Beloved & Blessed

Luke 3:22
…and the Holy Spirit descended upon him
in bodily form like a dove.
And a voice came from heaven,
"You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased."

It’s a beautiful moment in the Bible when God openly declares his great love for Jesus during his baptism. A part of me, when I read it thinks, “Would God say that about me? Would he say that I am his beloved and that he is pleased?”

If you’ve read The Shack, you may have noticed that in several points in the novel, Papa (God) makes reference to the fact that she is “especially fond” of someone in the book. The 2nd time it occurred, I questioned, “Surely the author is not trying to say that God has favorites?”

But haven’t we all wondered that at times? We wonder if God considers some more beloved than others. We wonder if, when hard times come, God may not love us as much as we thought he did. Or maybe we wonder if there is something we could do that would cause God to love us more. Maybe we fear that he’s not as pleased with us as he is with some others, therefore affecting his love for us.

“To the degree that those fears have a place in your life,
you neither believe I am good nor know
deep in your heart that I love you.
You sing about it; you talk about it,

but you don’t know it.”
~Jesus to Mack in The Shack

God’s love for us is separate from our actions. God’s love for us is not dependent on our actions, no more than our love diminishes when our own children behave in ways that disappoint and discourage us.

By the third time Papa states that she “is especially fond of someone” I realized that, given the opportunity, it’s a message that God is trying to convey to each and every one of us, not just a chosen few.

God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.

~St. Augustine

In a beautiful little book by Henri Nouwen entitled, Life of the Beloved – Spiritual Living in a Secular World, Nouwen aims to get the same message across: “You are beloved by God,” and...

…“The voice that calls us the Beloved

wills us words to bless others
and reveal to them that they are no less.”
~Henri Nouwen

At the end of The Shack, Papa asks Mack to relay a message to a friend of his. “Tell Willie I am especially fond of him.” When we acknowledge the gift of our own belovedness, we can’t help but want to encourage others claim to their belovedness as well.

Beloved and blessed, that’s what you are.

After all, God is especially fond of you.

I Finally Read It (Now I’m Recommending It)

Most people know I’m an avid reader and lead a book club, and they often come up to me and ask, “Have you read ______________?” With this particular book, it got to where I would finish the sentence for them and say, “The Shack? No. Not yet.” So many asked.

I put off starting it a long time, even though I had heard such positive reviews of it. The premise of this fictional story is a difficult, tragic subject matter and that was the main reason I lacked the enthusiasm to start it.

It wasn’t until one of my own teenage sons read it in 3 days and begged me to read it that I couldn’t put it off any longer. In an age of video games and movies, when your kids get this enthusiastic about a book, you take note.

Wow. I wish I’d had this book when I was younger.

Did you ever have a great teacher who helped you to learn without even trying because they were so good at explaining? Their enthusiasm was contagious.

That’s the way this book reads. I felt I was receiving an explanation of theological concepts (specific to my interest, the Trinity) which in the past made me feel like I was trying to grasp at air. As I read, I kept saying to myself: “That makes sense.” “I get that.” “Why didn’t I ever think of it that way?”

And I was saying: “When you look at it that way, it’s so beautiful.”

For me, one of the most intriguing talks between the Holy Spirit and the main character, Mack, surrounded a fractal.

A fractal in The Shack is described as, “something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex.” When the Holy Spirit shows Mack a fractal, he says it just looks like a mess to him. She tells him:

“This mess is you! Together you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart and it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you it seems like a mess but to me, I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive – a living fractal.”

I don’t mind telling you I was very late in coming into a relationship with the Holy Spirit in my own life and it’s one I’m still working on. The Shack confirmed for me so much of what I am only just beginning to learn about the amazing gift of the Holy Spirit. The simplest way I can think to say it is that the Holy Spirit is my Helper.

In another point in the story, God tells Mack,
“You try to make sense of the world in which you live based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality. It is like looking at a parade through the tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self-centeredness, and power and believing you are on your own and insignificant.”

We need the lenses of Holy Spirit to guide our heart’s eyes, to keep us from being limited by that same knothole perspective. It’s hard to see the pattern behind the “mess.” But with the Holy Spirit as our guide and helper, God’s full purpose for each life eventually comes into being.

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You can see more information on fractals here, (which can get highly mathematical and endlessly fascinating but hurt my brain after just a little research). I had fun creating my fractal art, but suspect it’s not quite mathematical or self-similar enough to be a true fractal. Oh well, it's "purty." :0)