flyer than angels

intimacy, order, freedom

Intimacy is cultivated in the balance, or better yet, the interconnectedness of order and freedom.

Intimacy becomes lawlessness without order, yet intimacy will just as easily become legalism without freedom. Both are unbelievably damaging to both the self and to our relationships with other selves. That is why it is important that we learn how to manage the dance between order and freedom, both with God, and our relationships with others.

This dance is only maintained in a life led by the Spirit. We see this is in the personhood of Jesus. He is both our Lover and Lord, our Friend and yet our King. He speaks that He comes to the door and knocks, giving us the freedom to open or close our hearts to His love, yet one of the key characteristics of one who receives His love is that we obey Him.

It is a paradox that cannot be solved in the flesh - our natural selves normally can only submit ourselves to one or the other, either order or freedom. We make one our master, and the other our enemy, loving freedom but despising order, loving order but despising freedom.

This cannot be solved in the flesh, however. It is only in the Spirit that we can move seamlessly between order and freedom. It is only there that we find order in freedom and freedom in order, and it is there that intimacy grows.

We can give ourselves willingly, while also knowing that we are safe to do so.

Therefore, when we find ourselves growing frustrated with a lack of intimacy, the question is not whether or not we have not enough order or too little freedom, but rather where are we located? In the flesh, or in the Spirit?