As my heart moves and settles into the realization that I want to worship and know Jesus intimately above all else I also realize how much I still want to be like Jesus....even to the point of death. Whether that be laying my life down for a friend until it kills me when God asks me to do that or being martyred in the Middle East. I want the Word to be "incarnated" through me!!
I truly truly believe that intimacy with Jesus involves throwing ourselves into both commandments with abandon. And I have waxed eloquent on this in past blogs.
Jesus Himself said "if you love me, you'll keep my commandments". And when asked what was the greatest commandment He named both. The first, first and closely on the heels, the second. So, if I truly want to love Jesus with all my heart, soul, mind and strength it means I sit at His feet in worship first and then I go out and lay my life down for others in love. Even unto death. He left us an example that we should follow in His steps. And HE lived both commandments out to the fullest. Until both the "saved" and the "unsaved" that He had come to love fully, killed Him. Hmmm.
Even the monks who I so love to study knew this. Not one of them abandoned either the first or the second commandment. They prayed much and they loved much and they died much. St. Francis, one of my two favorite Catholic "monks", loved Jesus with everything in him and poured his life out for the poor and hurting. He is remembered as being the saint who was the most like Jesus. Wow. Oh that we would all be so remembered.
But to be so, it's the Marriage of the First and Second Commandments.
So, I see that in my own "monastic" journey, it involves both. I want to live my life passionately before God alone. I want to live for another world, another age. And that age has some wierd rules....lose your life to find it. Die to live. Love and self-sacrifice are higher than self-preservation. Yet we don't just go lie in a street and die of exposure or beat ourselves to "participate in the sufferings of Christ". But we do lay our lives down for others at the call of God. Living life before Him. When He says "die for this one in my Name for the sake of love"....we do it. Then it becomes the fellowship of His sufferings....
But that's another topic.
