A Killy Bride

When our daughter Ana was four and still living delightfully in that pink princess world, she loved to play dress up.  One day she ransacked her dress up box and came out of her room wearing raccoon slippers, a white bride’s veil and holding a police riot baton.

I said, “Ohh, Ana, what a beautiful bride you are!”

“No,” she answered with a gleam of fight in her eyes.  “I’m a killy bride.”

That’s a great word picture of who we are as the Body of Christ.

On the bride side, we are pictured in the Scriptures as fiercely loved by our champion groom.  The poetic book “Song of Solomon” paints an intimate portrait of Christ’s intense love for us.  Several places in the Scriptures we see this picture played out.  The prophet Isaiah wrote, “…My soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. [i] God delights in His Bride more the most love-sick groom that ever lived.

This part of our relationship with God is where we find Him in worship, prayer and just the simple intimacy of pouring out our hearts to Him.  Gazing into His eyes is where our love for Him starts.  “We love because He first loved us.”[ii]   

But that’s not the only picture of our identity.  There’s also the killy side.

We’re an army.  We’re taking new ground from the enemy.  The kingdom of God is movement.  “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force,”[iii] Jesus said about His forceful movement.

Jesus also said that He would build His church and “the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”[iv]  In this picture the church is the one on the offensive, not defensive.  We’re not trying to keep all those creepy people out of our nice, neat kingdom.  Rather, we’re the reckless ones storming the castle, scaling the foreboding walls and ransacking the kingdom of darkness.  In that fiery mission the gates of hell will eventually give way.

We’re both.  A killy bride.  If you will, there is a feminine side to our relationship with God (intimacy) and a masculine side (advancing).  Guys, you have to get used to the fact that you are a lovely bride. 

A character in C.S. Lewis’ science fiction novel That Hideous Strength ponders aloud that in the presence of God we all our feminine.

Ladies, let’s hear that warrior spirit.  Sit on the couch with us and watch one of our favorite movies.  Why do we like to watch things get blown up so much?   I think it’s because our souls were crafted for battle.  Just like we have to get comfortable wearing that bride’s veil, you have to get comfortable holding that police baton.

Our souls, anchored in a tender intimacy with Christ, were also meant to rise up and violently advance the kingdom of God against this present darkness.

Wear that lovely bride’s veil with pride and take out your police baton and go crack some skulls (in love, of course).  The next time you feel pinned down in a theology that solely focuses on your own individual relationship with God to the exclusion of impacting the world around you, show them that fight of gleam in your eyes.

“No!” you tell ‘em.  “I’m a killy bride!”