I must admit this has been a hard week for me with Jayber Crow. It's week 8 for the online study happening with Michele Morin, over at her site, Living Our Days. I so appreciate her hosting this group with lively discussion! But what do I do with a character who charms me with his small-town stories and beautiful descriptions of nature, and yet at the same time saddens me with his variable moral compass?
I think he must remind me of myself and those I love.
Why do we have such a hard time fully embracing the ONE who loves us so much?
Why do we so easily take up our own opinions as the best way to walk?
In this week's chapters, Jayber took a deep look at himself, and found the scales wanting. And from the depth of that conviction, a truer love than he could have imagined, for a woman forever inaccessible, was committed to inside of his heart. And while that love could never be acted upon, it yet stirred in him a vision of the ONE true love from which all others in this world have been created:
"But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity."
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow: A Novel (Port William) (p. 249). Counterpoint. Kindle Edition.
As he pondered that love, Jayber finally admitted to the love of a Creator who was beyond all of his own questions. As he allowed that love in his heart to lead him, he saw God as not only the Creator, but also as a Father:
And I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not.
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow: A Novel (Port William) (p. 252). Counterpoint. Kindle Edition.
And the great questions of Free-Will, held onto for years from his own younger days, were finally laid to rest in his heart:
"Just as a good man would not coerce the love of his wife, God does not coerce the love of His human creatures, not for Himself or for the world or for one another. To allow that love to exist fully and freely, He must allow it not to exist at all. His love is suffering. It is our freedom and His sorrow. To love the world as much even as I could love it would be suffering also, for I would fail. And yet all the good I know is in this, that a man might so love this world that it would break his heart."
Berry, Wendell. Jayber Crow: A Novel (Port William) (p. 254). Counterpoint. Kindle Edition.
But here is where my own heart fell onto a different path from Jayber. While he was content to live with that love resting in his heart, holding onto it as his own private treasure, something entirely different is stirred within me when that ONE true love is recognized.
What can I do with that sorrowing and suffering
when I feel my Savior's Love in me?
How can I watch those I love struggle in their own questions
and not reach out to them somehow?
For I know that what my Father offers
through the suffering of His son
was for my benefit
was for their benefit
was for your benefit
"He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;"
Isaiah 53:3-5
And my own heart was broken open this week
with convictions.
If I say that I am blessed to have tasted
this love of my beautiful Lord
how then can my selfish heart
hoard it inside
as a treasure only for myself?
And it was here that my Father, Creator of that Love,
stirred in my heart to look around me
to feel the pain of those next to me
to hear the silent cries
of those alone in their pain.
The Father has sent his Son,
to search for EVERY lost one,
calling out to EACH lonely child,
offering a way to come home.
"Still, it’s what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he’d see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him."
Isaiah 53:10 MSG
Life, life, and more life
is what Jesus has come
to give us.
How can I not also seek after those lost ones
offering the same life
calling to the same home
showing the same love
that He has given to me?
Would you join me in prayer this week?
"Dear Father,
I confess that my heart has not always been stirred to give. I admit that there have been times when I have been content to hoard away Your love, as a treasure all my own. Please forgive me for those moments when I've closed my eyes to those around me. Will You open my heart to see the beauty of those hearts around me? Will You open my heart to share Your love with those hurting and lonely souls? And will You give me Your JOY that loves to seek, loves to call out, and loves to bring life where only death has reigned? Will You change my eyes to look through Your eyes of love?
In the Name of Your Son, Jesus, I pray, Amen."
I would love to hear your comments and prayer requests below. We are meant to share the load together!
I am linking this week with:
