Waiting for Resurrection

Our life with God is in the process of growing: there is a tension between the now and the “not yet.” While the plan for who He meant us to be was in the mind and heart of God before we were conceived, the living out of that destiny takes place, here on earth, through a process of time and trust.

 On this day, Holy Saturday as the liturgical church calls it, Jesus is in a place of utter waiting and trust on God to resurrect Him. As a man He did not have the power to resurrect Himself, He had to wait for His Father. So likewise, we cannot bring life to ourselves but must surrender to God, knowing that His love for us will not forget us, will not abandon us, will not hurt us, but will bring us to a higher life than we have known. This is not a hopeful truism, but a living truth!

 Jesus understands waiting in trust for God to bring life and resurrection. He understands the vulnerability of waiting in hope, and trusting in faith. Today we can all say that there is something within us that is giving place, perhaps in fits and starts, to who we are yet to become. The sons and daughters of God are being revealed. The life of God is welling up within us ready to bud forth new things that will glorify and reflect God’s nature in us.

 Ponder happily that this day signifies that we are moving from the valley of the shadow of death to our rightful place beneath the shadow of His wings! So let us surrender ourselves into the hands of our Father. Though we be in an “in-between” place, a place of almost there but not yet, we know that “He who has begun a good work in us will continue to carry it through to completion in Christ Jesus” (Phil 1:6) Look to your Father and to your Saviour!

Resurrection awaits!

 

Thoughts as the Old Passes into the New

It has been an interesting year.  Somewhere along the line  I felt like I have fallen through the back of my wardrobe into a landscape much wilder than Narnia. The prophet Isaiah, had a year like that, only I imagine it was even more intense, "In the year King Uzziah died, he writes, I saw the Lord high and lifted up and  His train filled the temple." (Isaiah 6:1) .  His look at God spun him around and threw him to the floor. There was nothing much left of him but his eyes and his ears.

A seraphim approaches him and puts a burning coal on his lips, and while this purges him, it makes him aware that his speech does not do God justice. And all that he hears spoken around him and by him falls far short of the glory of God. His own lips are not prepared to be in the Presence of God.  And yet, he sees God and God sees him and his response is to want to speak purely of God and for God.

I'm not sure what I've seen this year, but its like having spent a long time climbing to a top of a very tall mountain, a mountain that has to be climbed with trepidation, step by step, and takes all of your attention so that you cannot look around til you reach the summit. And then, the last step, as you stand and look to survey what you have climbed up there for,  is one vast, immense panorama of incredible splendor and beauty and order and wonder as far as the eye can see. Yes, that's where I've been. 

To have a place to stand and see oneself in perspective is an INCREDIBLE gift. One that has blown me away to the degree that I have dared to look. There are things in life that tend to close down our vision of God and ourselves. We end up with a kind of a tunnel vision born of fear. We can only see a small section of the path straight ahead and sometimes that is all we need to see, but there are also times when the blinder's come off and we are allowed to see the whole panorama, all of it at once, for God only knows entirely why, but definitely for a reason connected with one's destiny.

Last year I had the pleasure of visiting the Isle of Man. I don't know who named it that, but on the ground it's beautiful but normal.  It's Man. It's what born of man, and belongs to man, and is of man: just like so much of our experience. There is a mountain peak on the Isle called Snaefell. Its the only place on the island where you can see seven kingdoms just by turning around : England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Mann, the Sea, and Heaven! To see the panorama from the top is to somehow change you, to pull you out of Man and to bring you up to a higher place.

I'm acclimating to the higher place, I'm acclimating to the great expanse of Heaven, to the Kingdom of God unfolding in ways that I could not see a year ago.  I'm acclimating to being mostly only eyes and ears, and having angels touch my lips with coals, and seeing the train of God's glory fill the temple.  If you know what I'm saying, you have been there, and if you don't quite know what I'm saying, I'm not sure I can explain it.

I intend to let whatever is happening have its full work! I intend to stand and breath in the thick smoke of God filling the temple. I intend to let God change me and use me in whatever way He chooses. I intend for 2018 to be an amazing year. Lord, make Your dwelling place in me as I make myself a fit dwelling place for You!  

The God-Sent God

It is Easter Sunday. It is a reminder that our problems here were so big that they could not
be fixed from afar. Some problems are like that. In an age where I can look through a webcam
at some distant part of the earth, or have a doctor diagnose my condition remotely, or speak
with people at the far end of the globe instantaneously, we tend to forget that some problems
are too big for any of that to help. .

It would be a pitiless God who created people, set them upon the earth, watched them
bring ruin upon themselves and yet do nothing about it.  If He merely watched from
afar, what would that say to us? But He sent us His Son. In humility. Incognito to those
who would not see.

Sometimes, when something is really broken, you have to send the right Man to fix the
problem, and sometimes He might have to come a long way. Such is the Christmas
and Easter story. We weren't sent just anybody to fix our problem. We were sent the
God-sent God. God did not send a messenger, someone to get the job done (as if
just a messenger could), and check to see  the delivery confirmation number to
see if he arrived.  No, God sent God to help us. What that means exactly and how
He did it, we shall only understand One Day. But today we can know that He did
not send just anybody, but His Only Begotten Son. Spirit of His Spirit. Eternally One.
He sent Himself.    Sometimes there is only one Man for the job. Thankfully, it was
the Right and Righteous One, Jesus. Thank God for the God-sent God.

Hallelujah, He is Risen! Happy Easter!. 

The Light at the End of the Alley

"The light at the end of the alley, the sunset at the end of the mountain day,
silently speaking of things way beyond themselves, things we can't quite 
reach, but can sense within,  things of which we catch but a fleeting glimpse. 
The road ahead is filled with that which will cause wonder and cause 
us to wonder.  But tonight, here it is right before me. 

--photo taken in Colorado Springs, CO

O world as God as made it! All is beauty!

O world as God has made it! All is beauty! --Robert Browning

--photo taken in Colorado Springs, Colorado

                            Depart from the highway, and transplant thyself in some enclosed ground,

   for it is hard for a tree that stands by the wayside to keep its fruit until it be ripe. ---John Chrysostom

It's a nice time of year to retreat and allow the Lord to fill us back up....far

from the 'madding crowd...

lovely snow falling from pines....Easthampton, MA 

The Soul of God Shouting for Joy!

"Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill...I see the soul of God shouting for joy."

~~William Blake

photo taken at Sacred Heart Church, Feeding Hills, MA

The Indwelling Truth in Presence & Power --George MacDonald

Our Lord had no design of constructing a system of truth in intellectual forms. The truth of the moment in its relation to him, The Truth, was what he spoke. He spoke out of a region of realities which he knew could only be suggested—not represented—in the forms of intellect and speech. With vivid flashes of life and truth his words invade our darkness, rousing us with sharp stings of light to will our awaking, to arise from the dead and cry for the light which he can give, not in the lightning of words only, but in indwelling presence and power.

How, then, must the truth fare with those who, having neither glow nor insight, will build intellectual systems upon the words of our Lord, or of his disciples? ....

 To men who are not simple, simple words are the most inexplicable of riddles.

[George MacDonald, unwritten sermons I: "I shall not be forgiven", p 24 of this link]


photo taken in West Suffield, CT.
 

If you want the fire of God, you must become the fuel of God

                      If you want the fire of God, you must become the fuel of God.
                                                                                          --Tom Tenney

photo taken in Cambridge, UK


 

 

Drink, Dear Saint, of the Sweetness of God

      "But the believing soul longs and faints for God; she rests sweetly in the contemplation of Him. She glories in the reproach of the Cross, until the glory of His face shall be revealed. Like the Bride, the dove of Christ, that is covered with silver wings (Ps. 68.13), white with innocence and purity, she reposes in the thought of Thine abundant kindness, Lord Jesus; and above all she longs for that day when in the joyful splendor of Thy saints, gleaming with the radiance of the Beatific Vision, her feathers shall be like gold, resplendent with the joy of Thy countenance." --Bernard of Clairvaux on the Love of God






photo taken in Catskill, NY 

Jonathan Edwards: I Know Not How to Express...

This I know not how to express otherwise than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world; and sometimes a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of soul, that I know not how to express.
... I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father’s pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looking upon the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, as I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet, and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness.



photo taken on the far side of Pike's Peak...
near the Florrisant Fossil Beds,
Colorado

Jonathan Edwards: the appearance of divine glory in almost everything...

The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet, cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything.


God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing;
in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind.


I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time; and in the day, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things:

In the meantime, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. . .” - 

--Jonathan Edwards

photo taken in Wilmington, Delaware