The Kingdom of God | Pearl of Great Price

So today's teaching scripture is from Matthew chapter 13 verse 45

Matthew 13:45–46

to 46. Again the Kingdom of heaven is

like a merchant in search of fine pearls.

On finding 1 Pearl of great value, he went and sold all that

he had and bought it. This is the word of the Lord

Good. Morning.

So in 1957, John Coltrane was. Fired.

From Miles Davis Band. He was deep in the throes of.

Addiction and was personally and professionally.

Wrecked. And it was in that state that he

locked himself in a room and quit using both alcohol and

heroin cold Turkey. And he experienced what he.

Describes as a. Spiritual Awakening.

In that place he. Didn't go looking for God, he

went into that room to white knuckle.

His way through detox. And.

Later he writes I. Experienced by the.

Grace of God A. Spiritual awakening which was to

lead me. To a richer, fuller, more

productive life. That kind of thing is what we

talked about in last week's parable of the hidden treasure

in the field that comes right before this one.

The Kingdom of Heaven, 1 might say, found Coltrane suddenly and

unexpectedly in that room, in the field that he was.

Plowing of his. Ordinary life but his.

Greatest work? And one of the greatest albums

in the history of recorded music, A Love Supreme, came

seven years. After that moment, After.

Seven years of daily practice of spiritual discipline.

Of. Learning to pray through the

instrument of what musicians called woodshedding.

That's the long. Unglamorous, arduous, solitary

process of. The formation of music, this

album didn't come from this chance encounter that he had.

He didn't have this experience of the love of God and then

write a love supreme the very next day.

It came from everything that. He did after that.

Profound moment of change. So a love.

Supreme in four movements, 33 minutes long, recorded in one

session in one day on December 9th, 19. 64.

The musicians who were in the studio that night described the

session as unlike anything they had.

Ever witnessed? There was this sense that

something way beyond ordinary craft, ordinary music making,

was happening before their very. Eyes that.

John Coltrane had prepared himself so thoroughly that the

music came through him rather than from him, like it was

coming from another place. In the liner notes for A Love

Supreme, Coltrane dedicated the album to God, calling it a

humble offering to Him and as an attempt to say thank you.

God through our work. And he opened those notes with a

single line of scripture. Seek and you shall find.

This is the sort of summary of the prior.

Seven years of John Coltrane's life of.

Struggle of process of. Reflection of looking forward

and what I'm trying to. Describe with this story is this

that the. Stumbling upon chance

encounters. With God's love.

And the long intentional. Search are.

Both in his story and you can't have the second one without the

first one. He has to have.

The moment. Of.

Realization the this this chance encounter with the love.

Of God. To be able to go on the journey

that he goes on. Next, but after.

God's love finds John Coltrane he spends 7 years learning what

to do with what he's found in that moment and so that.

Is where we'll be. This morning we were in Matthew

1340. Four last week.

So for those of you who was here last week for.

That one, yeah. So you probably forgot.

The moment you walked out the door.

What we talked about. So just a little refresher for

you. To no, I'm just.

Kidding. I wait well.

You know people. Always say you, you go home.

Singing the worship songs, but nobody goes home singing the

sermon, right? So there are things that are a

little easier to remember and and things that are a little

harder, but there was a man. Plowing a field.

That he didn't own. And his plow.

Hits something Buried treasure. And it finds.

Him in this ordinary moment. Of his everyday life.

That he didn't plan for, but what he finds is worth selling

everything. To buy the field.

That contained the treasure and so.

This week, Jesus says. Something similar again, and he

deliberately places this new parable alongside the previous

one instead of an ordinary. Day laborer he tells a short

story about a. Merchant and a lifetime of

searching. Of searching.

As vocation, as searching. You know that this, this this

man's only concern in life and so.

These two parables. When you read them through

quickly, they sound the same. They sort of follow the same

cadence. A field hand finds treasure in a

field, sells everything to buy the field.

For joy and a. Merchant searching for fine.

Pearls finds a Pearl of great price sells.

Everything to buy the Pearl, but looking a little bit.

Closer I. Think there's actually a?

Completely different aspect of what?

Jesus calls the Kingdom of heaven or the Kingdom of God in

this second. Short story which?

Raises a question worth sitting with before we go any further

into the text. If Jesus says that the.

Kingdom can and indeed does find us completely by accident.

Why search it all? I find myself asking that

question after the. Story that we read last week if.

If the Kingdom. Is like.

Someone who stumbles on treasure in a field, what's the value in?

Sort of troubling ourselves with the.

Searching with the asking with the hard questions of of faith

in life. The Quaker.

Writer Parker Palmer. In his book, The Promise of.

Paradox argues. That most of us are not equipped

to understand. Our lives through the.

Lens of paradox. So this whole book he spends

sort of unpacking the nature. Of.

The contradictions of the Christian faith, the

contradictions of the text, and the contradictions of the

questions. That we have to ask ourselves to

be able to truly live. This thing out because.

We're people, at least. I'm a person who wants

resolution. Either or.

Black and white thinking is easier for me to get my mind

around either the Kingdom is a. Gift that you receive.

Or it's something you work toward.

Right, this is the. Way that our minds try to make

sense of of these questions either.

Grace does everything or. Your effort matters.

We set up these sort of. Bifurcated questions for

ourselves. Because it's easier for us to

live. In one side of that tension.

Or the other rather. Than holding that tension and

living our. Whole lives.

In. A paradoxical truth.

About what the Kingdom of God is like.

We are not comfortable holding 2 profound truths in conversation

with one another. At the same time, we want to

live on one side. Or the other but.

Palmer, drawing on the Christian mystical tradition.

Says that faith is precisely the capacity to hold.

Paradox with humility to hold the tensions in our lives.

To hold the contradictory truths in our lives with humility.

He quotes the physicist. Niels.

Bohr, who says the opposite of a correct.

Statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth

may be another profound truth. Isn't that an interesting

thought? So these things are sort of.

Scattered all over our lives that that.

Seem mutually exclusive. To believe one means that you

would. Necessarily have to reject the

other, right? But it's not so because when

Jesus. Teaches these parables.

Of the Kingdom, which is the series that we're in right now,

where we're looking at the. Ways that Jesus teaches.

About the different aspects of the Kingdom and these.

Different ways of describing. What the Kingdom of.

God is like. What the rule and reign?

The the the. Loving authority of God is.

Like in our world. He uses paradox.

He uses contradictions to teach about the nature of the Kingdom,

so that we can see this thing from every possible angle you

know I can think of. Ways that I've.

Experienced the presence of God in both ways in my life, and I

think you probably can too. I became a Christian because of

one of those ordinary moments that was animated by the love of

God. An unsuspecting moment in my

life where God's Kingdom just came crashing down on my head.

But I've also known as I think many of you have times in my.

Life where I've searched. And I've prayed and I've

discerned. And hungered for the love of.

God diligently. Over the course of.

Months and. Years, and those have.

Been uniquely satisfied at the end of a long process of seeking

God. Both things can be true at the

same time. So last week the Kingdom found

someone who wasn't looking. This week the Kingdom is found

by someone who has been searching for his whole life and

Jesus. Put these puts these two

parables back-to-back. Very much on.

Purpose because both are. True, and the tension between

them is not a problem. To solve it's it's the shape.

Of the thing itself, the Kingdom finds the accidental and.

Rewards the devoted just. The same it comes in this

strange. Logic of pure gift.

And the culmination of a lifetime of searching both

things are true at the same time, and holding both of these

things without collapsing 1 into.

The other is part of the work. Of following Jesus.

The first word of this. Parable is again.

So it's a small work, small word that does.

Real work. Again, Jesus says, deliberately

asking us to. Read these parables as a pair.

There's actually a third and even more confusing parable that

we're not going to preach on in this series that also begins

with, again, directly after this one.

So if you'd like to. Go read it.

You're welcome to, but you'll probably have.

Questions. And then he introduces a

merchant. The Greek word is for a.

Traveling wholesale trader so this isn't a side hustle.

This is this. Person's whole.

Life, their whole vocation, he deals specifically.

In pearls. It is what this.

Person knows and he has handled thousands of them.

Across years of work. In markets from the Persian

Gulf. To the Red Sea.

He knows immediately what he's looking at because he finds

something that's extraordinary, that stands out because he spent

his. Whole professional life.

Learning the difference between fine and ordinary.

So this is just a little bit of like what the hearers of this

parable. Would be imagining when Jesus.

Starts to describe. This merchant the search.

For the Pearl of great, Price prepared his eyes.

Because he had looked on many, many, many lesser things before,

he finds this one. So much like the buried treasure

last week, There's there's. Something about this?

Story that would have. Landed more forcefully on.

Jesus hearers. Than it does maybe for us as

moderns in the West. Pearls.

In the ancient world, were among the most valuable commodities in

the Roman Empire and were more consistently prized than gold in

some societies. So when we hear Pearl, we think

you know. Possibly a valuable.

Thing maybe you think of like, you know, your your

grandmother's jewelry or something.

Like a little bit obscure a little bit.

Abstract, but we know it's. Valuable but to the hearers of

this parable. They would have been hearing the

most valuable thing, in fact. Pliny the Elder.

Wrote that the. The two most expensive objects

in the. World were pearls.

Owned by Cleopatra so we know that when Jesus says the.

Pearl of great price. What people are hearing is not

just some random valuable thing they're hearing the most.

Valuable object. In the world, one detail that's

easy to miss is that the merchant had been collecting.

Pearls, plural. This was his.

Life's accumulation. And so in this moment, he trades

his entire collection, everything that he's.

Gathered across a lifetime of expertise.

For this one stone, this is a complete reorientation of

everything that he has and everything that he is, which

makes this parable on its. Face sort of foolish.

I don't know how many of you in the room own a business.

That sells. Things.

But I just want you to imagine for a moment that you take your

entire inventory. You.

Liquidate your entire inventory to buy one item.

That's not a great business model.

Or like if you're in real. Estate, you know, maybe.

You're a developer. And you're buying apartment

buildings, you're buying. Properties to flip.

And you take your. Whole real estate portfolio, you

sell it all. Off and you buy one enormous

mansion in the Beverly Hills. Probably not a good business

decision, right? That thing is going to be much.

Harder to turn over. You're probably not going to

make a profit. On it.

So. So again, Jesus is telling a.

Story that's a little. Bit counterintuitive.

He's he's not just saying that this was a savvy business person

who had finally found what they were looking for.

He's saying this person, this is a person who.

Takes a hard. Left turn and actually.

Sort of. Betrays all the sensibilities of

what they had been spending their entire life doing.

He is no longer a Pearl merchant once he.

Sold all of the. Pearls and buys one extremely

expensive 1. He owns one stone and nothing

else. Robert Capen would say the

Kingdom operates. By a different logic.

Entirely in this case, and this foolishness is not incidental.

To the story it's the. Point of the story.

Paul writes to the. Corinthians, that the message.

Of the cross is. Foolishness.

To those who are perishing, the Pearl merchant looks.

From the outside, like a man who has completely lost his mind,

one would look at this decision and think, please give me one,

one good reason. From the inside, though, he's

found the one thing that makes everything else negotiable.

And this is. Where the parable?

Continues to open into. Deeper layers of what?

Jesus. Is trying to communicate and

where we need to ask the same question that we.

Asked last week if the treasure was.

Buried in the field before the man arrived.

Who put it there? And we need to ask the same

thing here if the. Pearl was already.

Formed before the merchant found it, Who formed it?

And so we can go the practical direction and say, you know, a

Pearl is the only precious stone that's made by a living

creature. It's made through irritation,

layer by layer. Over years and the oyster.

Doesn't choose the grain of sand, but it.

Chooses what to do. With it and what comes out the

other side is something of extraordinary value and beauty.

There's no shortcut to a fine Pearl and the time and the cost.

Are part of. What The thing is?

I think that's part of the the story that Jesus.

Is trying to tell. The church father said that the.

Field containing the treasure is Christ himself, and I think the

same thing is true here, that the Pearl was formed before the

merchant arrived at the market. God has been at work in the

world long before any of us began searching.

God has been sort of weaving this.

Thread of his love. And his kindness throughout.

The the tapestry of history. Since the very beginning, and

it's been there for human beings to search for and to find,

Searching for the Kingdom of God, searching for.

The love of God. Searching for God's kindness and

God's justice in the. World prepares our eyes to be

able to. See it when we find it, but it

doesn't produce what we find. The searching doesn't create the

conditions for you to experience the love of God.

And I think so often we get this wrong.

We we slip into, you know what I would almost say is magical

thinking to think that somehow our efforts are searching our

desire bring about the thing that we're looking for.

But it's very much the opposite. The love and the kindness.

Of God are already. Present in your life for you to

find. And so then the parable turns

the mirror one more time. What if the merchant is not only

a picture? Of us.

But what if the merchant is also a picture of God?

If the Pearl of great price. Is humanity the.

People of God, that that God's. Gathering to himself.

Across all of history. The one who finds it and sells

everything to buy it. Is Christ?

And here the emphasis. Shifts.

From last. Week's parable.

This is vocation. This is his.

Job. So no longer.

Is it just a? Field Hand.

Plowing in the field. Working for someone else, this

is the culmination of an. Eternal purpose for Jesus the

deliberate search of a love that.

Has organized itself around finding us the way that God

comes into the world in Christ. This is where the artist and

writer. Makoto Fujimura's idea.

Of gratuitous. Beauty lands with.

With great force. For me.

He argues that beauty is. Gratuitous in the best sense, so

often we hear. The word.

Gratuitous and we think you know, over the top.

Unnecessary, almost with a negative connotation.

But what he does is he says. You know, this is, this is so.

Over the top so. Beyond utility, it's not.

Necessary for survival. It's not useful in any pragmatic

sense. And he says that's.

Precisely. What makes something point

beyond? Mere survival towards.

Something like flourishing? What God desires for.

Humanity God didn't need. To create.

God didn't need to redeem, and so the concept of selling

everything in one's possession for a single Pearl.

Is foolish. It's gratuitous.

And I think in that way, Jesus is illustrating what the love.

Of God is like. It's way beyond what's

necessary. It's way beyond just the simple

practical needs that we have in our lives.

It includes those things, too. It's.

So big, though, that it goes. Far beyond just the basic

necessities of life. And so this concept of selling

everything in your possession for one Pearl.

Is foolish. It's it's.

One stone and. The merchant sells.

Everything, for one thing, that has no.

Practical value whatsoever. Fujimoro.

Writes that art is gratuitous. Art is extravagant, but so is

the love of God. And so it's just one of the.

Reasons that I love to, you know, sort of surface like.

Music and film and visual. Arts and all these things, you

know, because. It's one of the ways that we get

in. Touch with with the over the top

gratuitous love of God for. Us far beyond just what we need

and so rather than being somehow efficient.

The cross shaped love of Christ is extravagant God's love.

Isn't the minimum. Required to solve.

The problem? It's always extravagantly more

than enough. The Impressionists painted with

light. Not because light is useful, but

because the world. Is dim.

They lived in a world. That was sort of.

Overtaken by darkness and by struggle.

By war, by strife. And the soul needs.

Feeding our souls. Need life to keep going and so

community and prayer and engaging suffering aren't

productivity. Hacks for the spiritual life.

They are our souls. Participation in the gratuitous.

Beauty of God, the over the top beauty of God and so.

Sometimes even I can find myself thinking about things.

Like like worship. In the gathered room.

And you know what is that actually doing?

What good is that? Or I think about, you know,

serving in this area or doing this thing or whatever, you

know, giving a little bit of money here or doing this and

it's like what? What's the real value?

And there's a reminder, I think. For us that the search.

Itself, for the Kingdom, all the little things, all the ways.

That we just sort of. That might feel like a.

Drop in the bucket. Reflect the extravagant.

Over the top love of God that goes.

Far beyond the practical goes far beyond solving a problem.

I brought this in last week but I think.

It's worth. Raising in this context again,

Paul describes this same reorientation in Philippians and

and we hear this all the time, but I think it's helpful.

To hear it set. Right, right next to these

parables, he considers everything that he has

accumulated as a loss compared to the surpassing worth of

knowing Christ. The value calculus.

The math has completely shifted and.

What looked like wealth to us before, what looked like wealth

to Paul before, looks like rubble.

Next to what he's found, Paul's a great example of this too.

From the Scriptures, he has a moment, a happenstance moment

where the love of God crashes down on his head, and then years

of formation, years of searching for the thing.

And he's not. He's not grieving.

What he gave up. In this case, I think there's

something important to name here while we're talking about

paradox and tensions and the way that the Kingdom comes to us.

That lives close to home for us specifically because our little

Vineyard church here is actually.

A kind of paradox in itself. I.

Want to show you 3 photographs? The first one is a.

Jesus, people Beach. Baptism from the early 1970s.

So there's people in street clothes standing in the Pacific

Ocean, laughing, crying, cliffs packed with onlookers to the

scene. Not a stained glass window.

Insight. No chairs, no coffee, and.

This is where our. Movement came from this is where

the family of churches. That we're part of.

Sort of had its beginning. The Vineyard was born out of

scenes like this one. A whole bunch of people who

found the Kingdom by accident in parking lots, on the beach, in

bars, in living rooms with no. Religious pedigree whatsoever.

And no. Spiritual resume required the.

Kingdom found them and crashed into their lives and that is

real and it's good and it's in the DNA.

Of who we are as a church. This next one is a papal Mass at

Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome with this ornate altar and

hundreds of priests investments. Each of them you know each each.

Surface in this. Building carrying 2000 years of

accumulated tradition and ceremony, and it's worth

reaching toward to receive some of its gifts.

We read the old. Stuff.

And we practice silence and some liturgy and some of the ancient

prayers, and we know that formation matters, that this

long devoted search matters. And there's a kind of depth that

only comes from. Years.

Years. And years and.

Years of devoted practice. And asking the hard questions.

What a stark contrast between beach baptisms in the 70s and

this right. And the last one is the Sunday

gathering at Asia's Hope in Cambodia.

A church. That this community.

Has the privilege of. Walking alongside in.

Periodic trips. And our tangible.

Support through our partnership. This is this is another thing

that we love, you know the Kingdom doesn't belong to.

The West it doesn't. Belong to any single tradition.

It doesn't belong to any single aesthetic.

It doesn't belong to a single hemisphere.

God's presence is thick in this room in a dusty suburb of Phnom

Penh, packed with orphans and genocide survivors who found the

treasure in the field that they didn't know they were plowing.

And the audacious claim? Of the.

Christian faith of the. Project of.

Living a life. With Jesus.

Is that the same basic thing is happening in all?

Three of those photographs. That's like kind of a

challenging thing to get our mind around, isn't it?

I mean just just click. Through those 3.

Again, just linger on each one for a minute.

The same basic thing is happening in all three of those.

Photographs the worship of Christ, God's.

Kingdom and power and love. Present with people.

On a California. Beach 50 years ago.

In the most ornate building in Western civilization and in

Cambodia on a Sunday morning and.

By the way. I think this is interesting.

Because I sat with these photographs for a while this

week, you can tell where your bias is.

By which one is hardest? For you to believe, 'cause I

think probably for almost every person, when you look at all

three of these pictures, you go. There's one of them that you

see. And you go, yeah.

But I'm not. Sure about that.

I don't know about what those people are doing.

I mean really like. Genuinely, any any one of them

we are imperfectly trying to hold.

All of these. Three and the whole mess.

Of the broader tradition that we're a.

Part of at the same time the spontaneous encounter and the

ancient tradition of the. Global Church.

And the tension between those things is not a problem to fix.

And so some weeks you or I might walk out of here feeling a

little. Bit like that was a little bit

too. Fill in the blank and you know,

in some sense, I mean, I, I don't want to be, you know, I.

Want to be realistic? That could be because.

We're doing something wrong. But it also could be because

we're. Attempting to sort of inhabit.

These. Traditions that are in tension

at any given time, recognizing the beauty and the value of each

one of them and going, you know, one or the other of those things

might be sort of home base for you but.

Would that we receive the gifts of all of them does.

That make sense so. The merchant didn't arrive at

the Great. Pearl on his first day in the

market, he became someone who could recognize the Pearl by

spending years handling everything else and.

There's a lot of. Everything else in your story

and mine. I I know it to be true.

You know we. We sort of sift through the

difficult. Things of life, the things that.

Just. Flat out are not God.

Because. We want to become people who can

learn to recognize what is God. Where God is at?

Work in your life and so. Our practices of.

Community and formation and mission, They're not.

They're not unique. You know, God forbid we ever

think that we're. Up to something clever.

Or that we've got. Some like great new idea.

That's going to be the best thing that anybody's ever seen

that walks in these. Doors because the truth.

Is we stand in a long line. Of received practice.

From our brothers and sisters in recent history, in ancient

history, in our own city and on the other side of the.

World. This is the search that

prepares. Our eyes to recognize.

What was already there? What was already?

Planted in your life for. You to receive as the Pearl of

great price as the gift. Of the Kingdom of God to you.

So where does this leave us? The Kingdom found the man before

he went looking in last week's story, and God has already.

Sold everything to purchase the field.

That contains us, which means that the sell everything move.

Of discipleship is the. Response of someone who has

already been found and has spent enough time in the market to

know. What they're holding.

And how to find it? And the difference?

There's a difference between the person who searches.

Because they're trying to. Conjure something and the person

who. Searches because they've

already. Tasted something real and they

want more of it. That's what a devoted life with

God looks. Like and I think this is.

Important to talk about because so often we get.

Tricked into thinking that we're searching so that we can have.

Another experience or so that we.

Can have that experience for the first time or so that God will

do something for us I'm so encouraged by.

Both of these types of stories. And I also want to say that the

longer that I do this, the more I gravitate.

Toward the stories of. Long devoted searching to have a

moment and then draft off of that thing for five.

Years or a decade? Is one thing, but when I hear

stories and I sit with people with my friends who have been

faithful for. 40 or 50 years. To keep searching for God's

Kingdom among us and who haven't flamed out, haven't made some

dumb mistake, haven't you know, whatever.

That's the kind of thing that. I draw a real.

Encouragement from again this you know the the, the momentary.

Stories are also. Encouraging.

They're also good, but you know some of.

Us were taught. And with the best of intentions,

by the way, that the moment of. Surprise is the whole story that

grace is free. And there is nothing left.

For you to do. Once you've experienced it and

what I would. Say is that it is free.

And there is nothing left for you to do.

And that the accidental finding is not the destination.

It's the beginning of a long journey.

And for many of us, I think that has.

Quietly, sort of. Become a stuck place in our

life. Where we were told.

You know you had this experience.

Grace is free. There's nothing left for.

You to do. And now?

Here you are 5. 1020 years on going I'm not sure what to.

Do about that. Because I don't feel.

Quite as excited about. This thing that happened.

Back here. As I did at one point, and

nobody really. Told me what to.

Do with it. And so the years have gone by

and the thing that felt vivid at one point has started to feel

distant and you weren't sure. If it was your fault, or God's

fault, or if that's just sort. Of the way that things are, but

we tend to sort of lose the. Plot after a little.

While if we're not. Sure, what to do?

With the gift that's been given to us and.

So here's the arc of these two parables.

Together, the Kingdom comes to the person who wasn't looking in

an ordinary field on an ordinary morning, the plow hit something.

They stop, they sell. Everything and buy the field and

the Kingdom comes to a person who has spent a lifetime looking

in a market who knows better than anyone what they're looking

at. And after years.

Of handling lesser things, he finds the one that makes

everything else that he's seen look cheap.

Both of them sell everything, but the journey is slightly

different. To get there the.

Destination's the same, but Palmer writes again that faith.

Is the. Breakthrough into the Deep.

Realm of the soul that accepts. Tension with humility.

You actually don't have to choose between the accidental

grace. And the devoted search.

And I think for some people, God's doing one of those things

in your life, even right now, even right now in the moment

that you're in, the accidental grace is finding you.

You've sort of. Stumbled into something and it's

and it shimmers with. The love of God.

And for others of you, you are in the long unresolved middle

where you go. I know I bumped into something

at some point and I'm trying to figure out what that means for

my life. And I'm asking the question and

I'm sort of moving in that direction, but I don't know.

Exactly what to do? And so here's where I want to

land this morning. As the worship.

Team comes back and parents you can prepare.

To receive your kids back in the back there, I'd just invite

everybody to. Stand if you're able.

We're going to do some prayer ministry if somewhere along the

way someone told you that grace is free and.

That's the whole project. And you've been living on that.

For years. And although it's true,

something feels a little bit. Hollow about it.

That's actually not a you problem.

You've not done anything wrong, it's 100% true and it is not

100. Percent of the truth.

The treasure parable is real. And the Kingdom does find people

by accident, and that matters. And so does this one.

The merchant didn't stumble on the Pearl.

He searched for it hard. For a long time through a lot of

lesser things and the search is not contrary.

To God's love, and I think that's what I would would hope

that at least somebody leaves. With a sense of this morning, is

that the. Search.

That you're finding yourself in the midst of is not contrary.

To God's love for you. God's love is coming to you in

the middle of that.