When we look pass what we front toward one another or better what we present toward one another as our person-hood we find out where our fears and ultimate loyalties are rooted. If selfness is rooted in ourselves then what we feel and who we are as people gets corrupted by a kind of egocentric love that has little overflow. It is a love focused on self preserving loyalties that dictate to us a perceived truth that is foreign to reality and true humanity. I think I need an ‘embedment in a particular sense of identity’ [brueggemann] if I am to walk in this life faithful to the kind of person Jesus intends for us. The embedment being a certain brand of bedrock that is more sure than I or the world is on their best day. This stuff has to transcend and yet be completely engaged in a kind of loving awakenness that has its eyes open to humbleness and new ways of traversing the same old path.
This is where beards come in, or any other kind of creative longing. We engage a time a season when we seek the heart of God. It is not feeling but it feels the death attached to growth. It is not forever for every moment matters. And it is not comfortable it is confronting. God’s love confronts the fronts we put between us and others. It invites us to die for a season and to goodbyes peppered with thoughts of redemption.
