As the sun begins its southward journey and days darken and it’s like really cold in the morning, I find myself hovering more and more near the heating vents, bathing in the deliciousness of warm forced air. There is something about heat – from a vent, a radiator and especially an old-fashioned fire – that draws humans. It seems as if we have somehow been (unfairly?) thrust into a hard cold world when all we really want is comfortable warmth.
But is that really what God wants . . . or has created? God makes the world and the first thing he does is to begin to separate things – water from heavens, earth from water, day from night, animals from plants, female from male. God does not create a world of perpetual sunshine and golden days where the temperature always hovers at 78 degrees (well, there is Hawaii, but then, hey, they have volcanoes).
In fact, God not only seems to prefer contrasts to comfortable warmth, sometimes God demands that we live in those contrasts. At the other end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, God speaks to the church at Laodicea: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.” God demands this not only for the sake of the Laodiceans — for surely, they will only grow as they learn how to live with cold and hot — but also for the sake of restoring God’s creation. If we lack passion, if we are neither cold nor hot, than will we ever take risks? And why would others risk their own complacent self-sufficiency for a new life?
Cold and Heat. Day and Night. Dark and Light. No matter how we may attempt to insulate our lives, these are the realities that circumscribe our lives. But, as Rob Bell says in Velvet Elvis, “Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.” So it will remain cold for awhile. It will be bracing. It will burn some calories. Perhaps it will even wake me up.
And yet, the warm air filtering up from my furnace feels so nice on my bare feet and if I only stay under the covers a little bit longer I’ll feel better about things and if only I did live in Hawaii, why then think of the things I could accomplish!!!
Godspeed,
John