Seeing Both Sides

"Somewhere along the way, though, the church has encouraged a silent divorce between the Word and the Spirit. Divorces are painful, both for the children and the parents. One parent usually gets custody of the children, and the other only gets to visit occasionally. It breaks the hearts of the parents, and the children are usually worse off because of the arrangement. Many in the church today are content to live with only one parent. They live with the Word, and the Spirit only has limited visiting rights. He just gets to see and touch the kids once in a while. Some of his kids don't even recognise him anymore. Some have become afraid of him. Others in the church live with the Spirit and only allow the Word sporadic visits. The Spirit doesn't want to raise the kids without the Word. He can see how unruly they're becoming, but he won't force them to do what they must choose with their hearts.

So the church has become a divided family growing up with separate parents. One set of kids is proud of their education, and the other set of kids is proud of their freedom. Both think they're better than the other.

The parents are broken hearted. Because unlike most divorces, they didn't choose this divorce. Their kids did. And the Word and the Spirit have had to both honor and endure that choice."

Seeing both sides has been the story of my life; in more ways than one. Unfortunately or fortunately, I have seen and known both sides of the Word and Spirit.

Metaphorically speaking, though not far from the truth, I have felt the 'pain of this divorce'. Of being pull by one side and the also the other. It always had to be a choice - 'us' or 'them'. My inner being always yelled, "whatever happened to 'us'"?!

For a long time I sought to find a middle ground. And failed. It was futile. The misunderstandings between the two sides stood before me loud and clear. I was just too 'young' and 'taken' to articulate the root of what I saw....

This passage quoted by a book I just finished spoke deeply into the sorrows of my heart. As I'd grown deeper my relationship with God, the tensions I felt grew stronger. And as with all tensions, a time came when that tension had to break.

When I finally 'broke'. I was undone. And since then, I have rediscovered the marriage of both Spirit and Word together: as my inner being had always intuitively known - as One.