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The Music of God

20 Saturday May 2017

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Inspired by the metaphor of another writer…

MusicWhen I first heard the music of God, I was tone deaf.  Later in life, circumstances caused me to listen again.  This time, something in the music caught my ear…I continued listening.  Once I finally gave myself over to it, I was captivated by its beauty, goodness, and truth.  It spoke to the depths of my soul in a way that only music can.  I played it over and over.  I began to study the sheet music and to sing along.  I longed for others to hear it, to sing, too.

After awhile, I became a Pastor so that I might help others hear for the first time or to hear more deeply.

One day, I noticed a note out of place.  It was a small thing, one note in a grand score, but there it was.  Then, I began to hear other wrong notes. And, parts of the arrangement itself seemed somehow off.  I was becoming aware of the very faint echo of a more complete orchestration playing in my soul.

I sought silence in my life to try to hear more clearly what was so faint within.  The occasional mis-played note and the sections of poor arrangement were becoming an irritant in the music I once loved.  How could this be?

I joined with a group of pastors who were studying the Catholic mystics.  The music was set aright; beauty, goodness, and truth returned.  But over time, the music that continued to play within grew louder and more distinct.  The music I was hearing with my pastor friends was still off in some way I did not understand…it did not harmonize with the music within.  What I did know, however, was that I could no longer be content with the music surrounding me, I had to hear the music within.

When I first attended a Christian Orthodox Church, I knew immediately that I was hearing the music I was longing to hear, the music that had once been so faint within me.  I’ve been listening to it for several years now, letting it wash over me and permeate my heart and mind.  Slowly, I am hearing nuances previously unnoticed.  I try to hum along, but my voice seems croaked in comparison to the glory of the music.  I look forward to the day when I might sing along with the voices of the angels and the saints.  I have a long way to go.

It has been said that God is unknowable, but you have to know Him to know that.  This is the fundamental Christian paradox.

To know an unknowable God, to learn to sing along with the fullness of the music of God, to fully partake of the divine nature of the Source of the music…that will take an eternity.

Come and see…and hear the music.

The Way of Christ: Bearing a Little Shame and Finding Christ’s Joy

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

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Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?
–St Paul

I have been on this earth for 6 decades. I just experienced a recent job change and move to a new state—another wearying “new beginning.” It caused me to reflect deeply on my life over the period of many months. In times of past reflection, I have always remembered the things I have accomplished and the adventures I have had. The nature of this change caused me to reflect on the person that I am. Images began to come into my mind, images would not stop—and they linger still—faces of the people I have hurt in no small way because of my radical self-centeredness. Some names I know, some I no longer remember or never knew. The overriding image in my mind is that of my life as a boat moving through a narrow canal, the wake of my life swamping all who are near the shore.

It is a remarkably painful image, that boat. During some late nights I wonder how I can continue to bear it. I see faces from my past as the waves of my life roll over them. I want to beg them for forgiveness. I have deeply hurt these people.. I want to hide myself from the world. I feel so deeply guilty for what I have done, but the guilt is familiar. What is new to me is that I have begun to feel deeply, deeply ashamed of who I am: a wretched man.

Jesus ‘…endured the cross, despising the shame…’

St. Paul says that Jesus “…endured the cross, despising the shame…” (Hebrews 12:1-3). Jesus unjustly endured the humiliation and shame of a criminal’s death, which He didn’t deserve. The Way of Christ for me, therefore, is the way of bearing the shame of who I am: a distorted human who deserves the cross of death and eternity in hell…and I must admit that fact to the God whom I love. It is the shame that I deserve and the cross of pain I must bear daily. And it puts me in the Way of Jesus, the path of salvation.

But, bearing my cross is not living a life of despair, or so I am learning. In the midst of the pain of my shame before God, a curious thing is beginning to happen. A very tiny point of light is appearing amidst the grayness of my shame. When I allow it to do so, that tiniest pinpoint of light illuminates those around me in such a way that I cannot help but love them and pray for them; they are me and I am them. Words fail to explain this mystery; perhaps the prayer of St. Nikolai Velimirovic will help: “For all the history of mankind from Adam to me, I repent; for all history is in my blood. For I am in Adam and Adam is in me.”

Most importantly, in my deep shame and pain I am finding budding joy. Jesus, “…for the JOY set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame…” Joy, the same joy of Christ given to you by Him (John 15:11) comes to you only through bearing your cross of shame and pain. The joy of Christ out of the pain of my cross. It is a mystery to me.

This is the Way of Jesus. You must face yourself and bear the pain of shame for your wretchedness to experience the joy of Christ. Four considerations:

  • Shame can be painful beyond your capacity to bear it. Pray that the Spirit will reveal to you the things about which you must feel shame. Do not simply reflect on your own life judging yourself by your standards. This is false shame.
  • Do not run from the shame God reveals to you. It may feel like it is beyond your capacity to bear, but it is not. Pray for tears of repentance. God is with you, weeping, too, and in answer to St. Paul’s question, above, God, through Jesus, will save you from your wretchedness.
  • Pray for a very wise, mature Christian man or woman—a spiritual father or mother—with whom you can share your shame…someone who will not try to “fix” you; rather, someone who will silently bear witness to your confession of shame before God.
  • Bear only a little of your shame. How much shame should you bear before God? St. Silouan, about whom I wrote last time, put it his way: “Stand at the brink of the abyss of despair, and when you see that you cannot bear it any more, draw back a little and have a cup of tea.”

In your bearing of your cross of the pain of your shame you will begin to experience the promised fullness of the joy that is Christ’s. This is the Way of Jesus. It is mysterious, indeed.

The Way of Christ–Descent into Humility

21 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in All, Heaven and Hell

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If anyone is still out there following this blog…a friend of mine asked me to say a few words on his blog, which I have gladly done.

You can find my meager contribution here:

The Uncommon Journey

I may periodically post to his blog site, and I will let you know when I have done so.  I encourage you to visit this other site and to subscribe to Keith’s blog.

Christ is in our midst.

Deeper into the Desert

24 Sunday May 2015

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We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

“Little Giddings”
(No. 4 of “Four Quartets”)
T.S. Eliot

I started this blog nearly three years ago as a way of publicly recording my wanderings in the desert with God. I fancied myself as a western Poustinik…one called into the desert by God and whom would then periodically return with a message for the village. Being a Poustinik felt like my role in the church in which I was an associate pastor.

There have been significant changes in my life since I started writing here, changes which have included two major job changes and a move to another state. Perhaps you notice from the dates of the blog entries that I have only posted twice in the last year. Circumstances in my life have brought me to a point of working out of the vocational pastorate. But, that is not why my blogging has greatly decreased.

Over the past couple of years I have been discovering Eastern Orthodoxy. That journey has culminated (can one use that word with a journey that is really just beginning?) with me and my wife being received into the Church on Holy Saturday. We have finally come home.

We have seen the true light! We have received the heavenly Spirit! We have found the true Faith! Worshipping the undivided Trinity, who has saved us.

This is from a prayer sung during the Liturgy. The Orthodox believe the fullness of the faith–the fullness of God–is found by participating in the ancient Church. I’m not going to try to defend that statement; I don’t feel a need to. I simply believe it is true because the Church Herself proclaims it. I am experiencing it.

The Orthodox also believe that God is incomprehensible, but that you have the know Him to know that. Like Eliot’s poem, I have been exploring God for many years now, including sixty hours of formal, post graduate study. With Eliot’s traveller, I feel like I have arrived back at the beginning of my exploration: an infant in Christ.

The Orthodox Divine Liturgy is the very real journey from this world into the kingdom of God itself worshipping the Trinity with all the heavenly hosts, and then returning to this world. In my participation in this journey I have realized that I am only beginning to glimpse the incomprehensibility of God, only beginning to realize just how little I know Him and His revealed nature.

Before Him, before the men and women past and present who have given their lives to Him in a way that is so far beyond anything I have done I simply have nothing to say. Rather, I need to be quiet and listen and experience God through Him and His worldly saints.

I pray God draws me deeper into the desert, deeper into Him. Perhaps I’ll write here again here one day. Only God knows.

Journey Into Humility

09 Friday Jan 2015

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Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. -Apostle Paul, Philippians 2:5-8

I know a man, once at the top of his profession.  He has a long list of credentials. He travelled the world as a representative of the world’s largest company in his industry. He worked with other companies and governments on matters of international regulation.  At times he had individual’s lives in his hands.  Now, he works in what most consider as an entry level job in his profession.

I know a woman, considered an expert in her field.  She held a prominent position in one of the largest organizations of its kind in the world.  She knows state and federal law applicable to her field.  She has spoken at national conventions and has consulted across the country. She has coached and influenced the lives of hundreds.  Now it is hard for her to be accepted into an occasional volunteer position in her field.

I know a man, once a spiritual leader of hundreds, ordained by his denomination.  He has years of advanced study behind him.  He has taught at the university level and led spiritual retreats across the country.  He now attends a beginners class with other new believers in his own faith.

Humility is a curious thing.  Someone once said that the moment we think we are humble we have lost it.  We often think of a humble person as one who does not seek to be noticed and if noticed is quick to deflect praise and give credit to another.  The humble person might say, “I didn’t do anything special,” or “I didn’t do anything anyone else would’t have done,” or “I didn’t really contribute anything, Jane did much more than I did.”

I think this is humility, but that it is so much more.

Let’s go a little deeper and consider cleaning toilets.  I have cleaned toilets for Christ.  In my zeal to help another, I have cleaned toilets on occasion.  And I have come to see the pride in that: “Look at me, everyone, I am such a good Christian that I clean toilets.”  There is no humility in that attitude!  But, what if the only job you could get is cleaning toilets?  What if, despite all of your years of schooling, your vast experience and expertise, your accumulated wisdom, etc., what if all anyone would hire you to do is to clean toilets?  This is a different level of humility.  Would you take the job or would you consider it beneath you?  If you took the job, would you do it daily as though you were doing it for God?

Deeper.  Imagine a private screening of your life story, but you see your actions through the eyes of others.    You see and hear the real story behind the story, how hurtful your actions have been, how self-centered your life really is…the lasting pain you have caused another.  My first response would be to quickly look around to ensure no one else was watching my movie.  Could you stand to watch as the all scenes unfolded or would you hide your eyes during the painful moments and relish the joyful ones?  Would you have the courage to not rationalize away all that you saw, but to face who you are?

Still deeper.  Think of what it would be like to reveal to another human the darkest side of yourself through the stories of the deeds and thoughts you have just witnessed.  Facing the shame of who we are is hard enough in the privacy of our own minds; however, would you have the courage to reveal it to another?  Not just to reveal the things you could bear revealing, but to reveal the deepest, darkest part of you?  What would it do to us?  Would we feel crushed?    Or…would we feel sorrow in the depths of our soul?

It is here, I believe, that humility and repentance become one.

But this is the one to whom I [God] will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at My word.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.

True humility is an emptiness of self so that one can turn to and be filled with God (repentance).  It is realizing that we are nothing but dust with the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit in us making us into the image of God Himself.  It is realizing that, as dust, we cannot even fully grasp the fulness of our own wretchedness.  However, it is not, ultimately, self-abuse.

St Gregory of Sanai says it well:

…true humility does not say humble words, nor does it assume humble looks, it does not force oneself either to think humbly of oneself, or to abuse oneself in self-belittlement. Although all such things are the beginning, the manifestations and the various aspects of humility, humility itself is grace, given from above. There are two kinds of humility, as the holy fathers teach: to deem oneself the lowest of all beings and to ascribe to God all one’s good actions. The first is the beginning, the second the end.

Image and Likeness

08 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by in All, Humankind

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Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…”
From the story of creation, Genesis 1:26

I’m sitting in a small beach house on the Gulf of Mexico and calling it work. Really, I am working…you will have to trust me on that. It is just that right now the work involves waiting on a client.

While I’m waiting I have these few minutes to enjoy God’s creation and to ponder what it means that we are made in God’s image and likeness.

Some biblical commentators have suggested that image and likeness are the same, that the writer of Genesis says the same thing twice and in two different ways to make the strong point of our value as humans.

I recently came across another explanation that I find more theologically satisfying.

“In the beginning…” as the Book says, God and the first humans were united; humankind was by Grace what God is by nature. All was “good” until our first parents fell for a lie. The consequence of their disobedience of God changed humanity; our respective natures, God’s and man’s, were no longer united. Without God’s Spirit within us we became bound to the dust out of which we were created rather than bound to our Creator. To speak like the late Carl Sagan, we became the stuff of the creation rather than the stuff of the Creator.

God’s words from Genesis 3:16–

For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Our union with God now broken, there was no way for us to remain in the Garden of Eden, the garden of perfect harmony with our Creator. We had to leave. It remained that way for us for untold years, and, left to our own devices, there was no way to return, no way to reunite human nature with Divine nature. Separation of our nature from God’s, and being nothing but dust, would have been our eternal fate had God chosen not to act on our behalf.

At the moment of our separation from Him he announced that He had a plan for our restoration to Him, a plan to rescue us from being bound to the dust which is the world. Then one day, over two thousand years ago, Jesus was born and God’s rescue operation was made evident in the person of a baby.

One of the central beliefs of Christianity is that Jesus was both God and man, both human and Divine. I think we so often focus on Jesus’ death that we forget the significance of His birth. At the moment of His conception and manifest in His birth, human nature and Divine nature were reunited. Jesus became, as the Bible tells us, the second Adam. This has the most profound implication for us! Because of His birth it became possible for each of us to be reunited with God. With the birth of Jesus, the potential now existed for us to return home.

This potential is how the early Church Fathers came to understand our being made in the “image” of God: it is the potential for our “sanctification,” for our two natures, God’s and ours, to be united (called Theosis). And it is this potential that gives us value as humans over any other living thing: we are created in the image of God. Each of us humans has the potential to have our individual nature united with God’s nature. There are some who would try to confer “personhood” on apes or dolphins or other creatures based on intelligence, language use, etc.; however, no other creature has the potential to be united with God; humans alone are created in the image of God.

With this understanding of “image,” here is a great quote from the late Archbishop Dimitri of Dallas I want to throw in at this point:

The greatest danger in the modern world is the attack on man as the image of God. That God became man in order to unite man to God is the only sure Divine underwriting of human worth. We have value because of the image we bear.

If this potential of united natures is “image of God,” then what is “likeness?” It is simple, really. If “image” is the potential of union with God, then “likeness” is the actualization of that union. To actualize the potential, we must do two things. First, we must give God permission to begin drawing us into His life.

There are a lot of fancy theological words bandied about regarding Christianity. The bottom line is that God wants to invite us into His life, an unimaginable life of unconditional love. The ancients characterized this communal life of God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit, as a Divine Dance (perichoresis). God draws us into His life and wants desperately to teach us the steps of the dance.

This, then, is the second thing we must do: we must learn to cooperate with Him as He teaches us how to live life with Him, to dance the Divine Dance. And He is a gracious and patient dance instructor.

The most remarkable thing is that God wants this for each of us. After all, it is God’s desire that no one should spend an eternity dancing alone, disunited from Him. However, not everyone wants that sort of union with God.

So, look around you. Every human being you see bears the image of God. From the most kind person to the most hated terrorist, every one of us is an icon, an image of the living God. Every human being has inestimable value to God. Imagine a world in which we treated each other that way. Better yet, imagine a world in which this potential is fully realized. One day we won’t have to imagine this actualized world…it is God’s promised kingdom come. I pray that by God’s Grace within me, I will see you there.

Not Willing that Any should Perish

22 Thursday May 2014

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The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
  –From Peter’s second letter; 2Peter 3:9

I’ve been wondering lately about my view of my life and my sense of time.  More specifically, I’m coming to believe that my view of my life is too narrow and my sense of time too linear.

For a while, and in this blog you have read it, I have believed that the ultimate goal of life is relational union with God.  “Union with God” can be said differently: to know Him, where “know” is the most intimate knowing of another person; or, to be one with Him; or, to participate in the life of the Trinity; or, to partake of His Divine nature; or, to join the Divine Dance (Gr. perichoresis) with the Trinity.  We struggle to put words to it because it is a mystery.  Not a mystery in the sense that we must puzzle it out; rather, a genuine mystery in that no human really knows how it happens, only that it does and is the goal of our existence.

Over the past few years I have been pretty good at noticing God at work in the circumstances of my current life as He works to draw me into relational union with Him; I try to notice and cooperate as moment-by-moment he teaches me the steps of the Divine Dance with Him.

But, what if the “moment” is more than I have previously thought?

I’ve begun thinking about my linear view of time within the specific context of the ultimate goal of my life.  And, I’m thinking about this for a reason: I’m in the middle of a radical life change of direction.  So, within the context of the ultimate goal for my life and my immediate, upcoming change, here is what I’m thinking…

For a number years I’ve been praying along with the ancient Israeli King, David, that God would do whatever He needed to in my life in order to rid me of the distortions and attachments and wounds within me that hinder my relationship with Him.  Or, as a past writer, Julian of Norwich, would have put it, I pray that I might be “oned” with God.  It is a dangerous prayer, but I have meant it, at least as I have understood what it meant.

I have been alive nearly two score and eighteen years.  All this time I have viewed my life as a linear journey through time which has brought me to this point.  But, what if time collapses to a single moment, a moment which contains my birth, my lived life, and my death, all simultaneously?  And, what if God, aware of my later life prayer to do with me whatever is necessary to bring me into relational oneness with Him, actually began to answer that prayer from the moment of my birth?  Wouldn’t that change how I view my path through life?

This is not as preposterous as it might first sound.  For at least the first thousand years, the Christian Church believed this.  Even today, when celebrating the resurrection of Jesus at Easter, we say, “Christ is risen,” not “Christ has risen.”

Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church believes that as we participate in the Divine Liturgy, what the Western Church might refer to as Sunday morning worship, all of time collapses into the present moment.  All that was, is, and is yet to be is fully present in the moment…all of past history and future events are occurring simultaneously in the present.  Another mystery, to say the least.

I have occasionally said this about important moments in my life: “All the events of my life have brought me to this point.”  But I have meant that in an autonomous sense.  Let me try  to give an example.  I say about my meeting my wife that I had to take the path through life that I did so that our paths would cross on that day more than 27 years ago.  She had nothing to do with any of my life decisions that ultimately brought us together prior to our meeting; it was all me.  She played no role in it, it was all me up to that wonderful day.  Sometimes we attribute such things to “fate.”

I believe that this autonomous living is how I have thought of God’s involvement in my life prior to my turning to Him fifteen years ago.  I now realize that I have believed I moved through life making choices until I finally made a choice for Him, and there He was waiting for me.  Not too different from the way I would say I met my wife.  Whether fate, dumb luck—whatever the mechanism—I have generally thought of my life-before-God as life-with-no-God-involvement-until-I-turned-to-Him.  It is a common enough teaching of the Church.  I have taught it!

But, what if at the moment of my birth (actually, from the moment of all creation) God knew that in my fifties I would be desperately praying for Him to rid me of the junk in my life that keeps me from being oned with Him?  The implication is this: rather than God sitting back waiting for me to turn to Him, I now believe that from the moment of my birth He was active in my life answering the prayer He knew I would pray more than fifty years later.

For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether…
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
–A Psalm of King David

In other words, I’m moving toward believing that God began answering my prayer of oneness with Him the moment I prayed it; but because all moments exist together, His answer included all of my life before I prayed the prayer.

Yeah, I know…this brings up all kinds of questions of my free will and God’s will for me…a debate with a long history within Christianity.  But the intertwining of two free wills, God’s and mine, is nothing if not also a mystery.  Goodness, the intertwining of mine and my wife’s respective free wills is mysterious enough!!

So, what’s the point of all this?  Well, as I look back over my life at the decisions I’ve made, good and bad, at least from my perspective, and the resulting path I’ve taken, I have a choice of how to assess it.  On the one hand I can believe that I was slogging through life alone until I finally turned to God.  On the other hand I can believe God was in my life always, working at answering my “future” prayer to be oned with Him.

If I believe the former, then I can easily fall into regret for decisions made and the path I took.  Then I make myself feel better by saying that God will “redeem it” for some future use.

However, if I believe the latter, that God was at work all of my life answering my prayer, then my entire life is an answered prayer. Because of my own free will and my refusal to acknowledge Him for more than 40 years, He answered my “future” prayer the only way He could, which is the path of life I have lived.  Therefore, my life path is not something to be regretted and “redeemed”; rather, it is something for which to be utterly thankful.

Choose Life

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in All, Life

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I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…

—Moses (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

The debate over homosexuality is a hot-button issue about many things: moral right and wrong, human rights, love, happiness, natural law, the definition of marriage…

As important as these issues are, I don’t believe they should be the focus, at least not for Christians.  The debate over homosexuality should be a discussion about one thing and only one thing: what brings us life.

And this focus should apply not just to homosexuality but to all behavior, sexual and otherwise.

Here’s a question: Why did Jesus die for us?  If you have ever been to Sunday school or watched a sporting event you know about John 3:16—

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son [Jesus], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Life.

Jesus said later in the same book of the Bible that He came so that we might “have life and life more abundantly.”  Sadly, that is not often the message of Christians.  Too often we reduce Christianity to a list of moral rights and wrongs rather than an invitation into abundant life with God.    We wag our fingers at Christians and non-Christians alike when we see what we believe is unbiblical behavior; we judge and scoff at and scold people for not being “good.”

When we reduce Christianity to a list of rights and wrongs we say that Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection were God’s way of making bad people good.  Sadly, we turn God into some kind of supernatural Santa Clause who keeps a list of who has been naughty and nice and doles out eternal presents or lumps of coal.

Like many of you, I don’t want to worship that kind of god either.

But…what if Jesus’ death was not about making bad people good?  What if it was only about offering life to dead people?  If the latter is the case, then the Bible can be no longer viewed as Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth; rather, through its stories God tells us and shows us the way that people fully alive with Him normally live, and Jesus’ life is the exemplar.  Further, the Bible shows us of God’s eagerness to be with us and the lengths He will go to help us to participate in His life.

Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good, Jesus came to offer life to dead people.

I know a little something about living without God—living as a dead person with my dead-person behaviors.  I wanted to be the master of my own universe, to fulfill all of my own desires.

I know from my own experience that dead people act out because they don’t know any better, it is simply “natural” for them to act this way.  You Christians sometimes got mad at me, but I didn’t know any better.  Rarely was I invited into life; rather, it was pointed out to me that I was acting badly.

It doesn’t matter whether the dead-person behavior born out of greed, pride, gluttony, power-mongering, anger, or lust (homosexuality or premarital heterosexual sex)—and the list goes on and on—dead people will naturally do the things of dead people.  Sure, dead people can perform good and great acts, too, but even those acts come from the vestiges of God’s morality since we are all made in His image and will not in and of themselves bring life to the dead.

Sin is not the things we do that are wrong, where “wrong” is defined as acting against biblical rules.  No.  Sin is our state of being separated from God.  When God calls us to turn to Him and  then to obey Him, He does so only because wants to unite us to Himself, He wants to bring us into a relationship with Him where we will find the abundant life He has for us; therefore, following His way for us to live is simply the way people fully alive in relationship with Him try to live their lives.

God is inviting us into the fullness of abundant life; He is not an all-powerful Killjoy…

God is inviting us into the fullness of abundant life; He is not an all-powerful Killjoy trying to ruin our fun and quench our desires.  Obeying God does not prevent us from enjoying life.  Quite the contrary!  Obeying God frees us to live the abundant life He wants for us.  We are oppressed only when we allow ourselves to be held captive by our attempts to satiate our own unbridled passions and desires.

This is the heart of the Bible message: God only wants for us to be our best, to be fully alive, to become the person He created us to be, which only occurs when we are in relationship with Him.  This is real Love, His for us.

But, participating in God’s life takes effort, just like any relationship worth having.  I must put forth effort into changing my old, dead-person habits for the sake of our relationship, relying on the power of God’s Holy Spirit within me to increasingly transform me over my lifetime into a person fully and abundantly alive and participating in His life.

Yes, I still battle many of my old, dead-person habits.  And lately, it seems, God has been unfailing in pointing out to me just how much I still act like a dead person.  Curiously, His pointing this out gives me hope because it reminds me of His love for me and that I can only find abundant life with Him.  And it helps me to have compassion for the still dead people and for other dead-acting Christians and makes me want to offer them the same hope I am finding with Him.

God is calling each one of us out of dead-person life and into a life fully alive with Him.  God is love and can only act toward us out of love; however, His love for us precludes Him from accepting something less for us that He has intended.

So, the choices in our lives, Christian and non-Christian alike, are not about right and wrong and who has the moral high-ground.  All of our daily choices of behavior really boil down to a single choice that we repeat every moment of every day: it is the choice between behaving as a human being alive with God or behaving as one dead and apart from God.

Respond to God’s invitation.  Choose life.

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days…

—Moses (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Waiting

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in All, Death

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Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord    (Psalm 27:14)

Waiting is hard for most of us.  It takes patience.  The ticking of the clock (do clocks still tick?) can seem interminable.  And, perhaps it is increasingly hard because we are not used to waiting much anymore.  With our mobile devices it is easy to distract ourselves from its tedium.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to reflect on waiting…

If current science is correct, the universe was created somewhere around 13.8 billion years ago.  Ex nihilo is what some say: “out of nothing.”  Correct, in the way it is meant, but the will and Word and action of God are hardly “nothing.”

God spoke into the nothingness.  It sounded like a BANG!

And God began to wait.

Corridor of Time

Created matter cools ands clumps together.  Stars form, live, and die.   One day a mass of hydrogen ignites and an average yellow star appears—we call it “the Sun.”  Matter begins to orbit around this star.  Finally, some 9.3 billion years after The Beginning, there was Earth, “without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep.”  9.3 billion years. Tick, tick, tick…  Write down the number 29.  Follow it with 16 zeros.  That many seconds ticked by between creation of the universe and the formation of Earth.  Tick, tick, tick…the waiting seems interminable; God’s patience, unimaginable.

Another 1 billion years of seconds pass; tick, tick, tick…a 3 with 16 zeros.  First life appears.  Still He waits…

Still another 3.3 billion years tick off; a 1 followed by 17 zeros.  Tick, tick, tick…the precursors to Adam and Eve walk Earth.  Still He waits…

Again, God speaks, and man and woman appear in the mist of antiquity.  Tick, tick, tick…a 4 followed by 17 zeros between BANG! and the appearance of mankind “created in His image and likeness.”  Still He waits…

God created us to share in His life and in His love, to “partake of His divine nature.”  Write a 4 followed by 17 zeros; that is how many seconds have ticked by since The Beginning.  The number is too big to comprehend.  Put it another way: only in the last 0.0007% of Time between The Beginning until today has mankind, as icon of God, existed.  Tick, tick, tick…  99.9993% of Time God has waited for us.  He is not in a hurry.

 ———————————

At 8:15 on the morning of April 16th, 1924, she entered the world.  Since The Beginning, each of her days was written in God’s book “when there were yet none of them.”  He had plans for her welfare and not for evil, to give her a future and a hope.  Then, for 13.8 billion years God awaited her conception.  He knew the exact time and place she would arrive into the world.  With each tick and tock He thought of her.

Ninety years ago she was conceived and it has been eighty-nine years since her birth.  She was intricately formed exactly as He had intended.  Eighty-nine years: write a 28 followed by 8 zeros.  Tick, tick, tick…each second of her life is precious to God.

The 89 years is drawing to a close.  God’s beautiful daughter lies unresponsive: one day, two days, three days, now four…345,600 seconds have ticked by since she last talked….it is we who now wait.  And we wonder, “Why do You continue to wait, God?”  We plead, “Take her now.”  God remains patient, unhurried.  He has waited 13.8 billion and 89 years to hold her.  When finally He draws her to Him, He will hold her for eternity, seconds without number.

BANG!, said God..it is now 13.8 billion and 89 years later and almost time for the Lover and His beloved to be united face-to-face.  For all of eternity.  God waits patiently for her; it is we who can’t wait.

 ———————————

Physical death came last night, just six weeks shy of ninety.  It has been 13.8 billion and 89 years since God first thought of His most beautiful daughter. Now she has come home to Him.

435,000,000,000,000,000 times the clock has ticked as He waited for her.  They are finally together; Lover and Beloved now united.  That is Love beyond measure.  She is more alive than ever.

 It is our turn to wait to see her.

Tick Tock

Wow!

18 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by in All, Prayer

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wow /wou/: expressing astonishment or admiration.

The Boardwalk At Trouville-Monet

The Boardwalk At Trouville-Monet

Recently I visited the local art museum to view an exhibit focused on French art from the late 1600s to the early 1900s.

This particular exhibit contained many works from the greats of that time period, such as, Degas, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and van  Gogh.

At first, I was moving slowly through the exhibit pausing in front of each work with an audible and involuntarily, “Wow!”  The genius of each artist was evident even to me.

With each passing gallery my pace began to quicken; I was pausing less at each work.  Toward the end of the two-and-a-half hours I noticed my initial “Wow!” response had faded.  Sure, I would occasionally come across a work that stood out in some way and I would get another shot of Wow!, but, for the most part it had faded even though I was still standing before works of true art by rare geniuses.  Mostly, though, I was getting tired.  There was no longer enough Wow! to keep me engaged and energized.

We humans are fickle creatures, aren’t we?  We are forever seeking Wow! and then more Wow!  I think this points to the central problem with Wow!: we eventually become numb to the initial precipitating Wow! experience and begin looking for more of it—whether in the form of the next adrenaline thrill or the next great novel or a new way to read something in the Bible or the latest generation of smartphone or…wherever.  Like a drug to which we have built up a tolerance, we need a greater and greater Wow! fix to keep our interest.

I noticed something else at the museum.  After viewing the exhibit, our small party of four gathered in the middle of one of the larger galleries to discuss our thoughts of the exhibit and our plans for dinner together.  As we talked, I found myself beginning to stare at several of the nearby impressionist paintings.  Being able to so easily view them together from a distance of about 20 feet allowed me to see them in a way I had never seen them before and to immediately understand impressionism in a new and profound way.  My first response was, of course, Wow!  We continued to stand in the gallery and I began to enjoy the extended time to engage with these few paintings in this new way—I was no longer seeing the paintings; rather, I was experiencing the paintings.  And then a strange thing happened, my Wow! began to change to a quieter and prolonged “wow…”

My Wow! had given way to awe.

My Wow! had given way to awe.

awe /ô/: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

“Wonder” is such a terrific synonym for “awe.”  Perhaps you recall a day when you noticed a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset, one so remarkable that it stopped you in your tracks.  Likely you couldn’t help but stare at it, not thinking about it but experiencing it in wonder.  Standing there, staring at the beauty before you, doing nothing but being in the experience of the moment is, paradoxically, a deliberate act of contemplation.  The “awe” you felt can only come from such deliberate contemplation.

Have you ever been curious why the so-called Christian mystics focus on contemplation of God as the way to God?  It is easy to believe, from our modern standpoint, that contemplating God is an archaic practice for those with nothing else to do.  It is a waste of time, we tell ourselves, because we are not doing anything for God.  Not so.  I believe the act of contemplation is indeed the path to God exactly because of my experience at the museum: without contemplation I only think or hear about God and maybe it gives me a sense of Wow!  I look to God for a Wow!-inducing miracle and then, like those who saw Jesus perform miracles and wanted more, I, too, continuously seek more and more Wow! from God.  However, when I slow down to contemplate God I begin to experience Him more deeply, to experience Him with fear and wonder…to begin to engage Him with a sense of awe.

Contemplation requires time, and, sadly, time is something we have so little of, or so we believe.

The biblical writers often write with a sense of awe:

O Lord, our Sovereign how majestic is your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory above the heavens…When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8)

Ancient Israel’s King David took the time to contemplate creation around and above him and was clearly in awe of God as he wrote these words.  In those final minutes at the museum, as I began to contemplate the art around me, I found myself in awe of the work and the artists…and of God, their creator.  Contemplating something from God had drawn me into contemplation of God.

Without God’s help, we are simply incapable of seeing Him and contemplating Him.  In the 1300s, a monk from the East, St Gregory Palamas, wrote this about God’s initiative toward us:

[Because we are incapable of seeing God, He] illuminates the mind alone with an obscure light, so as to draw a man to Himself by that within Himself which is comprehensible, and so as to evoke his wonder at that which is incomprehensible, and through this wonder to increase his longing, and through this longing to purify [his desire for] him.  (The Triads)

The light is God, and the mind (nous) of which Palamas speaks is not the brain or the mind as we think of it now.  He speaks of an inner organ of vision with which we are all able to see into the spiritual realm, a sight that has been obscured by the sin of mankind.

God is all around us and is ever inviting us, wishing that none of us turn from Him.  However, because our spiritual vision is so poor, we can only begin contemplating Him with our our senses or intellect through things that we “see,” such as great art.  Thankfully, as we seek Him He is at work in us, His children, clarifying our inner sight so that we might increasingly behold Him in awe.

Next time you see someone staring at a flower, at a sunset, at a two-legged image of God, at a work of art, or even staring off into space apparently wasting time, perhaps it is me contemplating God and experiencing Him in awe.  Come and sit beside me for awhile.