I don’t love my three great friends so passionately in spite of their differences from me. I love them so passionately because of their differences from me! And in this I am perfectly following my Father’s heart. I only need to let him spread it out, from a few friends to many more friends. God is beautiful and has beauty in infinite varieties within himself. His beauty is present in all of his children, if I will look for it.
The Mona Lisa is a masterpiece. But now imagine that it’s the only painting found on every wall of every gallery in the world. It would get boring quickly, wouldn’t it?
Many years ago, I read the explanation of the manifestation of languages at Pentecost given by Vladimir Solovyov, a late19th Century Russian philosopher, and it made sense to me. He said that the real miracle at Pentecost wasn’t the 120 speaking in other languages, but the whole crowd—from all over the world known to Rome—understanding perfectly what they had said. He called this a foretaste or foreshadowing of the scene the Apostle John saw around the throne in Heaven. In that scene, a great multitude from all nations, tribes, peoples and languages praises the Lamb around his throne. As Solovyov pointed out, John could tell the people were from different nations and ethnicities—their differences were visible—and they were speaking different languages. But they were perfectly united in praise, and all understood each other (and John understood them!). God overcomes the judgment pronounced at the Tower of Babel not by removing our differences and giving us only one language again, but by enabling his children to love (first) and then understand each other with all of our differences intact.
Our differences are part of the Father’s design, part of the unique beauty each of us has been given. Our genes recombine the way they do, allowing for nearly infinite variety to arise, because God designed us that way. He doesn’t want just the Mona Lisa in his gallery!
But all of this would have remained only a bunch of nice theory with no real meaning to me, no application to my life, if the Father had not graced my life with a series of three—in my eyes, at least—very exceptional women, scattered over a period of 40 years. (The Father has all time and is not in a hurry.) Each of the three was from a different culture and was very different from me, in just about every way imaginable. I perceived each of the three as very beautiful, in every way I could observe, and I loved—and still love—each of them quite passionately. And, looking back—as two of the three, at least, are very far in my past—the strength of my passion was (and remains) very important to the way God has used them to shape everything in my life that came after them.
But I’ve only come to recognize in the last few days what may be the most important change God has been making in my heart through all three of them over the years. It may, in fact, be the main “point” he has been trying to make all along, in a way my heart would understand. It is this:
I don’t love my three great friends so passionately in spite of their differences from me.
I love them so passionately because of their differences from me!
And in this I am perfectly following my Father’s heart. I only need to let him spread it out, from a few friends to many more friends. God is beautiful and has beauty in infinite varieties within himself. His beauty is present in all of his children, if I will look for it.
The fact that Jesus had to figuratively hit me over the head with the very different beauty of three women who aren’t my wife—though my wife loves all three just as much as I do—over a long period of years just to get my attention probably doesn’t say good things about me.
But it says something wonderful about the Father.
My Father loves beauty!
