Dangerous Beauty

I love snow. I love to watch the big fat flakes drift gently through the sky and cover the world in a blanket of white. I love the way every sound in muffled in the snow, it makes the world feel peaceful and warm. I love to play in the snow, to fall backwards in a mound of it and swish my arms and legs to make an angel. I love snow.

I really hate snow. I hate that it gets everywhere and I have to shove, I hate trying to keep my feet dry when I go out the door in the morning. I hate the slush that is brown and slippery on the roads, and the salt stains that seem to follow me everywhere. I hate being stuck inside, and I really hate the cold. Snow is dangerous, especially when it's fresh and you pass ten cars in the ditch on the way home while praying you won't be number eleven.

Snow claims lives every year, yet it also stuns be with its beauty every time it falls.

It seems strange that something we love can also be something that causes so much pain and trouble? Yet it isn't strange at all. Most things in the world are like that. Most good things, the things really worth having, come with a mound of troubles, too.

Like children. So many people want children, yet every parent will tell you it's a tough, thankless job. Then they go and get pregnant again.

Or mountain climbing, working so hard to reach a place where the world is spread out beneath you, a picture of peace and beauty. Even after losing friends to the dangerous climb.

I think that the world is this way because God is this way, and creation reflects Him.

How many times have you wanted to scream at God, wonder what is He doing and why? How many times have you fallen into His arms to drink of amazing grace or belted out worship songs for hours on end?

God is good, but he is also dangerous. He is a passionate, zealous being with very strong emotions and the ability to do whatever He wants. Yet I feel perfectly safe in His presence, it is the safest place to be--in the lion's mouth. We sometimes forget that God is powerful, that He can squash mountains with his little finger and level great kingdoms without batting an eye. We are safe, though, because He always chooses to do what is right.

Aslan, the Jesus character from the Chronicles of Narnia, first helped me truly see this truth about God. I think it is one of the most moving and essential parts of the story. "He isn't a tame lion, but he is good." He is a warrior and a lover. Aslan told Jill, a spoiled little girl who was super thirsty, that she had to turn her back on him to take a drink. She asked if he was safe. Aslan replied with a list of terrible, powerful things that he could do. If she wanted a drink, Jill had to trust that Aslan would not harm her. Not that she could have defended herself even if she was facing him!

I don't want a tame, timid God bound up in a catechism and perfectly defined by religious practice. I don't want a God who is only cuddly and happy and never takes a stand against what is wrong. I love God because He is dangerous and strong, because He does not make exceptions or give evil a centimeter of breathing space. I love God not because I always know what He will do or how things will happen. Just the opposite. I love an unpredictable and amazing being who created me to join in His wild existence.

Is the God you know both dangerous and beautiful? If you think God is safe, tame, predictable or controlled, take another look at the Bible. You'll find an amazing person with a frighteningly strong passionate love for you.