“But you ask, ‘How have we shown contempt for your name?” 
There is a boy in the neighbourhood… whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out three years ago . . . He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help . . . He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows that at last he has nothing to commend himself to another human being. He has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is exactly in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is different from him in this regard. We are all unlovable. More than that, the action of this boy’s life points beyond itself, it points to the gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us through we have nothing acceptable to offer Him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.
~William Stringfellow, My People is the Enemy: An Autobiographical Polemic, 97-98
•Adam
•Abraham – friend of God
•Enslavement in Egypt–God heard their cry
•Build a tabernacle
•Four generations later – David
•Build a temple
•Book of the Law was lostGod had desired to be tabernacled in each individual worshiper before they gathered for worship with one another. Stephen’s sermon, that he paid for with his life, says it all, "the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands.” Bodies were to be the temple of God.
•Sacrificial system became corrupted
•Priests lost the nobility of their calling
•People lost God when His glory departed
•Tent and alter were replaced by a power-seeking ecclesiastical authority
As the deer panteth for the water,http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=JE12CFNU
So my soul longeth after Thee,
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship Thee.
You alone are my strength and shield
To you alone may my spirit yield;
You alone are my heart’s desire,
and I long to worship Thee
In the forward of his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis senses that there is an uneven balance between love and pleasure.•Appreciative love undergirds, influences and informs Need-love and Gift-loveThis is the cornerstone of the answer to loneliness
•Appreciative love endures because it is rooted in the very source of our being, not merely in our behaving
•Appreciative love springs out of gratitude and takes into full cognizance the mystery of my being before the one who is the cause of my being and who Himself can never, not be
•Appreciative love, as it relates to our response to God, is a love that loves out of gratitude to Him; it is a love that bends the heart and will in worship
–Both women had loved and lost
–Both knew the deception of love
–Both had lived through Need-love and Gift-love
–Both knew the limitations of pleasure
What was there about that house that made it home in a way that all the other houses of my childhood never even came close to being? The permanence of it was part of the answer—the sense I had that whereas the other houses came and went, this one was there always and would go on being there for as far into the future as I could imagine, with Ellen bringing my grandmother her glass of buttermilk on a silver tray just at eleven every morning, and my grandfather going off to his downtown office and returning in time for a cocktail before dinner with the evening paper under his arm and maybe something he'd bought at the bakery on the way home, and the Saturday night suppers when the cook was out and the menu, in honor of the New England half of my grandmother's background, was always mahogany-colored beans baked with salt pork and molasses, steamed Boston brown bread with raisins in it, and strong black coffee boiled in a pot with an eggshell to settle the grounds and sweetened with lumps of sugar and cream heavy enough to whip.
There is an ancient story that comes out of Buddhism that tells of a woman who wanted to know how she could rid herself of her miseries and her bereavements.Now, life is far more complicated than to be summarily epitomized as a journey to alleviate hurt, but I think you get the point.
She was told by the sage to go from door to door and when she found a home where there were no worries, to ask there for a morsel of grain
She returned a long while later saying that she had not found a single home that fit that description
In fact, she had become so involved in hearing of the heartaches of others that she had forgotten her own. The moral of the story – in giving you forget your own need
"There is a sense in which two and two are four,
The plane of ledgers and cashbooks – on which these propositions are approximately sound,
But if you rise from that plane to a loftier one,
You will find at once that they are untenable …
it is obviously untrue that half-a-baby and half-a-baby make a baby,
Let the sword do its deadly work…
The two halves of a baby make no baby at all,
"On this higher plane of human sentiment and experience, the laws of mathematics collapse completely"
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When a man distributes his wealth among his children, he gives to each a part
But when a woman distributes her love among her children, she gives it all to each …
No man who has once fallen in love will ever be persuaded that one and one are only two,
He looks at her, and feels that one plus one would be a million …
No happy couple into the sweet shelter of whose home a little child has come will ever be convinced that two and one are only three,
Life has been enriched a thousandfold by the addition of that one little life to theirs,
And I am certain that no pair from whose clinging and protecting arms their treasure has been snatched will find comfort in the assurance that one from three leaves two. . ."
"In the great crises of life one’s faith in figures breaks down hopelessly."
Although Kathy came to us years ago, her story remains a stark reminder of the complex and heart-breaking reasons kids continue to come to our doors. Here is her story...http://www.covenanthouse.org/homeless-youth/view/this_belongs_to_me
Kathy came through our door dressed in dirty rags and clutching a small paint can to her chest. Whatever she did, wherever she went, the paint can never left her hands. She took the can with her to the cafeteria that first morning, and to bed with her at night.
Kathy even took the paint can into the bathroom, leaving it just outside the curtain as she showered. Getting dressed, the precious object rested between her feet.
"This can belongs to me."
That’s what she told the counselors at Covenant House whenever they asked her about it. When Kathy was sad or angry or hurt – which happened a lot – she took her paint can to a quiet dorm room on the third floor. Many times Kathy would rock gently back and forth, the can in her arms. Sometimes she talked to the paint can in low whispers.
Troubled kids often carry stuffed animals, photos, and all sorts of keepsakes, but no one had ever seen a child cherish a paint can.
Troubled kids often carry stuffed animals, photos, and all sorts of keepsakes, but no one had ever seen a child cherish a paint can.
One day, a concerned staff member approached Kathy, hoping to finally solve the mystery: “Kathy, that’s a really nice can. What’s in it?” For a long time, Kathy didn’t answer. She rocked back and forth, her hair swinging around her shoulders.
Then she looked over at the counselor with tears in her eyes and said:
“It’s my mother. It’s my mother’s ashes.
I went and got them from the funeral home. See, it even has her name on it.” Kathy pointed to a little red label which listed the only memories Kathy had of her mother: name, date of birth, date of death.
Then Kathy held the can close, and hugged it. “I never really knew my mother. I mean, she threw me in the garbage two days after I was born.”
My mother told me she loved me
Kathy’s story was checked. The year Kathy was born the New York newspapers ran a story saying that police had found a little infant girl in a dumpster two days after Kathy was born.
“I ended up living in a lot of foster homes, mad at my mother,” Kathy said. “But then, I decided I was going to try to find her. I got lucky – someone knew where she was living. I went to her house but she wasn’t there,” Kathy said.
“My mother was in the hospital. She had AIDS. I went to the hospital… I got to meet her the day before she died. My mother told me she loved me,” Kathy said crying. “She told me she loved me.”
Covenant House can’t make up for all the loss in Kathy’s life… the love that should have been showered on this sweet child by her mother, long before their first meeting at the hospital. But by opening up to us about the contents in the can – and sharing her story – she is beginning to let our love in. With unconditional support and services designed to help her succeed, one day Kathy will put down the paint can and instead hold on tight to a new life filled with happiness.
In the introduction of his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis points our that there are four concepts that try to make a connection between love and pleasure and wonders what binds them and what separates them.
Listen to the words of Luke 7:36-43:
When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.
A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.
As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”•Woman – dared to come uninvited, gave to Jesus the best of her possessions, fell prostrate at His feet – washing them with her tears and drying them with her hair.
“Tell me, teacher,” he said.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
