Holiness

Holiness. The more I get to know God, the more I think differently about what that word means. At one time, it meant a threatening, confining perfection that hangs over my head like a vaulted ceiling I can never reach. The more I learn about the boundless grace of God, the ceiling disappears into thin air. I look above me and all I can see is sky. Stars. I see His glory. He erases the ceiling, so I can begin to see Him for who He really is.  He erases the ceiling, so that I’m not constantly reminded of all that I am not. He erases the ceiling, to show me that He sees me. Intimately. Even when I am enticed by other lovers.  Holiness. The kind of love that is so void of pride, it’s a vacuum. The kind of love that is so absent of self-protection that it pursues me, though I am an adulteress. The absence of pride in this holiness thinks nothing about alluring me again, and again, though I betray Him. That’s holiness.

“Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
Then she will say,
“I will go back to my husband as at first…”
Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her…
“In that day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.’”

(Hos. 2:6-7, 14, 16 NIV)