A couple of years ago Hollywood released the movie "Traffic". I didn't see it. I had already seen the British version that it was based on. Over the holidays I rented it from Netflix and watched it again. It had been a long while. My babies were little the first time I saw it. Now they tower over me.
The series tells several interwoven stories of people whose lives are all affected by the heroin trade coming out of Pakistan. One particularly poignant story is of a government minister who's daughter becomes addicted to heroin. We watch as she and her family go through all of the typical stages of a family affected by drugs. Finally after she steals from the home and makes it look like a burglary the father puts her out and tells her, "You are not my daughter."
A while later, after dreaming that he is standing over his daughter's grave he begins to search for her. He does everything he can think of, including walking the streets at night. He finds a dealer who knows her and pays him a visit. After talking to him for a little while he gets ready to leave and the young man tells him, "I wish I had someone searching for me."The father finally finds his daughter passed out half dressed with a John standing over her demanding service for his money. The Father says, "That's my daughter." The John runs off and the father takes his daughter home. Once there he begins to talk to her. He tells her, " I love you. I love you unconditionally. You don't have to stop taking heroin. You don't have to stop anything. No matter what I will still love you."
How many of us, like the young dealer, are wistfully thinking, "I wish I had someone searching for me?". We spend so much of our lives it seems searching for love. How different our lives would be if we only woke up and realized that like the father desperately searching for his daughter to bring her safely home, love is searching for us. How would our lives and our feelings about ourselves change if we realized that His love is unconditional, we don't have to stop anything to receive it, we don't have to be anything to receive it, we can just BE.
You don't have to search for love.
Love is searching for you.
Love is searching for me.
Can't you hear him calling your name?
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7 comments:
This story reminds me of why, ultimately, I'm a univeralist.
Opps...universalist.
i can hear him.
the same voice i heard when I was nine years old.
i love the sound...
Yes, jazztheo, there is none other like it is there?
C. I had to look up universalism, being unfamiliar with the term as it relates to our faith. I'm not sure about all of that, but honestly I've come to the place in my life where I don't feel I have to be sure about every little detail.
I just know that people are desperate for that love, and we need to let them know they already have it.
It represents the blessed hope that God--in His own time (an oxymoron, I know) and way--will "save" everyone and everything. Ultimate and final restoration is the true nature of eschatology in this view. This does NOT mean that purgation (suffering, trials, tribulation, etc., this side of the Great Veil and/or on the other side, too, potentially) is eliminated altogether, but that God's "punishment" is redemptive and restorative in nature vs. being retributive and vindictive.
It basically assumes that LOVE is God’s very nature, instead of just one among many of His attributes; and thus, by definition, His other attributes flow forth from said nature, taking their cue, if you will, from LOVE instead of v.v. For example, justice, while important, is not God's nature, but an attribute that flows from His nature, which is LOVE. Unfortuantely, the Church universal throughout its history has inverted this flow and by and large has condemned the view of universalism (aka apokatastasis) as heretical. I wrote a post on this on EAC quite some time ago. I'll repost in case you're interested.
Bottom line: the person and work of Christ has indeed, once and for all, reversed the "Fall." It might not seem obvious, but that doesn’t matter. Time is a slippery thing. The intent and will of the Trinity WILL be done. No act of God will ultimately be in vain. All will be made whole. Holy Saturday matters for us all, just as does Good Friday and Easter! As the mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich, said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
Or as Bob Marley said -
Evry ting gonna be alright. Tee hee.
Interesting.
Spot on and in the "spirit," so to speak.
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