Theology Thursday: Don't Miss this Short Poem

As we know Christ we come to a place where we trip over joy and never again look back, our heart and life forever His. 

Tripping Over Joy                                                                     
(Daniel Ladinsky Hafiz)

What is the difference between your experience
of existence and that of a saint?

The saint knows that the spiritual path
is a sublime chess game with God
and that the Beloved has just made such a fantastic move
that the saint is now continually tripping over joy
and bursting out in laughter and saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear, I’m afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.

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I will always love this poem. The wonder of finding God's provision all-encompassing compels a dance of glad surrender. What joy to find in some measure our very will and person and imagined effort subsumed in the great I Am. All we imagined we were is owed to Him, easily surrendered because provided and re-purchased by this Great Lover of our souls. 

As Francis Thompson has it "All which thy child’s mistake fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: rise, clasp My hand, and come!" We never gain more than when we lose everything for Christ.

The theology here has to do, I suppose, with monergism vs. synergism: the effort to understand the scope and weight of God's role in our salvation. This poem leans to monergism, but I do not think it means God flattens our will or our free participation. Rather it shows God as the master persuader, drawing us to Himself in ways irresistible.

Why do not all come to Him? Many reasons but I will offer only one I stumbled upon today, attributed to C. S Lewis: "An atheist does not look for God for the same reason a thief does not look for policemen." We all find ways to avoid God, this is true, for our God is a consuming fire. Yet, when our heart opens but a little, when we dare to lean in, we find in time -- in time -- our resistance is overcome and we succumb to the very life of God, whom to know is life eternal.

In sum, I love this poem because it reminds me what I desperately need to remember: "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling." Christ is our Sabbath rest: in Him we are freed from reliance on our own effort. As we know Him we come to a place where we trip over joy and never again look back, our heart and life forever His.