oh how quickly we forget

He was in the world,
and thought the world was made through him,
the world did not recognize him.
He came to that which was his own,
but his own did not receive him.
Yet to all who received him,
to those who believed in him name,
he gave the right to be called Children of God--
children born not of natural descent,
nor of human decision or a husband's will,
but born of God.

John 1:10-13

We read this passage at Olive Branch tonight during the Christmas Eve service, and although John 1 has always held a sort of mystic fascination for me--all that Word was God and the Word was with God craziness--this time I was struck by something very specific in the text:

The world did not recognize Him.

I've been reading Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What lately, and he spends the majority of his time in that book trying to get the reader to grasp this concept of a relational God. Not relative (as in postmodern relative truth), but relational in the sense that the Christian God is a Person (and became, literally, a person) who has created us not to be some kind of entertaining ant farm or an army of minions, but merely to enjoy communion with Himself. A relationship, if you will, although even that simple word has been dragged through the mud of Evangelical Christianese. He tries to explain that all the "stuff" that normally comes to mind when we think of God--church, morals, spiritual disciplines, etc.--is completely trumped by and totally meaningless without a dynamic, loving relationship with our Bridegroom and Beloved, Jesus.

A lot of the time I have trouble getting past that notion of a stoic, detached God who's just sort of lazily watching history unfold the way a magician watches as he shuffles a deck of cards. But this time I think I understood for a moment the pain contained in these verses: "though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him." And as much as I hate to admit it, it reminded me of The Notebook.

The most touching part of this otherwise throwaway movie occurs when Allie, an elderly woman with Alzheimers, briefly has her memory return to her and is able to remember her devoted husband, who has written down their love story and reads it over and over to her on a regular basis. The couple embraces, but all too quickly they are pulled back to reality. Allie asks Noah how long it will be until she forgets him again, and he answers that if varies every time. The best they can do is make the most of the time that they have, and when Allie does forget, Noah goes right back to reading her the story and pursuing her with the memory of his love.

I can't help but think that God must have felt very much like Noah. Here He has created us in His likeness and given us this beautiful planet to enjoy together, and we turn our backs on Him. Then, when He has given us the ultimate demonstration of His love, when He has contained His infinite glory in human flesh in order to repair the bridge between our hearts and His, we don't even recognize Him. The love, the intimacy, the joy that we felt with Him in the Garden of Eden has slowly faded from our collective memory. We are Allie with Alzheimers, a wife unable to remember her husband. And our husband, knowing full well the seriousness of the disease, must decide whether he will remain devoted to a woman who may or may not ever return his love again, or whether he will slip out the back door and leave her alone in the nursing home in the fog of her mind.

But of course, where true love is concerned, it's no choice at all.

As for me, I am all too aware of my own spiritual Alzheimers. Those fleeting moments of recognition, of beholding the face of God and truly knowing Him, are precious and rare. Inevitably, I ask the bittersweet question: "How long until I forget again?"

Merry Christmas, everyone. I pray we all have a memory flash.