“All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
What in Christ is correspondent to the creative power of God? It must be something that comes also of love; and in the Son the love must be to the already existent. Because of that eternal love which has not beginning, the Father must have the Son. God could not love, could not be love, without making things to love: Jesus has God to love; the love of the Son is responsive to the love of the Father. The response to self-existent love is self-abnegating love. The refusal of himself is that in Jesus which corresponds to the creation of God. His love takes action, creates, in self-abjuration, in the death of self as motive; in the drowning of self in the life of God, where it lives only as love. What is life in a child? Is it not perfect response to his parents, through oneness with them? A child at strife with his parents, one in whom their will is not his, is no child; as a child he is dead. His spiritual order is on the way to chaos. Disintegration has begun. Death is at work in him. See the same child yielding to the will that is righteously above his own; see the life begin to flow from the heart through the members; see the light rise like a fountain in his eyes, and flash from his face! Life has again its lordship!
The life of Christ is this—negatively, that he does nothing, cares for nothing for his own sake; positively, that he cares with his whole soul for the will, the pleasure of his father. Because his father is his father, therefore he will be his child.
Commentary
by Leah Morency
I have seven children. My heart is in seven beautiful beings, all before me so many, many days and nights, and often as we did last night at bed time, we talk.
They have no fear of questioning, for their trust is implicit in my honest and loving response. Their questions, which always surprise, delight, and challenge me, test my intellect, my heart, and reveal my true understanding!
Last night's favorites were "Why doesn't God have a wife?" "If there is no sin in heaven will there be comic books or heroes?" What we always end up talking of, in the childlike terms of the realm their minds can speak of, is that struggle, of what it is to live for Christ, and what place God has determining right and wrong in their reality.
This is one place the child begins to navigate the reality of the deathly self and its pull and drag down to self-gratification through self-will, and alternatively, the way of life, the way of the true self in Christ. I tell them the true self is in us, born of the father's love, created through Him, Christ, who is Life in us. The struggle of the true child is to at once deny the reign of self, and then, to walk in the creation power of the life, the love of the father through Christ in us.
But this is the struggle of the human form, mind, body, soul, emotion, passions, dreams, all beginning in infant beauty and innocence. As a mother, my purpose is to nurture the Love in my children, to teach them the creative power of that Love and Life in Christ that is in each of them. This is the only antidote to the death that beckons and assaults them daily with the lie that destruction is power.
Every question they ask I can relate to this truth: Love is in and of Christ, creation is from this Love, their being exists through this Love, therefore they are immediately intimate with their Father and creative power through their creation in Christ.
All we can know of right or wrong, good and bad, God and not God, is tied to the power of creation. How well little ones know this. They are literally in the midst of their own creation as we watch them grow!
Love flows into Life, which flows into Power, which expresses Creativity.
The opposite of destruction is creativity. Like us, children see destruction and can perceive it as power. So much of my talks with my children revolves around directing them away from power they feel in expressing self through destruction, and to the true Power, the power that creates and has created them, and which is immediately available to them in their minds hearts and souls through Christ. What does this power look like?
The power of Christ is this, to become a vessel of God, to empty self to receive the Life of Christ, and, as I tell them every day, the power to create Love and Life in this world. This is being a child of God, being of our Father, and one thing children, all children, deeply long for.