Carrie Cox’s Corner

“I just don’t understand, Father. How can love and Christianity be so real, when christians are capable of being so ugly. All I can see is the opposite of love. How can I love them?”

I wrestled with this idea of charity. I had been reading one of Corrie Ten Boom’s books. She’s one of my favorite authors-The Hiding Place is probably my favorite book. But she always seems to challenge me, even after I’ve read her works over and over, there seems to be more in there than there was before. I guess it’s life experiences, taking off the colored glasses and seeing life for what it truly is: a few days and full of trouble, not always the American dream. Well, I was wrestling. My faith, and my lovely Lord spoke to my heart and said I needed to love-have charity. The entire rest of my being was shaking its head vigorously all together, a clear no. It didn’t compute. It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t figure it out. I asked the Lord to help me love them, to have charity, even when I felt like I wasn’t wrong, but had been wronged, but there were no feelings, besides confusion. I finally stopped trying to figure it out, to generate the right feelings of the warm fuzzies, and I took a walk.

We were in Galveston for a short little holiday while school was still out. I had brought along Tramp For the Lord, the follow up book to The Hiding Place. I struggled with love and forgiveness for minor faults, but I had never been wronged like she had. How could her faith be so strong? I walked and my mind still reeled. I finally sat down and just stared at the sea. Something about the water, the wind, the multi sensory overload there at the ocean that helps me to stop overthinking. It soothes my salty soul. I sat there and felt myself relax. I felt the Lord speak gently to me, “Look up, child.”

I looked up and saw the most amazing thing: the biggest cloud I’ve ever seen was right in front of me over the ocean, and it was in the shape of the largest heart I’d have ever seen. As I looked at that, my understanding opened. I don’t need a heart and a mind that is capable of loving like God does, He already has it, I just have to allow it to work through me. The shape in the cloud, the most elementary symbol of love, opened my eyes to how much love our heavenly Father has. He had the love that I needed then. He was willing to not only give it to me, but to show it to me in the sky at just the moment that I needed it. My eyes filled with tears as I looked up.

I looked up!

“There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still,” is Corrie Ten Boom’s most famous quote about her time in the concentration camp. I had a small pit, a crevice in the grand scheme of things-God was enough. Corrie had a large pit, a chasm of human depravity-God’s love was more than enough. And the best part about it, and what I’m thankful about for it today, there is no depletion of this love. Even after meeting our needs, there is no lack. Its depth is unfathomable. It is written in the sky.