Kiss Interrupted

Kissing is a glorious but scary prospect.

This attraction action has all the trappings of love, but love of whom?

The pressing of lips is passionate and intimate. Each kiss has meaning, backstory, and agenda.

So then, the most important question regarding the first kiss and then every kiss afterwards is this: Was a kiss given or taken?

Either answer is the foundation of your world and mine.

To be at its best, every smooch must be a gift; given.

Holy, actually, due to the fact that we are made in the image of God.

Holy insures that we are aware of God’s presence in the present. If this is the case, then even a peck is cosmic, supercalifragilisticxpialidocious, light of the world, glory to God in the highest, let the nations be glad!

Every holy action brings heaven and earth together. Though physical, the meeting of lips causes reactions in both the phenomenal and noumenal realms. Sure, the earth moves under our feet whenever we share spit, but there is also a stirring in the heavenly places (read: Ephesians).

The danger is that we get caught up in the moment. Physical badinage can cause us to think about ourselves and even, surreptitiously, manipulate the other person to our own desires (read: James 4:1-10). Instead of trying to out-give the other person we can digress into the lesser, less fulfilling, fleshly satisfaction that sets us up—at our core—to live for ourselves rather than for Jesus.

Who ever thought snogging would be an area of sanctification? But it is! It is first chapter of Genesis important. It is how it all began important. It is first lines of poetry important: “…bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”. Kissing is ours; it belongs to us. We, of all people, should know how to pucker because we know what a kiss means.

Ultimately, it points to lordship. We first, “Kiss the Son” (read: Psalm 2) and that is what transforms everything.

The more we realize that the personal and private is also to be righteous, then we are steps forward in our public display of biblical love. What has been typically, ME time, is gloriously changed from self-serving to serving each other to serving others.   

And so it is with everything we are called to do.

Hospitality cannot be about you or I—it’s about them; for Him.

The same goes for teaching, or giving, or serving, or helping, or visiting the aged or poor, or cooking and delivering meals, or praying for others, or helping someone repair their roof, or anything and everything ‘good’ that we do.

In other words, the next time, and every time after, that you are face-to-face with your beloved, or someone in need, the love that you show should be the same as Jesus displayed on the Cross.