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It Is About Time

(Burn your floaties for a deep dive thread September 25th at sunset)

No one has ever become poor by giving. — Anne Frank

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live. —  Omar N. Bradley

Listen to the wind blow, down comes the night. Running in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies. Break the silence, damn the dark, damn the light. And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again. I can still hear you saying, you would never break the chain… — Fleetwood Mac

In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. —  Brennan Manning

The Cry of a Suffering Servant

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
    you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
    they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
    in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
    you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you;
    from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

Many bulls surround me;
    strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
Roaring lions that tear their prey
    open their mouths wide against me.
I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
    it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs surround me,
    a pack of villains encircles me;
    they pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
    people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
    and cast lots for my garment.

But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
    You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
Deliver me from the sword,
    my precious life from the power of the dogs.
Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
    save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

I will declare your name to my people;
    in the assembly I will praise you.
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
    Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
For he has not despised or scorned
    the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
    but has listened to his cry for help.

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
    before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek the Lord will praise him—
    may your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth
    will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
    will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the Lord
    and he rules over the nations.

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
    all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
    those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
    declaring to a people yet unborn:
    He has done it!

Isaiah’s Reflections on the Deeply Rooted Theme

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and he will bring justice to the nations.
He will not shout or cry out,
    or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
    he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
    In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”

This is what God the Lord says—
the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,
    who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
    who gives breath to its people,
    and life to those who walk on it:
“I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
    I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
    to be a covenant for the people
    and a light for the Gentiles,
 to open eyes that are blind,
    to free captives from prison
    and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.

“I am the Lord; that is my name!
    I will not yield my glory to another
    or my praise to idols.
See, the former things have taken place,
    and new things I declare;
before they spring into being
    I announce them to you.”

…

Listen to me, you islands;
    hear this, you distant nations:
Before I was born the Lord called me;
    from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.
He made my mouth like a sharpened sword,
    in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me into a polished arrow
    and concealed me in his quiver.
He said to me, “You are my servant,
    Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
    I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
    and my reward is with my God.”

And now the Lord says—
    he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
    and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord
    and my God has been my strength—
he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
    to restore the tribes of Jacob
    and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

This is what the Lord says—
    the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel—
to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation,
    to the servant of rulers:
“Kings will see you and stand up,
    princes will see and bow down,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

…

This is what the Lord says:

“Where is your mother’s certificate of divorce
    with which I sent her away?
Or to which of my creditors
    did I sell you?
Because of your sins you were sold;
    because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.
When I came, why was there no one?
    When I called, why was there no one to answer?
Was my arm too short to deliver you?
    Do I lack the strength to rescue you?
By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea,
    I turn rivers into a desert;
their fish rot for lack of water
    and die of thirst.
I clothe the heavens with darkness
    and make sackcloth its covering.”

The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
    to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
    wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
    I have not been rebellious,
    I have not turned away.
I offered my back to those who beat me,
    my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
    from mocking and spitting.
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
    I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
    and I know I will not be put to shame.
He who vindicates me is near.
    Who then will bring charges against me?
    Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
    Let him confront me!
It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
    Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
    the moths will eat them up.

Who among you fears the Lord
    and obeys the word of his servant?
Let the one who walks in the dark,
    who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
    and rely on their God.
But now, all you who light fires
    and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
    and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
    You will lie down in torment.

…

See, my servant will act wisely;
    he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
Just as there were many who were appalled at him—
    his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
    and his form marred beyond human likeness—
so he will sprinkle many nations,
    and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
    and what they have not heard, they will understand.

…

Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
    and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
    nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
After he has suffered,
    he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
    and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
    and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
    and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

“Who dis?” is actually a very old question and among the first questions I ask of a text: Who from and to whom, along with who profits/loses by its saying? In this case it is Isaiah and the Isaianic tradition reflecting on an already ancient knowledge by God’s faithful ones. Due to his inherited and achieved status in Jerusalem, Isaiah was an unlikely pick because he seemed to have everything in common with the people that he addressed… Irony for efficacy, that is the reality of God as we discussed last time. God resolved that paradox in a Flash, somewhat like that fellow Saul who stood with discarded cloaks at the stoning of Stephen. We may come from a people, but we are transformed into the people of God. That divine process always comes with a cost today for a profit in the future, ask Isaiah or Saul or Stephen. Often that cost is the very system of bogus belief, crumbling worldview or delusional cosmology, that made us fat and semi-euphoric for so long. Shoot, I myself literally came of age in The Valley of Quail…     

Despite the social status and cultural privileges (gifts of man) Isaiah enjoyed, at his maturity he recieved a gift from God that reoriented salvation history. It rectified poor Aye, so that he might know all that former “glory” as filth and sin, which he then confronted, endured, and overcame. In the midst of world-ending circumstances arose the genesis of a revelation, which we know as the Most High calling, from the only God that breaks the chain of the world through suffering service. Like so many others, Isaiah saw that all those “gifts,” all that “greatness,” became as crappy rags in the twinkling of an aye. It was his humility, honesty, and willingness to serve, no matter the loss, that made him “a man of God.” Further, he admitted, from the start, that his sins were part and parcel of his people’s even greater sins.

It was his painful and prolonged sufferings because of his own people, not necessarily for his people (the coming terror was already on them because so many of them kept doubling down in their sins), that made him who he became; it was by appointment with God that the prophet’s overwhelming faithfulness grew and became memorialized across the Writings and the Witnesses. As a result of his lived, believing loyalty to his God, he became his name, “God saves.” He and some from among his people faced a disastrous future and distant hope all at once, centuries before any one became aware of the sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth. What an honor, what a horror, talk about a trail blazer and a saga for the ages, a rain-maker and heart-breaker of the second order… “who is like the Lord?!”… But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Isaiah turned from the boutique charity and plastic charms of Israel’s gods of lifestyle. God put him to work calling out the lies and loves, the dark and the light, of those gods, which many people insisted that they couldn’t live without, or worse, they would die for them. So be it, the unholy rubble had to be cleared out, no matter how long it took, so that survivors might know the real shalom of God. Only survivors know the faithful terror of the journey, the Arms that held them thorough it all, and the Power that raised them to overcome both their past and all the obstacles to come. Those who’ve jumped in enjambment across that chasm can and did carry each other. Their suffering enabled them to fully trust and know a suffering God. Others cannot. Only a suffering God can “save” a suffering people. And who is not sin-bruised? Those who entertain themselves with ersatz victimhood have gods that will not “save” anyone. Those people and gods forge the chain of their world by chaining others in darkness. God breaks all chains and the dark with the Light. The idols and their servants anesthetize guilty bystanders in night-fall. The Spirit of God draws in peoples to awake at Day-break.    

There is a beautiful isle where I learned one of their most enduring and widespread sayings quickly for survival’s sake: “Mind the gap.” It may seem doggerel and trite for a people renowned as eloquently repressed poetic folk, but it is essential to everyday life there, just as an embrace of Spiritual enjambement is required for real life with God everyday… If you don’t remember, no worries the post is up most days for now. And if you’re new, then please start at the beginning of the blog. (It will be inverted this summer just to make sure).

“In the gap” is where those Isaianic texts were written, and it’s where we live, in analogy, almost like the first generations of Isaiah’s readers. The most knowledgeable folks conclude there’s about a two-hundred-year gap between Isaiah 39:8 and 40:1 (yes, I am averse to more recent impositions to the Writings, but for wit and brevity sometimes exact addresses are helpful). The first 39 chapters are primarily about loss, this is where God’s judgment comes as withdrawal, not wrath, and not because of “other people,” but because the people who claimed to be His people didn’t act like His people for a very, very, very long time. To be fair, some did, but many others did not. Unfortunately, God’s judgment is global and communal, as well as personal. There were too many who had put their “faith” in their glory which, in reality, was rooted in unjust economic and military policies of unfaith. Ironically, that faithlessness was championed most by those who called themselves “faithful.” The power of faith-filled unity meant to glorify the God of Israel, was co-opted by vichy believers and the powers that be.

So, God simply handed them over to the circumstances that they had built for themselves for so long. It is Right and Just in every age, and I will always praise Him for it no matter what. Even if it happens, again, sometime soon, my tune will not change. Of course the name of Isaiah was celebrated only in the aftermath and reinvestment of Israel so many years latter, while the faithless are lost to history and God. It ain’t nothing new, and very few look back at Isaiah as a prophet of doom. But in the thick-of-it, back then, the people were only happy in their delusions, but a time later, and today, most rightly remember him as a messenger of God’s salvation, a great prophet, perhaps the greatest. I need to remind myself of that on an almost daily basis.

On that personal note, since it’ll be a minute before the next post, I wouldn’t claim any of those titles, because through many trials I have learned that it doesn’t matter what people call me, and it matters very little what I denominate myself as…  What matters most is first what God calls you before His counsel, then what He calls you in private, and if the Writings are to be believed, the name our parents gave us at birth matters somewhat, but even that can be overcome/changed if renamed by God. So, I am a witness to my God, a servant to my Lord, and there’s another curious name, a three-off oddity that even has me and some others, who are most knowledgeable about such things, a bit puzzled. So today, “witness” and “servant” only for me… even if not asked, it is answered.     

Now back to the plot: first we get a time of loss, deserved consequences, and divine repercussions… then some silence (two hundred years?) … and then hope comes to the fore in chapters 40-66. For those who kept the hope alive in the inspired, creative, and imaginative tradition of the great prophet, the horizon was the goal, the telos, while muddling through the gap. I’ve always felt that it is the profound tension between judgment and promise that made Isaianic texts so freaking awesome. I might not want to endure Jerimiah’s story again, but Isaiah’s? Yes, please and thank you more. Both were lugubrious, to be sure, but Isaiah looked up while Jeremiah looked down, a bit like comparing Yeats to Joyce, or if I maybe so bold, Emerson to Thoreau… both great but in different perspectives.

Certainly, we may suffer in service to God and others, but if we have indeed been set free, then no storm at sea is too much (an allegory we’ll explore next spring more fully)… Remember that after the shipwreck is when Balian’s story, like Isaiah’s, was rocketed into the fifth dimension. The new (old) land of myth-cum-reality, a place of ancient inheritance, and a new (old) way of living must be championed, not for the powers that be… No, but for the Power that redeems Balian… All against the dissolving backdrop of a lost wife, living among despicable people riding roughshod over a failing society, and against a terminally corrupt church. God delivers Balian, not for himself, but so that he might help heal God’s land, while delivering a beloved people at the very moment they felt abandoned and doomed. And he does it all, like Isaiah, every dang step God’s Way, in Right conscience, not the way of petty tyrants according to the vile desires of worldly achievement for a selfish priesthood. The Godly are delivered in pain, not comfort, according to and out of their natural state. Born again but from above, as it were. They are delivered while they lived in reality, not while they glorified themselves in a delusional future or over-nostalgized past, which was trademarked by the wealthy ghouls of politics and religion. That is what I am talking about, that is how “I am” does it, “just listen to the words long written down” and the movie you were just shown.

The salvific conviction that drives chapters 40-55 comes in the gap. The robes of glorious recovery can only be worn, if people remove their old garments. I confess some old attachments are more than skin deep and it’s almost impossible to imagine the loss of their comfort, even though their stench has finally offended the Long Nose of Heaven. Staying on God’s superhighway mapped out by Isaiah, the hope that renews hearts in chapters 56-66 also comes with struggle. The return, the reordering of Holy places, and the land itself are faithful yet contested. Contemporary readers may want to flag up the inclusiveness demanded in chapter 56 and the renewal of a greater neighborliness in chapter 58. There were many who capitalized on division and proclaimed exclusivity… But I guess they had to die first because everyone knows those types never change.

Personally, I find it beyond curious that time and time again certain peoples become convinced that their faith was full and complete before they were born, their forefathers’, and their’s alone, had everything completely right. How serendipitous their world is, how lucky they are! Well, I am sure that I will never know their world or where it goes because that is not my story, it is not Isaiah’s story, and it certainly isn’t Jesus’ story. My God and my Lord and Isaiah, all told me from the time I was a little child that our Way is narrow and beset on all sides, especially from the inside. Even on the far side of the Cross from here, before God was made flesh, even then, the way of the suffering service was well known to the righteous. We are always commanded to love till to our deaths, while others order ageless, baseless hatereds only to call it life. Bon soirée and c’est la mort to all those “lucky” people in that wide-way of living.

Before we bid adieu to Isaiah and his blessed people and turn to the Fulfillment of the suffering servant and those beloveds who first followed the Way of Jesus, I’d like to make a minor personal point, perhaps it is only important to me, perhaps not. But it seems to me that throughout the Bible, from Adam and Eve to Job and his “friends” to the Spirit and the Bride, that sometimes there is a man, or woman, every so often, put there by God in a highly conflicted situation…. They are salvation history writ small with burning bones and trembling flesh. “Sometimes there’s a man”, or so it is written, that embodies the panoramic dilemma of God’s people as a contested personification between heaven and hell, peoples and powers. That is the character of the suffering servant. History, or at least the narration of history, brings the eyes of the world to a cataract in time and place. The person is the round peg for the God-shaped round hole, but most, if not all, of the people that they encounter want her or him to be a square or triangle or anything and everything that they are not called, nay ordered to be. Why would they do that? Because… well because, Nimrods and all the petty goons who apologize for them want to control others.

Scripture, it’s Writer, and I put it to you, here and now, that living for self is not Satanic; it is just human. I can understand it. Every human ought to understand it. Hell, some of us even got rich and fat on it, you know “The American Way,” or even much more broadly “The Western Wind.” Those ways are melting away today, but their victims are still the most desired by God. Hence, they are very far from unredeemable, even the ones that victimized the others can be regenerated if they turn from their wickedness. Black sheep are best at breaking generational curses, and scapegoats that overcome devils are lifted up to ride on a horse of a different color.

Conversely, it is impossible to please God with “ethical wars” or “moral statutes”, both are spectacular manifestations of failed faith en masse. “Get religion” fiats reveal the end of an age, not the beginning of a glorious new Reich; see the imperial propaganda to conquest and Leges Juliae imposed on Roman citizens as the Republic fell to centuries of tyranny. The fall of the Weimar Republic is a more recent display of darkness in action by a people claiming to be righteous and imposing purity on others. There was a time, not too long ago, when everybody knew that “good Germans” would make “bad Americans.” But, from age to age, all it takes is one wicked generation for all to be lost.

It is even clearer today than back then, that compelling by threat of artillery fire, or homogenizing legislation, leads to antichrists’ counterfeit for God’s purity. Their terminal fraud is forcing others to conform to their will because their god told them so, or else they’ll make all others disappear… That is always Satan’s followers’ sin, always has been since Cain, and it will be to their bitter end. No matter what they call themselves or how they brand their faithlessness, the action of their heads and hands mark (for all to see) the desolating occultation of the possibility for Spiritual growth, with the abominable destruction of Holy space wherein people might have chosen God. Why? Because the white-washed tombs still chose unjust splendor over righteous suffering. It is the definitive and literal opposite of service to others. It is self-service, demanding all others serve them. God will not forgive this blasphemy in spirit, this eternal sin. My Lord says so.

The only Way that I’ve been given is to fulfill God’s promises, and trust Us, that Way cuts down every other way. Even if you pervert your pet passages over a hundred lifetimes across mass media… Can you fool God? Can you redeem Satan? It is not my job ‘to teach Nazis lessons in humanity, Nazis ain’t got no humanity because they exchanged suffering in God’s image for their own pleasurable power in the world; they are all foot soldiers of a Jesus-hating Lair.’ And devils rule every petty nimrod and all their apologists… But being a witness against all that gross wickedness and a servant to those who suffer from the evildoers, that is the suffering servant in a nutshell. God promises those servants a divine solidarity in Isaiah 61, which culminates with the righteous One’s proclamations at the Sermon on the Mount. That’s where I am headed, and who I am with, no matter how much hell all the devils try to heap upon us.      

C’mon people, you don’t need to be Isaiah, for even Jonah, “the worst of the prophets,” knew that change is a requirement and Spiritual growth hurts/matures only by personal choice, never in bullying duress. Moreover, again, service to God and others is free and exists, for real, only in a volitional state. Most importantly, if we grow Spiritually then our understanding of God will change, grow every day, sometimes almost none (maybe it even feels like a loss) and other days there are giant leaps in perception. Life is part of that process. The trick is choosing every day to grow along His lines, not our own or this world’s. Then, without doubt, He’s always getting bigger. But unlike human tools, in Christ, the greater the scope of disclosure there’s also an increase, not a decrease, in the detail we see, “the more stones, both bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God.” Heck, I am worse than Jonah or any of you, and still I know this little bit to be true: worship God alone.

Jesus’ Perfection of Suffering Service

First and Last Response to Satan

The devil led him (Jesus) up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”

The Cost of Following Jesus

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Watchfulness

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Peter asked, “Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?”

The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.

“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

The Narrow Door

Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

Mister Robert Allen Zimmerman’s Song

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”

Still, the Same Dispute with Worldliness

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

These are just a few salient passages from only one Gospel, and I had a whole spiel ready… but in final review, who could expand on the Master? Who can throw light upon the Light? What kind of fool could? Well, I got the Nod here, so I’ll briefly ask… Do you see Isaiah’s points on inclusion, greater neighborliness, and the holy rejection of worldly gifts, rule, and standards? Do you see the stakes? Who profits and loses? Do you see the vows, the commitments, and the guarantee of Isaiah 61? Do you see the blessedness, the exhilaration, and the rapture of Matthew 5? If yes, keep up the good works in right trust… If no, well, you are in luck because the time ahead will afford even the blind, deaf, and dumb many opportunities to break good. For the dead, it doesn’t matter what happens they’re going to stay asleep.

In turning from the Master to his disciples, I can say that we’re at least 2 years away from discussing Tactics: the formerly tenuous, subterrain seeds, the forgotten meanings of teshuva, tzedakah, tikkun olam pulled from death and darkness into flowering by the light of Christ Jesus. Suffice to say today… if you do believe, then you will suffer to follow him, God, and the broken world in right service. Despite their hiddenness to most, at present the rudiments are on full array wherever suffering servants garden. I need not say anymore on my Lord’s account… other than if you do not love him now in the embrace of service, you’ll never love him again. So, focus on growing His gifts in you, not building on your achievements, because the Spirit of Christ is looking to invest virtues not outcomes. To Him, in this world, human accomplishments are meaningless… at best. So stay at it, even if it seems that you’ve made no difference, the Spirit sees your faithfulness.  

Disciples in Suffering Service

His (a Pharisee named Gamaliel) speech persuaded them (the members of the supreme council and tribunal of the Jews). They called the apostles in and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

…

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man (Saul of Tarsus) is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

…

 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.

….

 Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.

…

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering… The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

…

Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!… Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

…

 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.

…

For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

“He committed no sin,
    and no deceit was found in his mouth.”

When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

…

 Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For,

“Whoever would love life
    and see good days
must keep their tongue from evil
    and their lips from deceitful speech.
They must turn from evil and do good;
    they must seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
    and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. 

…

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin… Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And,

“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
    what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.

…

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

“God opposes the proud
    but shows favor to the humble.”

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

It would seem that no matter where we look in the New Testament, poor Aye, is always less than a stone’s throw away. These are just a few citations from a few of those books. None from Paul, just one more Paul quote further down, but as you’ve been shown over the past 27 posts, you cannot swing a dead gentile anywhere in the Paulines without landing on a passage concerning right suffering for, and like, Jesus. Can’t have too much scripture. Again, I’ll truncate the commentary so the texts may do the Lion’s share of their work in you. Just a reminder and a storied caution to end.

The Rule of Christ means his baseless love merits our eternal service. So why do so many who claim the Name express evermore baseless hate? Oh, you know the wicked creatures who judge by the amount of skin pigment per square inch, and the others who promote “convenient lies” for greed and selfishness, serving the Beast and their disordered world. Many of them scream about taking all scriptures literally, but of the multitude I’ve met, only one or two are missing their right hands… ironic or hypocritical? Perhaps both. Those “good people” will be startled (in the minimum) to awaken in Judgment that their doctrines and theologies are mostly human inventions. They have taken literalisms as metaphor and metaphor as literalism… that’s forgivable by any reader, even all the men “who’ve taken up their sufferings as a woman giving birth.”

It may be forgivable, but it is manifestly horsepucky, just avoid stepping in it. However, a worse sin comes when they get puffed up enough to foist it upon the Word, from the outside, for personal gain (imposing their disorders on God’s Order). To be sure, at certain times and places (people’s or “national” spaces), they helped to preserve and guide. They are excellent histories of human reflections about God, which are always historically situated and culturally contested. Therefore they’re not immutable or divine at all; in fact, they’re the opposite; they are the very evidence of change. Yet their promoters tell their followers not to change. How curious and queer of them. Simply ask anyone who has recovered from childish ideas or trauma: what happens when people try to carry all those old behaviors for too long into their maturity? The old beliefs begin to do much more harm than good; they can even kill. How many “Christians” have taken “a godly” social affinity for a situational teaching as propaganda to murder literally because of purely metaphorical doctrines on various perspectival debates? The nimrods among us are doing it this very day. That is not suffering according to God’s will. The best I can say is these teachings might assist some, but they will not save any one. Put your trust in Jesus, and serve God alone.   

All the nations may walk
    in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
    our God for ever and ever.

That’s why I and others read for the story, particularly, resonances across the stories, melodies shared by the holy ones across the whole earth and every age. I don’t know much, but I do know that the semantic codes in the various, relevant languages have changed greatly just over my lifetime. Also I know, the Song remains forever the same, and it is the most direct route to the heart of any matter. Even as empires and their philosophies, or nations and their languages, or contracts and “covenants,” rise and fall… and brothers and sisters they do, they all do… Even if all the elements were to melt away tomorrow, I am with the One who created all things you see and even those you don’t yet. For he is the One who sent me himself to suffer for his cause: the restoration of His order in all His creation (independent clause)… and also, you’re invited to join Us along with any of your preferred saints (dependent clause).  

Thanks to Jesus and all the saints who have gone before me, I know that there is only one God who heals and liberates in the realities of Spirit and Truth. For others, I am reminded of what Kant said, “If the truth shall kill them, then let them die.” It has been my biggest nut to crack personally, but I’ve made some progress. “Live and let die” is actually part of the holy protocol when Jesus sent out some of the first missionaries, ‘don’t even mind the dust.’ It is also some of the Spirit’s last words, ‘let them be as they were.’ The only ones who reject truth are those preferring their own lies be imposed on others, so they might suffer a little less for a minute. Ironically, in the end, it is they who’ll suffer the most, by far. To build an idol, you must kill the truth first, to restore the truth you smash the idol first… but the lies that remain destroy the idolaters more than they’ve ever harmed the poor and oppressed. There is the greatest hope in the last judgment. It grieves me that Isaiah 61 and Mathew 5 are perverted in selfish mouths and belied in greedy acts to further alienate the very folks my God sent me to love… All-the-while clarity and mercy, beauty and joy, in Christ are on full display in the discounted and forgotten. They embody the Gospel, the sufferings of my Lord most, as they are drawn out of the world’s chaos and restored in the Spirit. The song, the Promise, and mission remain the same.    

Make no mistake, whether I blog or not, whether anyone reads it or not, I will serve daily, because my Lord has set me free in deed. And even though I am old and grungy and poorer in worldly wealth than I ever have been, I am not glum, I have never had more joy in my life. I suit up and show up, and I let the Spirit do the rest. It is a beautiful plan: take it easy and share. My only lament is that it is too often from a desk, and not always out in the trenches where I was born-again. Sometimes people see the Glory and sometimes they don’t. But because I have been led through times of affliction, brokenness, and loss, practically no one is out of reach. I know enslavement and bondage in wealth and poverty, they are both imposters in seasons of grief like Job’s old friends. All that means I’ve been formed as a stranger to no person, unless they reject me. But then, “Ain’t no bother,” because the world is heaping up ever more consequences and repercussions for most who become, by pain, even better targets for the Gospel, sometimes I even add a few words.

Finally, as a true cautionary tale, allow me to end with a story that should be taken very literally by my intended first audience. It concerns a baptized and serving, famous follower of Christ Jesus, post-Pentecost, so I’ve always looked for him in myself. But thanks to right suffering for the cause of Christ over the decades, I see less of him and more of people like Paul.   

Simon the Sorcerer

Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great, and all the people, both high and low, gave him their attention and exclaimed, “This man is rightly called the Great Power of God.” They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his sorcery. But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Simon himself believed and was baptized. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw.

When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”

Peter answered: “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God. Repent of this wickedness and pray to the Lord in the hope that he may forgive you for having such a thought in your heart. For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.”

Then Simon answered, “Pray to the Lord for me so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

After they had further proclaimed the word of the Lord and testified about Jesus, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many Samaritan villages.

What can we learn from the father of lifestyle christianity? Is there anyone still today who’d dare prefer the fake news of their fetish to the Good News of God? Were Simon and his heirs counted as goats or sheep according to the Master? Did they repent to the extent that the Spirit might transform him into Christ-likeness? Were they finally will-ing to suffer God’s will rather than try to steal God’s glory by buying God’s power? Did they ever come to understand what they have done so very wrong? Can they smash their worldview ultimately, which was composed by sin and bitterness in a desire for status and reputation that ripped off other people for their own personal wealth? Are Simon and his children frauds forever? How was any of that about doctrine or theology, instead of just plain old self-will run riot? So what does the Judge say is important? Simon says the right words, like he must have at his baptism, but there’s obviously more to the salvation on offer through the blood of Jesus. All Peter tells us is “perhaps,” if Simon honestly turns and exchanges “greatness” in sin for humility in the Spirit. I trust that the narrator leaves us hanging (“enjambs” us) for a very good, spiritual reason.     

Let’s not move on in negativity. There are a few things we can certainly know from this dense little vignette. We know, no matter your perspective on Pentecost, that God does not share his Glory nor splash out his Power willy-nilly. Luke often points us to obedience in the believer as a prerequisite for “greater” manifestations of the Holy Spirit through a convert. Whether you personally appraise that as “a reward,” or not, from either viewpoint we know growth in the Spirit is about the wise articulation of Christ-like principles in our everyday life, no matter the outcome. God does not invest His power in people based on their influence, public notoriety, reputation or worldly wealth. God judges differently, because charisma without character is always cancerous but character without charisma is always curative. Time is on God’s side, not the enemy’s; so we can wait, sometimes we even wait patiently. Like the wise man said, “everyone wants to be full but very few are willing to be filled.”

If you might be “a camel,” then start assessing yourself with “the eye of a needle” now, today. Further, we can know that the qualities which the Spirit searches for are neatly analogized, in summation, as a “heart” issue. Moreover, “heart failure” can disqualify you from God’s ministry. But fear not, for we should know also that repentance cures these spiritual heart issues. I practice mine almost daily, but your milage may vary… That is cool with me because, to be honest, I need all the work I can get in, while I am sure others do not. In addition, we see Jesus’ implied missional axiom at work: “Live and let die,” for no matter Simon’s final estate, the apostles went on doing the same thing. They remained “on-task,” grinding it out day after day. At least this time, they didn’t have to take a flogging. I certainly count that as a good day, while some fools who’ve never been beaten for God laugh. On that day the Lord’s servants only had to strongly admonish a greedy-rich and power-hungry man of celebrity. And lastly, we may know too that in the Lord’s service, some days are good and many others are best called “necessary days.” At times there will be suffering, but there is always purpose at work. I pray you have many more good days than “necessary” ones.

The Suffering Servant Balian

Behold, Immanuel Kant, the white, upwardly mobile man from a working-class background who founded CRT. Critical thought brought reformational ideas and European culture to full flower. But today there are a lot of leaders out and about, who claim his mantel and that cultural inheritance, yet they have betrayed their philosophical, theological, and political creators. So it is no wonder they make war on their Creator, chosing to make their own images instead. They are simply delusional sophists selling a destructive world system, which never existed in God’s name or will, for a moment of worldly power. They are literally at war with the only living God, His good order of creation, and divine will.

Wherever and whenever these nimrods get their way, Truth is murdered to raise their idols (and fetishes), as thinking of truth well, with cirumspection, is abolished. If they get their way enough, then whole generations, with God, will learn that the unity of apperception alone makes possible the synthesis of the manifold under a category out in the streets together. I wonder if that might not be for the best, for it will terrify and destroy the wicked thugs, the world system they’re trying to impose, and their beastly “house-keeping,” once again, as it has so many times before, but only after a terrible amount of unecessary suffering.

I had a few thousand words about Kant ready, but increasingly it came to our attention that many people would rather hate him than even attempt to understand him. Ignorance is no sin, we’re all ignorant, but pride in one’s ignorance is a very detestable sin that profanes the sapient qualities God gifted humanity. Still worse, imposing that ignorance on others, especially for pride or profit, is a stain on a soul for eternity. They should’ve chosen a Godly code. I mean for Heaven’s sake, most of their own theories of salvation (especially at the moment justification) require the person to be self-reflexive and appreciate their own sinfulness, to the point where they are willing to reslove a new Spiritual sythesis in their lives. That’s the essence of critical (anything) theory. Most idolaters are stupid, but you have to be far past dead (sold out to Satan on-the-down-low) to be that dumb about something so important and obvious to a Rectified life.

It’s easy to suffer and serve the people and issues we care about. That is just natural love, even the gentiles can do that. But loving a stranger, or even an enemy, and expect nothing back? Even being accused or punished for their defense and restoration? That’s God’s kind of love, the love of a suffering servant. You may say, “I serve Jesus!” just like Simon did. And well, you might be right about that. Maybe it means something, maybe not… the right answer to that is “perhaps.” But I know for a fact that he Himself stands for those who suffer as he did. I am not ashamed, for that is the only thing that matters, because that is the Power that saves. By act, word, and deed that is the love of Christ Jesus.

I know people who actually live that kind of love, they are so easy to see and I am drawn to them; I am all about them now. But still, it is ever easier to see those who talk about God’s love, speaking beautiful words of life, healing people, etc… But my Lord calls them goats. I spent a life time trying to reach them, but they reject and accuse me most falsely. So now, I am ordered to keep moving and not to look back, not even to carry them as dust on my shoes.

“They call me Ismahel,” “but that ain’t no bother.” 6.6

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

 …

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

It is clear that both the Master and the writers of the Second Witness inarguably linked suffering and the living experience of resurrection with Christ in the midst of a broken world. How was this most basic truth lost? Well, perhaps it stems from the only warning I’ll flag-up on that great fact. Praying for the sufferings of Jesus Christ, like Paul did is a mistake, or so it seemed at the time, for a long while. But I must say that accusing such a person of having an unclean spirit for undergoing such sufferings by God, following the Lord, in order to receive the Power of God… well, let’s just say Job’s friends are in better shape.

Oh, yes dear reader the accusations fly, no matter what demons I’ve cast out. But like the man sang, “I’d rather walk in the dark with Jesus.” And trust me, there is no quicker way to acquire “trust with God,” and be blessed with God’s trust in you. Lastly, before I begin, please remember that this is my witness, there are as many as there are other witnesses. I do not intend for anyone to be like me. I am simply sharing my experience as Jesus gave me his strength and hope, because he told me to, here and now. You need to follow Jesus similarly and pass it on in the life he gives you.

It was the spring of 2006, and all of the fun (from all but one) of the memories above were just that: distant memories, on the otherside of a very dark place. But that’s not the point today. As you might be able to tell from the photos, I was always a “utility player” who ranged almost globally. I wasn’t great at any one thing, so I was willing to learn many things as God, and his appointed mentors, allowed the Spirit maximum room to operate in me. I took pride in nothing, so if I failed, at least, I learned how to get up again, again and again. More importantly, if I were misplaced by my superiors, or abused by friends, then it wasn’t my fault! I miss the lightness of that freedom. Only in retrospect, I am now sure the point was that I always learned something while not reinforcing my own biases about myself. I remained teachable and open, kenosis-lite if you will. Also, as you’ll see below, I learned rule #62 the hard way, repeatedly. Is that another rule that is Greek to you? It shouldn’t be strange to anyone in the flesh, especially in the service, especially when we suffer in service. Rule #62 is simply, “don’t take yourself too damn seriously.”  

My father had just died after suffering terribly for a decade, and a people, who God sent me to again, had enforced a very unholy separation. While many of the priests were gracious, the lay people were murder. So, you might think I’d be sad or frustrated. But actually, I experienced a great relief and freedom in both cases. Until, on my birthday, two very solemn angels of high rank came to me. I had not met them before, but I came to know one of them later as Raguel. Even though I did not know their names, somehow I knew their work, their protection of my Lord’s body in the tomb. I honor any angel of the Lord. I had learned that if you meet one, you can be very personal. However, if it’s two, or more, all seriousness and greater honor is required. So, I simply said, “What would my Lord have of me? His servant is listening.”

Then something unique and new happened, one, or both in perfect unison, spoke to me without moving their lips. He or they said, “Son of man prepare yourself for soon your soul will be raised while you still wake. But fear not, for we will remain with your body, so no harm will come to you as you rise to meet God and serve your Lord for three days.” Dumbfounded, all I could manage to say was, “If it is God’s will, let it be.” You can never go wrong paraphrasing the Lord’s mother, it was the safest response I know and the only one that came to me at the time. It has been my experience, in general, that if you quote scripture to angels, it’s hard to say the wrong thing. I like that because I’ve always been accused of saying the wrong thing with people.

The day was quiet and hot. There was no wind, but I went for a shaky walk in the park on Heights Blvd. I spent the better part of 90 sweaty minutes trying to figure out what all that meant exactly. I didn’t know if I should be excited or scared, or something else. Things hadn’t been going my way of late, was I going to be rewarded or punished? The possibilities were incalculable. The next day I was overcome by fear because my whole body, especially my head, felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. I called a friend or two daily to try to understand what was happening and what I should do. But I soon learned, that there are times when even well intended friends cannot help, and I should forgive them even if they hurt me because they simply don’t understand.

Over the next week or so, as my state of mind and body deteriorated, I became more and more literally “beside myself,” and my friends and family grew increasingly worried. But I remained compliant and calm, even as they suspected or accused me of using drugs again. Let’s get this out of the way now, so I need not repeat it: I agreed to every drug test, no fewer than 4 were given with blood and hair. Each affirmed that I was, and had been, stone sober for at least a year; it had been longer. As the Devil would have it, this concerned my good people even more. They were beginning to understand that they did not understand. And they were frightened. So, near the end of the process, my people handed me over to the police, even though I had committed no crime. I had been a lamb the entire time. The police finally handed me over to doctors, which had been my friends’ intent.

The police were kind, the cuffs were too loose, but I had to wear them for the ride. I tried to have an ordinary conversation under extraordinary conditions with them. I believe they were more unsure than I was, maybe even more nervous. Meanwhile, I was tearing the veil between realities. I could see people and spirits at the same time. And as the car rose along the express lane towards downtown, I saw all of Houston laid bare. As if people had never been there, but I could see all the artificial structures as well like fog. Later this type of binocular vision would become important to understand. I could see all the fallen spirits squatting along the bayous and could hear the frogs croaking and cicadas chirping. Back in my head I was talking about housing prices and the coming global economic crash in 2008. And you know, I think that tripped out those poor public servants worse than if I told them what I was really looking at!

The policemen continued to be very kind. They removed my cuffs before we walked into the back of the station, so I offered to help them with their bags from the trunk. I sat alone in the corner of a hallway for a minute, and then they brought me a coke and took me to talk to an intake officer, who I believe was just trying to figure it all out. She couldn’t, but I tried to be calm and rational, even as she became disturbed. Whatever she figured, she took me to a table and another fellow asked if I’d like a sandwich. I said yessir thank you and please. And I’ll never forget as he walked out, he said aloud, “One more sandwich, we got royalty here tonight!” I still don’t know what he meant, but I enjoyed the free coke and sandwich, and a bottle of water to go. The sandwich guy came back and said it was late, so he was going to give me a place to rest. It was an unlocked room with a big window, two-way not one, and a new cushy mat that smelled clean against the back wall. So, I laid there as the binocular vision was fading, thinking to myself, “Well this isn’t too bad, in fact everybody has been really nice.”

Then came the drop, my two friends appeared over me and the padded slab beneath me, in the little room. I didn’t say anything, but I think the people outside heard something because I saw some folks walk to the window as Raguel spoke, “Son of man, rise now and be born above!” It felt like a terrible gravity wave was intent on ripping me apart, I began to shake and groan. I focused of the word “born,” and then I thought of how women screamed in pain, so I did. This had the folks at the window beside themselves and croaking and chirping like the bayou creatures outside. I looked down and saw the madness of it all. And in an instant, none of the madness concerned me… brothers and sisters I was gone, “Elvis had left the building.” For the next three days you’d have to ask the angels, police, and doctors what happened to my body because I was nowhere near it. And I was so happy to be free!

Next, I found myself walking up a valley. It was lush and flush with life. It was glorious, and as I walked up, I relaxed and felt as if this was the way I was meant to feel, the way everyone was created to feel. It felt good, but not too good. To move it still required focus and effort but there was no pain or tiredness. Then as large hills rose on either side of the valley, it began to dawn on me that I was walking a path that I had before, but there were no man-made any things. It was a river from Ein Gedi up to the Pool of Siloam… where “the old city” would be or had been. But that understanding cease to concern me as I saw God, the Father, alone sitting beneath a little pavilion or gazebo of sorts, as He rose, I flew to him and we embraced… I cry writing it now. He said, “Well done, son.” That’s all I ever wanted to hear, it is all anyone should ever need to hear, and I know it is what He wants to say to everyone. Whatever desires I still harbored for acknowledgement from anyone else ended that day, except for my wife… maybe… And for a long time, I wished the story ended there. But there’s always more.    

Next, we cleared the embrace somewhat as He looked at me and said, “I want you to go to a place, not understand it, serve and just trust Me.” My heart fell a bit, then my whole being fell a long way. It got so dark that I couldn’t see, but after a minute some vision started to resolve. I felt small and cramped, uncomfortable but not painful like my body had before. It appeared to be a cave and on the back wall stood one figure, and another sat with forearms on his knees and head down. Both had on spotless, high-quality linen, but as I saw some blood on and about the one sitting, and I realized where I was and who I was standing before, as he raised his head to meet my eyes. I know it is hard to believe dear reader, but believe me, I was speechless for the second time in one story… impossible I know, and so does anyone who knows me.  

The one standing, facing me, on my Lord’s right side, asked my Lord, “Are we ready now?” It was the first time I’d met Melchizedek. My Lord responded while looking at me, “Are we ready?” If I had a jaw, then it was agape, and still I was mute. But the two opposite me were patient, merciful, and kind in their silence, like they knew that I needed a minute, or a thousand. Jesus gazed up kindly, and Mel developed a slight grin. Finally, I got out one syllable something like, “What, er who, er huh?” Immediately, the one still standing said to my Lord, “You are right, he talks too much.” I began to feel stupid and hit my knees before my Lord and gushed, “What can I do?” He smiled and said, “You can start by helping me up, but be careful, this body is still weak.” I crawled under his left arm, as Mel dropped under his right, and we rose slowly to walk a few steps towards an unattractive entrance or exit out.  

Where were we walking? There is only one place that smells and sounds like that, it is not a bad place; it is the bad place. And I was not afraid, I just wanted to know what to do. As Jesus regained his feet, he walked ahead with Mel and I side by side behind. Because I wasn’t crazy, I looked right to ask him, “What do I do?” Mel said, “You’ve studied this, don’t worry you will know.” And after a beat he said, “It is easier than dealing with a committee of the self-righteous!” Jesus turned back, a bit, to look and quip, “Yeah, they’re murder!” They had made me comfortable in the worst situation imaginable, only to confound the devils as we walked at them smiling, a bit. Imagine their surprise, as their party in the grave came to a full stop.

I don’t have the words yet to explain it well. I don’t think that is the point today. But we walked upward as if on a line, the devils parted like the Red Sea. Holding them in abeyance was the easy bit, the bad part was hearing the screams of souls, some cursing, most begging, while some yelled out confused bits of the writings, some even still recited platitudes. That’s when I learned to leave behind my timeline, because some of those sayings weren’t invited until long after the Christ event literally transpired on earth. But none the less, I heard them then as I do now. As we walked a sphere materialized about our Lord, and Mel and I held it as a train while moving away from one another with hands out stretched. Some of the souls made it to us and took refuge in the sphere, others could not, while still others would not. The devils were no issue at all, I kept my eyes on the souls. It reminded me of most my mission trips, or even my life writ short… Some coming close even as others fall away, while still others curse or beg at a distance.

As we rose the screaming dissipated and the multitude with us began to get a grip on reality; then some even rejoiced. But I stayed focused on the flanks. Finally, we came to a heaven that I had not seen before. There were walls, attractive walls, and an entrance with the requisite guards, some I knew. Before the gate Mel walked up by my side, putting his left on my right shoulder he said, “Brother, today is not your day to walk in. Stay with me here.” I was very disappointed but like in this here story, that was not the point… but it is coming. I took advantage of the time I had with Mel. I wanted to go back to where I had met the Father, Mel smiled and obliged. He had a similar experience and I believe he was happy to have a confidant. We talked a long time, and I really wish I could tell you his story today. It is an amazing tale and he’s every bit the character for it. It is sad so little is known about him, but maybe later I’ll be given permission. At the end of that day-long walk and talk down to the Dead Sea that was made alive before us by the river of life we strolled along, he said it was time to say goodbye, because there was more for me to do. That’s when it got weird, so I turned pro.

I came back to my body, in a clean bed with a blood pressure cuff on my left arm. The attendant said, “Oh, he’s back! We thought you were going to die and break the machine.” I asked what day and time it was, and as the angel had told me it would be, it was exactly 72 hours from the time my soul had left my body behind. I laid there a minute to breathe and feel again. As the attendant departed, I saw two fellows to my left. A fellow crying while lying in another bed next to mine, and second fellow sitting in a chair on the far side beneath a window reading the Bible out loud. I asked their names. The one crying said his name was Jeremiah and the one sitting was called Isaiah. Yes, I know. But given the week I’d had, I thought that it made perfect sense. And then, it got weirder still.    

After a few minutes I stood and walked out into the common room. I knew the room, I had served in that psych ward, on that floor, and in that room over a decade before as an intern from university to collect data on schizophrenia for a longitudinal study. I started to laugh, why not? There I was, someplace I knew but on the other side of the looking glass. Some people might have been worried, but in an instant I realized that God had prepared me long before hand with a profession and education that I had left behind and thought, “what a waste of time and effort for years.” Only in that delayed moment did I come to understand that suffering had been of great use. It prepared me for the time to come, all that “suffering” was invaluble preperation. I knew exactly what was going to happen and what I should do. It was easy, I just had to be patient and remain calm. I just took it as a staycation.        

There were some hard bits. I had a few friends visit me, and I tried to ameliorate their concerns without getting too heavy. The older of my two sisters was my greatest concern. She saw me a day or two before and said that I “didn’t even look human.” She was relieved, but still very worried because she knew all my tox screens had come back pure as the driven snow. I thought to myself, “It is an old and well-known story, but wait a few months to unveil all of it to her.” Mostly, I listened and nodded for a few days. I said all the right things when people asked the right questions. Directly, I knew I’d get a release hearing. And I did.

Again, I was put at a big round table with a lot of well-intentioned folks. It was the same table I sat at some years ago, as we told young people that life was over as they knew it. They were usually hit the first time with a brutal diagnosis they couldn’t understand. So, I was curious about what I needed to say, but I knew their protocol. When the head doctor spoke up, the first thing she said put me at ease, “We hardly ever see a case like your’s sir. You came in psychotic, then you were suddenly struck sane.” They waited so I replied calmly, “From the looks on your faces and the reports others gave to me, I’d say it was a profound psychosis.” That took them aback, so I invited them to tour, in discussion, the symptoms and signs of adult-onset schizophrenia. I didn’t have the history or symptoms before the episode, and I had done things before or after, in the few days they watched, that schizophrenics can’t. And I told them the story of my last few years or so, all my family, friends, and all the other “good people” I had been among.

I love doctors and scientists with polite voices and loud pens, because I can alter a whole room full of them and their long-held opinions with one single fact. Whereas, I can confront a single idolater with a world of facts, and they still chose to die, or kill, in their misbeliefs. Just within that calendar year, I had sat before a similiar table filled with “good” and “spiritual” people. I tried to talk to them but their pride in ignorance was so great, God told me to go Jonathan Edwards on them. I did, and told them that if they did not repent God was going to start taking out American cities. They did not, so God did; within weeks Katrina destroyed New Orleans and then Rita emptied out Houston. Still nothing, they were far past dead. I didn’t bring it up back then, or today, like profiteers and gravy trainers do in books and on TV. That misses the point entirely. In fact, it makes things worse for everybody, especially the generations to come.

The point is righteous people must apprehend reality critically to adopt in an on-going and healthy fashion to build faith, not just once maybe to make much of one’s self. I don’t want more of me. I want more Jesus in me and everyone else, dead or alive. Also, I only mentioned it today to point out that I know some are sicker than others. That’s fine; it’s Reality. I’ll work with both, often, as I am now, but only with those who are willing to be honest, even if just a little to begin. Back then, the doctors released me med free the very next day. While those other people, I don’t know what happened to them. In both cases, I simply told each group a greater, but limited, truth within and about their worldview, which they could understand, with a lexicon they could comprehend, and I allow for the results to vary widely; that’s their choice and I am ordered to live with that come life or death. That’s really all you can do, short of abolishing their delusions and showing them the greater reality. But that takes much more time than I had back then. It is a gift, and it is a curse, that takes great wisdom and patience to exercise rightly. I watch myriad charlatans do it grievously everyday without insight and no wisdom in media, on the streets, and in churches. God hates it. They’re butchers of the heart, mind, and soul for profit.

Two things of note happened the last day. First, the lead doctor, a short brilliant woman, took me aside and said, “After reflecting on your history, I don’t know how you made it. Any of those half dozen events you experienced could’ve sent me over the edge.” I smiled and said, “Ma’am, you are a brilliant doctor and I completely agree with you.” In parting she asked me just to do two things for her, since she wouldn’t prescribe meds, “First, keep it up, stay clear of drugs… But more importantly stay away from those sick, wacko religious people and set strong boundaries with your dysfunctional siblings. That’s the hard part because I know how much you love them.” I said, “bless you for hearing me and understanding.” Her words are burned into my memory and I put into practice her sage advice and never looked back. That was a fast ball right down the center.

Maybe she sent in a relief pitcher for the curve, maybe not. But there was a tall, slender, and much older man, perhaps a visiting senior fellow or oversight board member, who’d remained silent throughout. He came to me as I was packing. He seemed a bit nervous, maudlin even, he said, “I know, you’re about to leave and you will. I just wanted you to know that I’ve never believed in anything that I couldn’t prove or see. But for the first time yesterday, listening to you, something happened. I couldn’t sleep and now I feel anxious, like something has changed and I don’t know what to do…” He began to fail in his speech, so I put my right hand on his towering left shoulder and said, “Man there is a God, he calls me by my name and I call him Jesus. I know, for a fact, that he literally went through hell on earth, and beneath it, just to get to you today. All of that just because he loves you that much. If you believed one thing I said, it needs to be that he as is real as my embrace. So, take your time and talk to him about it, tell him all your fears and doubts, heck be angry at him and blame him for this shitty world, you’d be crazy not to feel that way. I know he’ll work with a man like you no problem at all.” He simply said, “Thank you, thank you.” And he walked away, I believe he went to cry and have a long-overdue discussion with his Creator.

Now here’s the drop for you, dear reader. Thank you for allowing me to take the long way round to get to you… There is no board of know-it-alls that could ever exist that might train and send a someone on such a mission to get to that mature slender fellow. You couldn’t save enough flyer miles or move a coastline far enough to make it through. You may have heard of a mythical two kilometer sniper shot, but that one, that day, took light-years to measure. It would be insane to try it on human power. No one could survive or negotiate such a path, but I did because I was willing to endure the trial. That man was worth it, moreover the One who sent me, led me, and sustained me through it all is worthy.

My sisters have gotten much healthier over the years and now that we are older, we are the comfort to one another that our parents always wanted us to be. We’re all living happy and purpose filled lives. And what of all those terrible, whacko religious people? Shoot, I went to conference not too long after and paid to have Mark 3:21 translated into a dozen other languages. And while I’d love to say that it is all good news for them, that would be unwise and untrue at the moment I fear. But somehow, in a manner far weirder and greater than what you read above, I am still getting through to a few, so that many more might reach the Promised Land one day, in such a way, that it will make my story dull and inconsequential by any comparison. Their testimonies of the God and the Lord that I know have and will overcome the world.

Peculiar as it sounds, it is all true. I could prove most of it today circumstantially, but one day in the future I believe the right people will know it, in full, substantially… Can’t wait! Even better, it is mine alone with God. And as of today, I can finally say, out loud in writing, in full faith and complete confidence: This is the Jesus I know… that by him I made peace with all my past and forgave myself last. So that now, all might find peace with God by forgiving and serving others first, just as Jesus did. Amen, and all glory be to God!

Parable of the Constant Gardener

Once there was a generous Landlord who granted a people a prime valley under the most gracious set of conditions for many ages. And in a time after a time and another and a half, there was a general issue gardener who was given an ordinary plot, by the extraordinary Landlord, in the hills just outside, and above, what had become a rich and powerful city within the grant-land valley. He came from the valley and understood the indulgent people there. By all accounts, from the few below that knew him, he was far from perfect but he worked daily, some days were good while others were necessary. Most thought him curious because he really wasn’t interested in their fascinations, and none of them were fascinated by the things that interested him. The gardener found this curious because it was the Landlord who had directed his interests, and weren’t they supposed to serve the same interests, those given by the same Landlord… or so they claimed?

The gardener saw three folks, or types of folks, from the city on a semi-regular basis, always as they were walking up to the hilltop above the garden and far above the city to yell into the valley about the Landlord. They’d scream things that didn’t sound like the Landlord, who’d given him his plot, and they their valley. The gardener would silently, but dutifully, observe them in his few free moments as they’d go up and down, up and down, up and down, time after time, season after season, year after year… Finally, one day, curiosity got the better of the gardener because the Landlord asked his constant gardener for just one last season of work. So, the mediocre gardener, at his best, thought to himself, “this might be my last opportunity to ask the self-distinguished folks on their way up, what all they’re doing while being so conspicuously busy all the time.” So, he asked out loud, “Pardon me, what are y’all saying up there on the hilltop?”  

The first just laughed as confetti came from their cosmetic mouth in a semi-ecstatic state. They mocked the gardener with the sore back and chapped lips by saying, “Oh you fool, why do you move the stones about to raise such a meager crop, then only to have to grind the grains and bake your own bread?! We only have to ask, and free bread along with everything else we dream of, is delivered to us every day!” The grubby gardener almost spoke… But he became focused on an idea given directly to him by the Landlord a long time ago: “Life here in the valley ain’t about the bread. No, it is about serving the Landlord according to his will, not what I want for myself.” He wanted to say it out loud, but before he could, the first accuser transformed into a very pretty peacock, and began to squawk and rave about in their plumage, and no sooner than they had started in on their raving, than they begin to melt into a gurgling puddle of stink.

Just as the gardener began to say, “Oops, it was a mistake to ask.” The second accuser chimed in too quickly and sharply with the most eloquent speech ever composed, a jive of pondering verbosity, which they claimed was all about the Landlord’s most important precepts. It was a lecture so erudite that the gardener didn’t, or couldn’t, understand it as a long tongue descended from that educated mouth only to tickle their self in an area the gardener had been taught to avert his eyes from. And just as the dull-witted, poor spelling gardener wanted to say, “Oh please, stop talking, I don’t understand you, but I fear for you!” The second became a turkey, who strutted and gobbled. The gardener couldn’t speak gobble, but thought to himself, as the Landlord had taught him in his common ignorance, “Life here in the valley ain’t about testing all His words and concepts. No, it is about serving today as the unique Word of the Landlord served all long ago.” The turkey observed the slow-thinking agrarian and laughed in presumption at him for even trying to respond to their overwhelming speech. And as the wordy bird continued on, they too became an even larger bubbling pothole of stink, while the gardener thought to himself, “Too bad that jive turkey wasn’t even aware enough to pay attention to the horrific plight of the bird who walked by them for so long and stood right next to them.”

As the gardener turned his gaze to the third, the last accuser, he thought to himself, “If this one responds too… Well, I won’t say they’re the dumbest in the land, but they better hope that other fellow doesn’t die.” However, as the devil would have it, the third began to speak by dropping their pants and tried waving what only wives, mothers, and doctors ought to see. This embarrassed the gardener who turned, only to listen as the willy waver began to shout his propaganda, “You are low and I am already on high! The Landlord told me that I should rule and do as I please with the land and everyone in it, because I am great and you are not. I am already perfect and you are still terrible compared to me! Now turn to gaze upon me and become awed by my might!” In turning the gardener began to meditate on the Landlord’s rule that, “Every creature who received the good land should serve the Landlord only, who ordered us to serve the other people and the land, not rule it, in the Way that the Landlord did in person, both in word and deed.” But just wanting it to end, the lowliest of men turned all the way back around to see the third’s… short-coming. The gardener tried not to laugh, but as he sealed his mouth, the “Ozymandias” of the group grew ever angrier and devolved into the ugliest vulture you ever did see with the same diminutive “micro claw.” And then, as the filthy bird “powerfully” charged the “defenseless” gardener with the fowl’s dead menacing eyes, with beak out-stretched… Can you guess what happen? Yup, the same as happened to the first two but just faster and smellier.    

Now this quiet fellow who only gardened before, threw himself to the ground in a heap and began to think, “I really should have kept my mouth shut, just smiled, maybe even waved, and then none of this would’ve happened. The stink certainly wouldn’t have been this bad. Man, I really messed up the order of things!” And as the pea-brained, almost hunchback, old dirty gardener began to condemn himself, he heard the voice of the Landlord say, “Stop it! You only thought to tell them the truth, which is what I told you and them to say. Now, stand and walk to the top of the hill and I will meet you. There is a lot to do because the wicked and the greedy have confused most the people with lies to destroy my land and each other, from the lowest valley to the highest hill.”

Well, the gardener’s day went from catastrophic to perfect in a wink, and he started walking up the hill with hands free and heart aflame. As others descended and drew close to walk up with him, he didn’t even mind the strong smell of salt at work behind them in the air, because he was looking forward to seeing Landlord face to face and learning of the things to come. In fact, his heart was so full of glee about those prospects that he didn’t have any room in there to wonder about what became of those three special folks who had carried all their own “weights” up and down the same path so many times just to melt and stink in the end.

Coda

A Psalm of David

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
    He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
    he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

“There’s been enough talk for one day…” and I’ve been ordered literally by counsel to read, circumabulate, and break chains, while withdrawing restraints and saying as little as possible for a time. But I will be out there every day in the streets and libraries tak’n her easy fer all y’all, making the rounds Ghost-mode engaged. I whole-heartedly encourage each of you to do the same, in his Way. I pray that all of you live as the One we trust does, clean your own house, while “suffering” to serve others in fear and rejoice in trembing. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your own way…” Then come what may, whenever or however it may… you will be in the best possible position, and I’ll be right there with you all in Spirit. That is God’s promise being fulfilled in us, his servants.

(The next post is planned for sunset March 26th… yes, I know and selah)

We had the previous post for today ready since early November. But on the night of December 19^th I was at home doing what I ought on a Sunday night, God came to me, and I was terrified. I looked into His eyes, they reflected what He wanted me to see, and all I could get out was “Lo-Ammi.” The term echoed in response.

I wondered, “why show me this? It’s nothing new, as old as the golden calf. I already turned from them and deny all their works and minions, like I would the devil himself. I’ve made covenant with my senses to only look to You. There is no wisdom in their wasteland Utopia. I don’t listen either, because they tell nothing but lies… yada, yada, yada…” Then, I simply repeated the question, still no response but “Lo-Ammi.” I thought I might try describing the acts “blasphemy, stealing from You… yada, yada, yada…” Still nothing but “Lo-Ammi” now echoing about me loudly.

So, I spoke of the results of such idolatry, “they now claim that their fetish of You wrote their new version of the Constitution, and insist for some queer stupidity that You select their elected officials (who are not kings or heredity leaders, they’re intended to be the complete opposite). You’ve turned them over to their own hands. So, they are senseless, hostile to their own history, without memory, even without human reason, and refuse Your accountability or any responsibilty for their works. They have defiled Your earth, so even it will vomit them out. These bestials cast lots with Bishop Ludwig Müller and Hanns Kerrl under the feet of Your judgment … yada, yada, yada…” Still no new response, so I began to think “I’ve done everything except scream out in the street.”

During the last litany of “yada, yada, yada” flowing like a pearl-stringing Pentecostal barker in a tent on fire… I thought to myself not about He or they, because their train refuses to turn, and His never turns in the order of things… Then a weird thing happened. I stopped asking the question. I even went quiet in my head, which is no mean feat. The concept or word we glossed last year, “apatheia,” gently came to light in me. I don’t know a better definition now, but I know how it feels: dutiful serenity. It was resolved in me that they won’t change nor could God’s will, but I should and could. The Encounter turned out to be a classic case of “when I think it’s about someone else, it’s about me…” at least in part, my part.

It wasn’t even about what I said or thought for righteousness’ sake and lamenting lost hope for them, which are bang, dead-on, judging by my Lord’s responses. It was, apparently, about the way I said it, and more importantly, not letting the bellicosity of tensions that surround righteous offense affect me like it had in the past, or as their festival in the grave perverts them to this day. It wasn’t a Christmas-y feeling as gifts go in the traditional sense. But I look forward to a richer Lent.

Another result and one of His responses is that now the last post of our second course is rescheduled for April 6, and then we make a hard turn. Hopefully there won’t be too many rewrites in adjustment. All that aside, today is still a special day for some folks. So, I’ll share three of my favorite things related to this day, if only to balance out an unwanted review of perversions with a preview of some Holy positivity.

St. Agnes’ Eve

Deep on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapour goes;
May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil’d and dark,
To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper’s earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be.
Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
Thro’ all yon starlight keen,
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.

He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
One sabbath deep and wide—
A light upon the shining sea—
The Bridegroom with his bride!

– Alfred Tennyson

(next post sunset April 8th)

Become aware of God, in whose presence you are while you pray . . . Then take a formula of prayer and recite it with perfect attention both to the words you are saying and to the Person to whom you are saying them. — John Climacus

Why do some persons ‘find’ God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us. & Nothing in or of this world measures up to the simple pleasure of experiencing the presence of God. ― Aiden Wilson Tozer  

He didn’t know how it was to be done but he felt quite sure now that he would be able to do it. The Lion drew a deep breath, stooped its head even lower and gave him a Lion’s kiss. And at once Digory felt that new strength and courage had gone into him. & We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. ― Clive Staples Lewis

Admission

The God of gods—it’s God! —speaks out, shouts, “Earth!”
    welcomes the sun in the east,
    farewells the disappearing sun in the west.
From the dazzle of Zion,
    God blazes into view.
Our God makes his entrance,
    he’s not shy in his coming.
Starbursts of fireworks precede him.

He summons heaven and earth as a jury,
    he’s taking his people to court:
“Round up my saints who swore
    on the Bible their loyalty to me.”

The whole cosmos attests to the fairness of this court,
    that here God is judge.

“Are you listening, dear people? I’m getting ready to speak;
    Israel, I’m about ready to bring you to trial.
This is God, your God,
    speaking to you.
I don’t find fault with your acts of worship,
    the frequent burnt sacrifices you offer.
But why should I want your blue-ribbon bull,
    or more and more goats from your herds?
Every creature in the forest is mine,
    the wild animals on all the mountains.
I know every mountain bird by name;
    the scampering field mice are my friends.
If I get hungry, do you think I’d tell you?
    All creation and its bounty are mine.
Do you think I feast on venison?
    or drink drafts of goats’ blood?
Spread for me a banquet of praise,
    serve High God a feast of kept promises,
And call for help when you’re in trouble—
    I’ll help you, and you’ll honor me.”

Next, God calls up the wicked:

“What are you up to, quoting my laws,
    talking like we are good friends?
You never answer the door when I call;
    you treat my words like garbage.
If you find a thief, you make him your buddy;
    adulterers are your friends of choice.
Your mouth drools filth;
    lying is a serious art form with you.
You stab your own brother in the back,
    rip off your little sister.
I kept a quiet patience while you did these things;
    you thought I went along with your game.
I’m calling you on the carpet, now,
    laying your wickedness out in plain sight.

“Time’s up for playing fast and
    loose with me.
I’m ready to pass sentence,
    and there’s no help in sight!
It’s the praising life that honors me.
    As soon as you set your foot on the Way,
I’ll show you my salvation.”

God Saves

Isaiah was that fella… but then… something happened. Sure, he had a righteous uprbringing and Godly education within an honorable and God-fearing family. So too, he had spent his adult life ceremonially interceding for others and occupationally concerned about the well-being of others. If anyone ever should’ve, or could’ve, been all chummy (familiar and unsurprised) by God, then Isaiah would be he. Sure, sure, he had great and meaningful visions at a pivotal time on God’s calendar… He even spoke for God to Their people!… But then… This happened when he went to the temple in the year King Uzziah died:

Isaiah saw the Master sitting on a throne—high, exalted!—and the train of his robes filled the Temple. Angel-seraphs hovered above him, each with six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew. And they called back and forth one to the other,

    Holy, Holy, Holy is God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
    His bright glory fills the whole earth.

The foundations trembled at the sound of the angel voices, and then the whole house filled with smoke. I said,

“Doom! It’s Doomsday!
    I’m as good as dead!
Every word I’ve ever spoken is tainted—
    blasphemous even!
And the people I live with talk the same way,
    using words that corrupt and desecrate.
And here I’ve looked God in the face!
    The King! God-of-the-Angel-Armies!”

Then one of the angel-seraphs flew to me. He held a live coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with the coal and said,

“Look. This coal has touched your lips.
    Gone your guilt,
    your sins wiped out.”
And then I heard the voice of the Master:
    “Whom shall I send?
    Who will go for us?”
I spoke up,
    “I’ll go.
    Send me!”

He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Listen hard, but you aren’t going to get it;
    look hard, but you won’t catch on.’
Make these people blockheads,
    with fingers in their ears and blindfolds on their eyes,
So they won’t see a thing,
    won’t hear a word,
So they won’t have a clue about what’s going on
    and, yes, so they won’t turn around and be made whole.”

Astonished, I said,
    “And Master, how long is this to go on?”
He said, “Until the cities are emptied out,
    not a soul left in the cities—
Houses empty of people,
    countryside empty of people.
Until I, God, get rid of everyone, sending them off,
    the land totally empty.
And even if some should survive, say a tenth,
    the devastation will start up again.
The country will look like pine and oak forest
    with every tree cut down—
Every tree a stump, a huge field of stumps.
    But there’s a holy seed in those stumps.”

Yup, that happened. All deference to Mister Tozer, but I am not sure that Isaiah “took pleasure” in God’s prescence, at least, not in that moment. Maybe later. But that whole nation thought Isaiah was ready or he wouldn’t be going into the Holy Place. I am sure Isaiah thought he was ready. But he wasn’t. To be fair, who could be? And to his credit he nailed the landing: his response was impeccable. ‘I am the absolute worst!’ Or that is to say: ‘Compared to God, I am the worst among the worst sinners.’ I believe that because the book says so (repeatedly) and that’s the reality of the situation when all else fades into nothingness. God consciousness in toto, unmitigated holy situational-awareness, in soul-scorching presence always evokes that exact response. That’s why, thankfully, 99.9999999% of the time, on Earth, God works around us most subtly, but NOT imperceptibly. He’ll circumambulate us just beyond the light-line of our campfire, the event horizon of our awareness. When He does come up close in stealthy ways, otherwise mysterious, all so that the willing and honest can raise their awareness, in exercises, to know Him better, always… most often, if only so that we won’t run around like our hair is on fire.   

This is why I will not or cannot suspend my disbelief with with the fictions of ear-tickling preachers, monetized prophets, and shade-tree theologs… especially on social media. I cannot wait for the day that I don’t have to sanitize my scrolls. Oh, brother… how they will tell the world lies, big and small, just for the smiling agreement of child-like believers and a little filthy lucre. They got it, but it is not The Weight. Yet they know exactly what’s what, so everyone should believe, do, or not do such and such. They say they’re all high and lifted up, already, but they are not prepared soon to reap what they’ve sown for so long. It is just as a great poet penned:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Also, in person, I cannot tell you how many “prophets” and “apostles” I’ve met, even a “numinous prince” who tried to “correct and edify” me by subscribing me to his news letter (hello low-rent devil, proclaiming your inventive title up front told me everything that I’ll ever need to know about you). But because they have told me they were I don’t believe them. Worse, I’m dubious of the outcome when they finally have their “Isaiah moment,” in reality. They say they’re on Fire, but it is just their pants. They say they’re close to God, but it is just inflated ego. I don’t want to know them. I won’t ever know them again. You cannot trust their mouths. Conversely, I’ve met some real messengers sent by God with the Gospel fruits self-evident in their work, such astonishing fruits of Love, but none of them ever pronounced it up front… not one, not once, not to me. I good cry just thinking about them. I can’t wait to know them better. I can’t tell how many of them I missed at first, or all together. I had to be in fit Spiritual condition, pay close attention, and interact with them a bit. Mostly, I worked along side and only talked if necessary. You can trust their hands and feet. By their fruits, I want to know a whole and holy people like them. It seems to be something to live and die for…

I won’t labor on too much with “the suffering servant Aye,” “the prince of prophets,” because we’ll be using him much more soon. But I believe there are few relevant points to assist a more informed, contextual reading of the works attributed to him concerning our topic, consciousness of God and his Domain. First, over the centuries Israel had become increasingly idolatrous, despite occasional repentance and periodic, decent leadership. There are hundereds of divine offenses listed across the Oracles. Old and new informed commentaries all stress slightly different issues, but most can be boiled down for ease of understanding.

Isaiah notes that God’s people grew mainly in pious religiosity, wealth, and knowledge. In short, they had imprisoned themselves with delusional promises and fooled only themselves with fallacious motives, which were contrary to the Law and the prophets, God’s desire. That alone is enough to tempt and provoke God. But wait there’s more… they had committed themselves to, and derived their “glory” from worldly systems of domination, which included, but were not limited to: lying and killing to maintain a self-proclaimed status of privilege, blaming the poor, rejecting the immigrant, and colluding with corrupt leaders to put a thumb on the scales of justice in that day. Most, if not all, of that is the work of Satan’s reknowned tri-part temptations taking up residence in their hard hearts, and Wisdom says the last offense alone is enough for God to feel hatred toward the offenders. So dear reader, be thee friend or foe, I will say the same thing to both… that over-truncated list is more than enough to make God white-hot with anger.

So too, even when confronted with their sins, they refused to confess, let alone change. This led to the best of them claiming victimhood or declaring pseudo-righteousness supported by their own speculative ideas grown and tended over centuries of apostasy, and the worst blamed God for their problems and wondered why he didn’t give them everything they wanted. In short, they rejected the way of God-consciousness and instead attempted to impose their own consciousness and desires on others. And they did so with a great deal of success for a relatively long time. So, finally, God allowed them to manifest the captivity that they had been building up for themselves a long time.

For a solution, Isaiah got a divine face-full of Reality and did an awesome “about-face.” His formula for reconciliation with God and others was not a long nor an elaborate list. First, he was resolute that God was not a co-dependent. God would help them, but they needed to do their part as His servant. Second, as scary as it is, God’s reconciliation often comes through material confrontation. Divine wholeness is imparted after actual restitution, never after increasing repression and vengeance. If they wanted to make it worse, then more lip-service and repetitive religio-political practice would certainly do that toot sweet. Third, for any of that to be possible, they had to become accountable and quit blaming others, even delusional foes. They saw their day’s version of Antifa everywhere too, like drunks running from imagined devils. Lastly, after a prescribed duration of time, came the Divine Promise, which is the only source of honest hope, as true today as it was back then. The reality of Truth, never their proclaimed version of truth, would bring God’s whole and real healing: shalom. They need not be perfect. They only needed to take the initial steps, then ultimately walkout an amended lifestyle, as God’s power would deliver them and bring them Home. There are infinite facets to God’s consciousness that all his children should bear. But for Isaiah those were themes that recurred throughout his ministry.

The “only” real problem for Isaiah? He had to watch it all happen, like a lone radar signaling a maelstrom incoming from the sea while the “beloved” made men of straw and a religion of cards on the beach. It’s a suffering service much worse than a daily death, for a long time. Jesus wept and lamented for the same reason. Isaiah knew many of the sufferings of Jesus centuries before our Lord’s earthly arrival. You see, that’s the kind of phenomena, lived and textual, that inspires and encourages me despite the ship wreck of human history. So, put a bookmark in Isaiah’s works as will be back in it next time. And I humbly suggest, in full view of God’s unchanging ways and mercy, perhaps Isaiah’s call and directions might be relevant for some of us today. Not to put too fine an edge on my point, but these motifs were also adopted by my Lord for his own theology, ministry, and practice. May we turn to him now.            

The King and His Domain

“The world is crowded with” the King’s Domain:

When Jesus got word that John had been arrested, he returned to Galilee. He moved from his hometown, Nazareth, to the lakeside village Capernaum, nestled at the base of the Zebulun and Naphtali hills. This move completed Isaiah’s revelation:

Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
    road to the sea, over Jordan,
    Galilee, crossroads for the nations.
People sitting out their lives in the dark
    saw a huge light;
Sitting in that dark, dark country of death,
    they watched the sun come up.

This Isaiah-prophesied revelation came to life in Galilee the moment Jesus started preaching. He picked up where John left off: “Change your life. God’s kingdom is here.”

Also, the Prince of Peace’s earliest citation of a prophet in a public act was a very conscious reading form the prince of the prophets:

 He came to Nazareth where he had been raised. As he always did on the Sabbath, he went to the meeting place. When he stood up to read, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll, he found the place where it was written,

God’s Spirit is on me;
    he’s chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
    recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
    to announce, “This is God’s time to shine!”

He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the place was on him, intent. Then he started in, “You’ve just heard Scripture make history. It came true just now in this place.

Last year we discussed the fact that the first and last public proclamations of our Lord concernced repentance. It seems that both Isaiah and Jesus were more consciously aware of repentence than any other exercise of active belief. I only add now that repentance is the entree to the Light and his Domain of Light… So, have I talked about participatory and real change too much? Maybe, but, no. “May it never be!”

“Hang tight and just believe right! Then one day, after you die, you’ll be in heaven.” This is clearly not what Jesus, the Law, nor the Prophets, nor even the histories teach. The first few generations of Jesus’ followers wouldn’t have understood that abomination, and you really got to consistently over-leverage your reading of Paul or any other New Testament writings to get there. Historically that way of thinking is the amalgam of gentile fairytales, heaven only after you die… doesn’t exist in scripture. Worldly philosophies first infected the church a couple of centuries later and still later it was codified by state-church in order to lead people down the brimstone path to their earthly rule, not service, while they yet breathed. Trust me all those petty tyrants are singing a different tune now, but after seeing Perfect Justice once, you won’t stay angry at them either. People of the Way, Jesus followers worked on heaven from wherever they stood to wherever they went. To believe the later story about heaven is to call Jesus a liar and imply his earthly ministry was a failure. Too much? Don’t worry, that’s a dragon for us to tame or slay later, just next year I believe. Just pray and keep an open mind.

For now, follow God’s Word and do what pleases our Father. If that ain’t heaven I don’t know what is. What pleases a father most?… Don’t see it? I am sorry but that’s a lack of faithfulness is what our sources call blindness, or some of them might say the wrong kind of faith. Follow and more will always be revealed later. The secret? A spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down? Live and die as King Jesus and then you’re part of the revelation of his Kingdom for others too! But you might be the last to know it; only remember it isn’t about you, not anymore. I mean even devils know God and believe. Their fault? They want what they want, not what God wants. They’re disobedient at root, so they cannot be part of Heaven anymore or the new Earth. It is here now, and after the grave you can rise or keep falling, to wherever you’re assigned. The project is now, always has been, not in a future that we’re clearly told not to take for granted. Jesus is the first-born of the new crewtion expanding in all directions from him through us to others, by the power of the Spirit. It’s divine design that’s too simple for many. But if you’re still a doubting Thomas, I understand why. So, let’s go to a report that every Sunday school kid knows, but in the teaching, they really need to keep reading to hear Jesus’ whole message concerning his conscious, always present, rule and realm:

 “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men and women everywhere ran for the darkness. They went for the darkness because they were not really interested in pleasing God. Everyone who makes a practice of doing evil, addicted to denial and illusion, hates God-light and won’t come near it, fearing a painful exposure. But anyone working and living in truth and reality welcomes God-light so the work can be seen for the God-work it is.”

Belief and practice are bound by the Word’s divine mandate. To the minds of the biblical authors, from the table of contents to maps, if you separate them, then you are a wicked schizoid: double-minded, a hypocrite, etc. Hint, let the text do the teaching instead of bias confirmation and keep reading… any good scribe knows that. Also, notice how the paraphraser brings in the Isaianic indictments, symptoms of idolatry — refusal to come clean, denial, and delusion. Like I said, I can always tell an idolater, I just can’t tell them much. Also, Isaiah’s complete commitment to pleasing God is also foregrounded by Jesus. Lastly, even the worst idolater who’s always using the Lord’s name vainly should take note, shed a scale or two, when the King says, ‘this is your crisis!’

Speaking of a crisis of consciousness, choosing your own futile dreams about heaven and it’s Sovereign instead of what Jesus says about himself and his coming will always put you in peril. For if you do, then you may just miss a face-full of God, even if he is right in front of you:      

Jesus, grilled by the Pharisees on when the kingdom of God would come, answered, “The kingdom of God doesn’t come by counting the days on the calendar. Nor when someone says, ‘Look here!’ or, ‘There it is!’ And why? Because God’s kingdom is already among you.”

He went on to say to his disciples, “The days are coming when you are going to be desperately homesick for just a glimpse of one of the days of the Son of Man, and you won’t see a thing. And they’ll say to you, ‘Look over there!’ or, ‘Look here!’ Don’t fall for any of that nonsense. The arrival of the Son of Man is not something you go out to see. He simply comes.

It has been my experience that the churches who stress the timing and detailed description of Jesus or Heaven in the image of their own vain imagination of Messianic necessities to serve themselves… tend to be closer to indoctrination camps or social clubs. Service oriented churches are angelic habitats. If you really want to find God or live-in heaven now, then pick up your cross and follow Jesus to serve Jesus.

Speaking of lawyerly masters, the same holds true in the academies and seminaries where I’ve been able to have much better conversations with scribes and seminarians. While I’ve never claimed to be a good student, I have spent a minute in those places. And for all that human knowledge I’ve found tons of theories and arguments, many that I adore, but precious little about the reality of God’s coming Kingdom. And, to date, I haven’t found much help with the issue I’ve been trying to get my head around the past year: what does it mean for there to be no blood on the Bema Seat or the Lamb for the first time in 5000 years? I just checked yesterday, so apparently that’s the new “divine state of play.” I am less concerned but it still worries me, despite the reassurance of “all is well, keep it up.”  Omit that shortcoming, I have had the repeated pleasure of passing time with some of the finest teachers and most godly folks you could ever shake a pen at, but still, trying to experience the real King and the reality of our Kingdom… well, apart from the personal testimonies of those who’ve gone out and done the work (there are so many!) … I’d compare it to attempting to learn forestry at a lumber yard. Because Jesus himself says:

“When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

“Then he will turn to the ‘goats,’ the ones on his left, and say, ‘Get out, worthless goats! You’re good for nothing but the fires of hell. And why? Because—

I was hungry and you gave me no meal,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
I was homeless and you gave me no bed,
I was shivering and you gave me no clothes,
Sick and in prison, and you never visited.’

“Then those ‘goats’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’

“He will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’

“Then those ‘goats’ will be herded to their eternal doom, but the ‘sheep’ to their eternal reward.”

If the carrot don’t lure you then the stick will move you. It is a fact on every level. It’s the same charge Isaiah repeated time and time again. Does Jesus lay down the Law to talk about doctrines, icons, translations, manners, theories of sin, form of water baptism, using instruments in worship, minding other people’s business for them, or any of the other superfluous skubalon that “real” Christians have killed others over for the better part of two millennia… and still seek to defame and marginalize, in every possible way, today, here? No, he did not, and he will not! Pay heed to the Source of your acquittal. Don’t look at other people, keep your eyes on “the man in the mirror” and cut out the shit, even if it’s your right hand. I have trudged your halls and even I know your vapors. “Doom” says Isaiah, “doom” says Jesus, so says I.

Yikes and egads… can one read the prophets too much? I don’t know, but I do know Jesus and Isaiah offered very simple solutions for even the most complex of people, if they honestly love Jesus. Then c’mon man. Be more conscious of God’s desires, not yours, to become a member of the family? Simple:    

“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.

“You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you.

“But remember the root command: Love one another…”

The parable too dark? The directions not to your taste? You prefer a “newer model” of “old-time” Christian religion? Yes, yes, peace for I too have seen Holy seed even the most wicked generation, so here is one for the road. It cannot get any simpler than the unique child of God bearing witness:

While he was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers showed up. They were outside trying to get a message to him. Someone told Jesus, “Your mother and brothers are out here, wanting to speak with you.”

Jesus didn’t respond directly, but said, “Who do you think my mother and brothers are?” He then stretched out his hand toward his disciples. “Look closely. These are my mother and brothers. Obedience is thicker than blood. The person who obeys my heavenly Father’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

If that’s still too scary, then perhaps try resting with a latter day spiritual giant of smallness, Thomas Merton, who said:

“The will of God is not a ‘fate’ to which we must submit, but a creative act in our life that produces something absolutely new, something hitherto unforseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation consists not only in conforming to external laws, but in operating our wills to this mutually creative act.”

Co-creators and kinetic agents, not little gods nor static sponges, is Kingdom living? Sign me up, as long as God does the work that I cannot. He does, and what’s more, he puts up with me. I do not know God’s reward for my puny sacrifices, lived or volitional, but I do know, beyond a shadow of a demon, engaging the will of God’s consciousness with the best, and worse, of my obedience is the greatest liberty I will ever know on either side of the grave. He asks for my best, but even when I gave him my worst, as long as I kept to stepping, the Spirit always meets me there, on the rising road, even when I was serving in a pit, an actual grave too (no allegory for me, that’s how stupid I am). I learned that time and again, hard ways and easy ways. It is our solemn promise.

What is Near but Falls Away

I know that’s a face-full already but we still got a little more to cover today. God wanted me to stress how connected we are, whether we want to be or not. Your spiritual sickness infects others around you and the body of Christ on-the-whole. The sickness is not a desirable condition for his Domain and Rule. This is the Reality, the 411 of “this place,” today and forever more:

And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion.

But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.

What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.

I wanted to delay this point, because today, I know that some among you will twist out part of this as a perverse banner to gossip about others, blame them, and try to control their business. My desire was declined. Even if it is too early in your rescue, God is most compassionate about others. So pay heed with pains. God cares. At best that twist is an immature reading and at worst it’s an eternally fatal act for you and those you infect likewise. God says, “do that and you will die.” So let’s read it and live it as the author intended it. It is a command for ongoing honest and thorough accountability for the body as a whole, and yourself, first and foremost, not other people. Let God’s conscious in you attract others when they are ready. DO NOT drive others farther into darkness or you will be judged to have no light in you. You’ll receive a judgment worse than unrepentant sinners get. Not even you can be acquitted or walk in the Light if you live an unprincipled life, even Calvin calls such people reprobates. Nuff said…

Now, let’s do what I like and expand our view a bit to know the actual reality of God and his Realm as present here and now, always has been, always will be.

Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it! Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you. Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband. God draws a firm line against casual and illicit sex.

I beg of you. Keep the Lord’s last admonishment at hand here too, and his desire to work through us to love and heal the vicitims and the sin-bruised foremost in your minds, hearts, and hands. God loves being with us, please don’t stay at tempting Him that other way.

Now something I really, really, really love! Heaven is NOT only about now or its natives… It is an actual place, in actual space, that science is just now discovering!

I started peering into that lakeside decades ago and “I” really wanted to be among the first to prove it… but God formed me with different designs. When the vision first landed on me, I felt like Digory being kissed by Aslan! You talk about inspiration to commitment, “that me” made “this me” look like Eeyore the Donkey.

I’d love to spend a few years sharing with you about stochastically nested realities, non-linear tensor math, and supra mechanics to better explain… but I was admonished. And we don’t want any of the egotism of flat-earthers or regressive geo-centrists (they are all-the-rage again for people who cannot handle reality honestly or responsibly), that’s less God-conscious, not more.

So I won’t overelaborate here… just humbly submit: if it’s the height of human ignorance and arrogance to put God in a box, as most do, then it is much more ridiculous to put bounds on His Domain. And why has it always been done most often by those who proclaim to be closest to Him? That experience has been indelibly impressed on me by Him time and again, be it seminary, church, or academy. Heaven is not just a Who but it’s an immediate where, both here and there, it’s all one, all connected, Jesus says so. My experience in Christ is that the 11 “stable dimensions” plus time (differentially dilated across episodic durations) gets one to the Middle-ground. Above that our learn-ed follow is correct, above that “things” do become exponentially unstable, consciousness and souls and the native creatures shimmy with increasing ferocity… You think it will end you, until you reach the 30th-32nd where all things are safe as houses. If the only One in the 33rd calls you up, the One who designed and holds all creation together, then it’s not that bad… To me it was somewhat like I imagine breaking the sound barrier is… really shaky, boom, and then smooth sailing. But to prove it…the math isn’t there yet, but one day it will. So perhaps, in the meantime, it may be best to instruct: “Hey, Digory let the Lion draw breath and give you a kiss!”

I think I did well there, it’s a paragraph that would make Hemmingway blush but Faulkner would scoff at its brevity. Now to close out with the ditty I put off for too long, the most painful part.  

“They call me Ishmael,” “but that ain’t no matter.” 1.0

I was homesick the day I was born. So, God came to me early in the springtime of my youth. It was much later that authorities appointed over me, by God, tried their damnedest to make me ashamed of my relationship to Him. My earliest memories of His consciousness were instructive conversations about the way water flowed and how creatures live in it, and how all things have hidden within themselves orders and a name signed by Him before the half-light of our sins occulted His divine purpose in all things. This story, vignette really, was reaffirmed by mother in some of her last words to me, before she died suddenly of a broken heart. This is not easy to write out, but you know why I am.    

My consciousness with God has not always been like it is today, but it did begin very early on. It grew within me despite all my kicking and screaming following behind for pity’s sake. I confess, in part, it was because I wanted to be like what other people wanted me to be. But God wouldn’t abide their causes… He never will. So, the process has often been uneasy but it has always been simple, and at this point I am resigned to the fact it will never end, not even after death. For, now, death’s only real pain comes to me in watching those that I love die, as now, I am advanced in years to an age I never thought I’d reach, for a varied assortment of reasons. Comparing me only to myself in the past, I can confirm that our relationship has never been better or closer, and so too I’ve never been happier with my life in this world than I am today, despite the increasing darkness adored and promoted by so many who claim to love the Light. I fear for them, but I am finally free from their service. So I hope, and I treasure each day because I know it can all end in a flash. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen too much.

What we talk about, how we communicate, and the topics of the discussions have all changed dramatically. But it all began, as it should, where De Leon ends at a waterway, Sims Bayou to be precise. It was a much wilder spot back then; it used to twist and turn at various depths and bends, with trees and thick underbrushed growing out over the water in places. It was the first home my father built for us… we had many later. My mother must’ve had a great deal of trust to allow me to play all day at the edge and in the water. Although I clearly remember seeing her face appear from time to time over the crest of the riverbank, at a distance that seemed to me to be miles above at the time.

His was and is the kindest and calmest voice I’ll ever know. He would talk to me about things that I later learned were foundational concepts in math, physics, and even biology. So too they are many fundamental skills that I rely on to this day when sight casting for redfish in Espiritu Santo. That’s why I go there, for a short reset, not necessarily catch fish. But at the time I just looked forward to taking to Him every day. At the end of the day, I would tell my father what God showed me. Sometimes he smiled and at other times he seemed a bit bothered by what I passed on to him. Mom asked me once, only once, who I was talking to, and she said I reported like a flash, “God, just God.”

She never asked again. But it may have concerned my parents a bit because soon after, they wanted to put me in preschool, perhaps in a hope to have my “imaginary friend” disappear. I think that’s where my core fear, sometimes hate, of a faceless crowd came from. No worries, I am mostly over that now, mostly. But at the time, within the first couple of weeks, my stress and anxiety got so bad that as soon as I was dropped off, I would demand to go into the nap room by myself and cry myself to sleep. I believe that’s where and how I learned to pray and seek his Voice. I told anyone who would listen that I didn’t want to know those people, that wanted to go back and play on the bayou with God.

The accurate reports of my behavior must’ve heightened my parents concern a bit more, because a few weeks later they took me to hospital to get my hearing checked. I picked up everyone’s concern so much that I sweat like nobody’s business and couldn’t operate the adult size stick and button indicator in the sound booth. So, we went to hand signals. I liked that. And physically, my hearing was normal, very good in point of fact. I just didn’t care what most people had to say.

Next came what I believe was my first psychiatric evaluation (taken or given). It was the first time I ever had anyone besides my parents ask me about “the voice in my head.” I remember very little but I do remember him asking me who’s voice it was. I said “God,” with some frustration as if my mother would have lied to him… as if! The next part is all that I remember clearly because God told me exactly what to do next. The doctor asked what God told me to do and what he was like. So, God told me to shut up (still the hardest thing for me to do), walk around the desk and give the doctor a hug. I know I did because I remember how he stank of cigarettes. We talked on for a bit and I feel like I enjoyed the discussion. But it must of not been too important because I don’t remember any of the words.

This is the part my mother repeated back to me just before she went to hospital and died in the terrible spring of 2003. Before work I sat on the edge of the bed beside her, she laid beside my father, who was in the last stages of early onset Alzheimer’s. We spoke of the events above, and she said “don’t ever let go of God’s voice, no matter what happens.” I reminded her of something horrifying that I experienced a few years earlier in a dry and hopeless place. My point to her is the point God made to all the witnesses at hand, if I could have, then I would have then. It was the last time I ever saw her smile.

I asked when was the last time she worried about me hearing his voice. She said that she stopped the day we left that doctor’s office. She said that when she asked the doctor what it was wrong with me or if she should worry. He replied to her, “no-thing, not a single thing, and he thought they might need to worry… but not about that boy.” That was the last time she saw me smile and she grabbed my arm and almost wept. I hope with some pride, because that the good doctor also told her that he left our meeting wanting to know my God more than he wanted to know his own. Mom and I kissed and said goodbye then, I was late for “an important meeting.” As I walked out, that Voice said, “It is time to start letting go of them,” as I walked out the front door wearing the heaviest suit I’ll ever own. I never saw her conscious again, except when they briefly surfaced her from an induced coma to look into my father’s eyes one last time. It was the only time that I ever felt like I felt like an intruder in their lives.

To this day I really hope it was the same God, mine and the good doc’s. I’ve always had good luck with doctors. Maybe he might have thought our “Gods” were different because I didn’t use the name Jesus or articulate a doctrine of some sort. But that’s on him, because even at the age of 4 I knew that if Jesus didn’t create and sustain creation, then no one did…. If for no other reason than Jesus is the only person that I’ll ever know without a seeming beginning or end, no matter who comes or goes, no matter who lives or dies, or no matter who is acquitted or who ain’t.

It seems now, as it might have then, that all I need do is learn to accept things otherwise unconscionable to me, to let the river flow where it might, especially when it goes where I know not. I learned not to want the things conscionable to me, my futile dreams of God I let go. I want God’s consciousness to ever expand in me. Because that is how I grow in him and his new creation fills me. I then go forth with increasing awe in spite of all the novel, daily terrors. Despite his great gift, I too must confess my sin of occasionally wanting to hold on to people and things that God now holds alone, just over the boarder line and above the water. Today, if I focus in good Spiritual fitness, at times it seems I can make out some of their shapes and forms, even hear there voices again. I want to rise to meet them so, so badly. Most of my life, just for once, I wanted to go home… and stay home. Come to find out, as God revealed more of His and Himself to me, I already am and home comes to me.

Invitaion to Blessing

A last little exercise for better Spiritual fitness. Try praying for the person you hate most, that is to say the person or people you might abuse otherwise, until you don’t hate them anymore. Pray for them to receive everything God wants for them and everything they ever wanted and everything you ever wanted. Do it for weeks and months, if you can, it is a game-changer and soul-saver. If that’s too hard, then try number two on your list, and so on.

Or if that’s too advanced, then try wearing out this prayer instead of people you love with your same old skubalon. It is traditionally attributed to Mister Reinhold Niebuhr and it is a tonic for the conscious:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

You’re blessed when you stay on course,
    walking steadily on the road revealed by God.
You’re blessed when you follow his directions,
    doing your best to find him.
That’s right—you don’t go off on your own;
    you walk straight along the road he set.
You, God, prescribed the right way to live;
    now you expect us to live it.
Oh, that my steps might be steady,
    keeping to the course you set;
Then I’d never have any regrets
    in comparing my life with your counsel.
I thank you for speaking straight from your heart;
    I learn the pattern of your righteous ways.
I’m going to do what you tell me to do;
    don’t ever walk off and leave me.

How can a young person live a clean life?
    By carefully reading the map of your Word.
I’m single-minded in pursuit of you;
    don’t let me miss the road signs you’ve posted.
I’ve banked your promises in the vault of my heart
    so I won’t sin myself bankrupt.
Be blessed, God;
    train me in your ways of wise living.
I’ll transfer to my lips
    all the counsel that comes from your mouth;
I delight far more in what you tell me about living
    than in gathering a pile of riches.
I ponder every morsel of wisdom from you,
    I attentively watch how you’ve done it.
I relish everything you’ve told me of life,
    I won’t forget a word of it.

Be generous with me and I’ll live a full life;
    not for a minute will I take my eyes off your road.
Open my eyes so I can see
    what you show me of your miracle-wonders.
I’m a stranger in these parts;
    give me clear directions.
My soul is starved and hungry, ravenous!—
    insatiable for your nourishing commands.
And those who think they know so much,
    ignoring everything you tell them—let them have it!
Don’t let them mock and humiliate me;
    I’ve been careful to do just what you said.
While bad neighbors maliciously gossip about me,
    I’m absorbed in pondering your wise counsel.
Yes, your sayings on life are what give me delight;
    I listen to them as to good neighbors!

I’m feeling terrible—I couldn’t feel worse!
    Get me on my feet again. You promised, remember?
When I told my story, you responded;
    train me well in your deep wisdom.
Help me understand these things inside and out
    so I can ponder your miracle-wonders.
My sad life’s dilapidated, a falling-down barn;
    build me up again by your Word.
Barricade the road that goes Nowhere;
    grace me with your clear revelation.
I choose the true road to Somewhere,
    I post your road signs at every curve and corner.
I grasp and cling to whatever you tell me;
    God, don’t let me down!
I’ll run the course you lay out for me
    if you’ll just show me how.

God, teach me lessons for living
    so I can stay the course.
Give me insight so I can do what you tell me—
    my whole life one long, obedient response.
Guide me down the road of your commandments;
    I love traveling this freeway!
Give me an appetite for your words of wisdom,
    and not for piling up loot.
Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets,
    invigorate me on the pilgrim way.
Affirm your promises to me—
    promises made to all who fear you.
Deflect the harsh words of my critics—
    but what you say is always so good.
See how hungry I am for your counsel;
    preserve my life through your righteous ways!

Let your love, God, shape my life
    with salvation, exactly as you promised;
Then I’ll be able to stand up to mockery
    because I trusted your Word.
Don’t ever deprive me of truth, not ever—
    your commandments are what I depend on.
Oh, I’ll guard with my life what you’ve revealed to me,
    guard it now, guard it ever;
And I’ll stride freely through wide open spaces
    as I look for your truth and your wisdom;
Then I’ll tell the world what I find,
    speak out boldly in public, unembarrassed.
I cherish your commandments—oh, how I love them!—
    relishing every fragment of your counsel.

Remember what you said to me, your servant—
    I hang on to these words for dear life!
These words hold me up in bad times;
    yes, your promises rejuvenate me.
The haters hate me without mercy,
    but I don’t budge from your revelation.
I watch for your ancient landmark words,
    and know I’m on the right track.
But when I see the wicked ignore your directions,
    I’m beside myself with anger.
I set your instructions to music
    and sing them as I walk this pilgrim way.
I meditate on your name all night, God,
    treasuring your revelation, O God.
Still, I walk through a rain of derision
    because I live by your Word and counsel.

Because you have satisfied me, God, I promise
    to do everything you say.
I beg you from the bottom of my heart: smile,
    be gracious to me just as you promised.
When I took a long, careful look at your ways,
    I got my feet back on the trail you blazed.
I was up at once, didn’t drag my feet,
    was quick to follow your orders.
The wicked hemmed me in—there was no way out—
    but not for a minute did I forget your plan for me.
I get up in the middle of the night to thank you;
    your decisions are so right, so true—I can’t wait till morning!
I’m a friend and companion of all who fear you,
    of those committed to living by your rules.
Your love, God, fills the earth!
    Train me to live by your counsel.

Be good to your servant, God;
    be as good as your Word.
Train me in good common sense;
    I’m thoroughly committed to living your way.
Before I learned to answer you, I wandered all over the place,
    but now I’m in step with your Word.
You are good, and the source of good;
    train me in your goodness.
The godless spread lies about me,
    but I focus my attention on what you are saying;
They’re bland as a bucket of lard,
    while I dance to the tune of your revelation.
My troubles turned out all for the best—
    they forced me to learn from your textbook.
Truth from your mouth means more to me
    than striking it rich in a gold mine.

With your very own hands you formed me;
    now breathe your wisdom over me so I can understand you.
When they see me waiting, expecting your Word,
    those who fear you will take heart and be glad.
I can see now, God, that your decisions are right;
    your testing has taught me what’s true and right.
Oh, love me—and right now!—hold me tight!
    just the way you promised.
Now comfort me so I can live, really live;
    your revelation is the tune I dance to.
Let the fast-talking tricksters be exposed as frauds;
    they tried to sell me a bill of goods,
    but I kept my mind fixed on your counsel.
Let those who fear you turn to me
    for evidence of your wise guidance.
And let me live whole and holy, soul and body,
    so I can always walk with my head held high.

I’m homesick—longing for your salvation;
    I’m waiting for your word of hope.
My eyes grow heavy watching for some sign of your promise;
    how long must I wait for your comfort?
There’s smoke in my eyes—they burn and water,
    but I keep a steady gaze on the instructions you post.
How long do I have to put up with all this?
    How long till you haul my tormentors into court?
The arrogant godless try to throw me off track,
    ignorant as they are of God and his ways.
Everything you command is a sure thing,
    but they harass me with lies. Help!
They’ve pushed and pushed—they never let up—
    but I haven’t relaxed my grip on your counsel.
In your great love revive me
    so I can alertly obey your every word.

What you say goes, God,
    and stays, as permanent as the heavens.
Your truth never goes out of fashion;
    it’s as relevant as the earth when the sun comes up.
Your Word and truth are dependable as ever;
    that’s what you ordered—you set the earth going.
If your revelation hadn’t delighted me so,
    I would have given up when the hard times came.
But I’ll never forget the advice you gave me;
    you saved my life with those wise words.
Save me! I’m all yours.
    I look high and low for your words of wisdom.
The wicked lie in ambush to destroy me,
    but I’m only concerned with your plans for me.
I see the limits to everything human,
    but the horizons can’t contain your commands!

Oh, how I love all you’ve revealed;
    I reverently ponder it all the day long.
Your commands give me an edge on my enemies;
    they never become obsolete.
I’ve even become smarter than my teachers
    since I’ve pondered and absorbed your counsel.
I’ve become wiser than the wise old sages
    simply by doing what you tell me.
I watch my step, avoiding the ditches and ruts of evil
    so I can spend all my time keeping your Word.
I never make detours from the route you laid out;
    you gave me such good directions.
Your words are so choice, so tasty;
    I prefer them to the best home cooking.
With your instruction, I understand life;
    that’s why I hate false propaganda.

By your words I can see where I’m going;
    they throw a beam of light on my dark path.
I’ve committed myself and I’ll never turn back
    from living by your righteous order.
Everything’s falling apart on me, God;
    put me together again with your Word.
Adorn me with your finest sayings, God;
    teach me your holy rules.
My life is as close as my own hands,
    but I don’t forget what you have revealed.
The wicked do their best to throw me off track,
    but I don’t swerve an inch from your course.
I inherited your book on living; it’s mine forever—
    what a gift! And how happy it makes me!
I concentrate on doing exactly what you say—
    I always have and always will.

I hate the two-faced,
    but I love your clear-cut revelation.
You’re my place of quiet retreat;
    I wait for your Word to renew me.
Get out of my life, evildoers,
    so I can keep my God’s commands.
Take my side as you promised; I’ll live then for sure.
    Don’t disappoint all my grand hopes.
Stick with me and I’ll be all right;
    I’ll give total allegiance to your definitions of life.
Expose all who drift away from your sayings;
    their casual idolatry is lethal.
You reject earth’s wicked as so much rubbish;
    therefore I lovingly embrace everything you say.
I shiver in awe before you;
    your decisions leave me speechless with reverence.

I stood up for justice and the right;
    don’t leave me to the mercy of my oppressors.
Take the side of your servant, good God;
    don’t let the godless take advantage of me.
I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, waiting for you
    to keep your promise to set everything right.
Let your love dictate how you deal with me;
    teach me from your textbook on life.
I’m your servant—help me understand what that means,
    the inner meaning of your instructions.
It’s time to act, God;
    they’ve made a shambles of your revelation!
Yea-Saying God, I love what you command,
    I love it better than gold and gemstones;
Yea-Saying God, I honor everything you tell me,
    I despise every deceitful detour.

Every word you give me is a miracle word—
    how could I help but obey?
Break open your words, let the light shine out,
    let ordinary people see the meaning.
Mouth open and panting,
    I wanted your commands more than anything.
Turn my way, look kindly on me,
    as you always do to those who personally love you.
Steady my steps with your Word of promise
    so nothing malign gets the better of me.
Rescue me from the grip of bad men and women
    so I can live life your way.
Smile on me, your servant;
    teach me the right way to live.
I cry rivers of tears
    because nobody’s living by your book!

You are right and you do right, God;
    your decisions are right on target.
You rightly instruct us in how to live
    ever faithful to you.
My rivals nearly did me in,
    they persistently ignored your commandments.
Your promise has been tested through and through,
    and I, your servant, love it dearly.
I’m too young to be important,
    but I don’t forget what you tell me.
Your righteousness is eternally right,
    your revelation is the only truth.
Even though troubles came down on me hard,
    your commands always gave me delight.
The way you tell me to live is always right;
    help me understand it so I can live to the fullest.

I call out at the top of my lungs,
    “God! Answer! I’ll do whatever you say.”
I called to you, “Save me
    so I can carry out all your instructions.”
I was up before sunrise,
    crying for help, hoping for a word from you.
I stayed awake all night,
    prayerfully pondering your promise.
In your love, listen to me;
    in your justice, God, keep me alive.
As those out to get me come closer and closer,
    they go farther and farther from the truth you reveal;
But you’re the closest of all to me, God,
    and all your judgments true.
I’ve known all along from the evidence of your words
    that you meant them to last forever.

Take a good look at my trouble, and help me—
    I haven’t forgotten your revelation.
Take my side and get me out of this;
    give me back my life, just as you promised.
“Salvation” is only gibberish to the wicked
    because they’ve never looked it up in your dictionary.
Your mercies, God, run into the billions;
    following your guidelines, revive me.
My antagonists are too many to count,
    but I don’t swerve from the directions you gave.
I took one look at the quitters and was filled with loathing;
    they walked away from your promises so casually!
Take note of how I love what you tell me;
    out of your life of love, prolong my life.
Your words all add up to the sum total: Truth.
    Your righteous decisions are eternal.

I’ve been slandered unmercifully by the politicians,
    but my awe at your words keeps me stable.
I’m ecstatic over what you say,
    like one who strikes it rich.
I hate lies—can’t stand them!—
    but I love what you have revealed.
Seven times each day I stop and shout praises
    for the way you keep everything running right.
For those who love what you reveal, everything fits—
    no stumbling around in the dark for them.
I wait expectantly for your salvation;
    God, I do what you tell me.
My soul guards and keeps all your instructions—
    oh, how much I love them!
I follow your directions, abide by your counsel;
    my life’s an open book before you.

Let my cry come right into your presence, God;
    provide me with the insight that comes only from your Word.
Give my request your personal attention,
    rescue me on the terms of your promise.
Let praise cascade off my lips;
    after all, you’ve taught me the truth about life!
And let your promises ring from my tongue;
    every order you’ve given is right.
Put your hand out and steady me
    since I’ve chosen to live by your counsel.
I’m homesick, God, for your salvation;
    I love it when you show yourself!
Invigorate my soul so I can praise you well,
    use your decrees to put iron in my soul.
And should I wander off like a lost sheep—seek me!
    I’ll recognize the sound of your voice.

The journey is long and his way is narrow. If that were not true of his Domain, then he wouldn’t have told us so, nor would his Word repeat it so often. So, a lifelong, growing, and ongoing awareness in comprehension and a recreative cooperation of God’s will is what we want. What God wants is in the next post. Also, finally, prepare your thinking cap for next time. In the meantime, make some effort, however small you might think it is, to practice what God has taught us. And for those trying too hard, easy does it. Gaining the mind of Christ takes time, and He wants us to finish well.

(Sunrise January 20th)

The offspring of virtue is perseverance. The fruit and offspring of perseverance is habit and child of habit is character.- John Climacus

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply. . . If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.- A W Tozer 

If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly. And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all . . . why then perhaps we must stand fast a little-even at the risk of being heroes.- the character of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons.

They Have Afflicted Me from My Youth

“Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth”—
    let Israel now say—
“Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
    yet they have not prevailed against me.
The plowers plowed upon my back;
    they made long their furrows.”
The Lord is righteous;
    he has cut the cords of the wicked.
May all who hate Zion
    be put to shame and turned backward!
Let them be like the grass on the housetops,
    which withers before it grows up,
with which the reaper does not fill his hand
    nor the binder of sheaves his arms,
nor do those who pass by say,
    “The blessing of the Lord be upon you!
    We bless you in the name of the Lord!”

It is one thing to have the discipline to hold on when its hard, but it is quite another thing to keep on holding on when things stay hard. A friend of mine put it well: “Life is difficult.” Perseverance is simply discipline maintained over a duration. The great duration we’re in now is a threshold place and period marked by swordplay set East of Eden:

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Sword play continues to mark humanity deeply throughout the biblical histories. Swords are mentioned over 400 times in the writings while angels are only mentioned about 280 times. There’s a bigger something to that, but today we’re trudging to a person. And we should be “under the knife” of a certain person if we are to stand the risk of being heroes in Jesus’ eyes:

(Heroes) who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 

And this person is in complete accord with the one who will mark the end of everyone’s experience within assigned limns of this present world, by the sword:

In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength… And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

So, unless you want to become bird food as I once feared, it is best for all involved to willingly accept a little edginess, to be shaped, even afflicted, by God in a kinder and softer way, as a child of His habits, over a long period of time to manifest the fruits of a holy character.

If I had just one word to sum up Balian’s character in The Kingdom of Heaven, it would be perseverance. He certainly didn’t want for sword play either. More importantly, the would be royal only took up the sword as a last resort against flesh. Imposters do the opposite, they use the great Sword to destroy entire peoples as a first move. Really it’s their only move and ultimately they’ll be cut down by it. So, they’re the real eternal losers. In victorious character, Balian’s perseverance led him to a thirst for God’s will not personal glory, wealth, or status. He could’ve “had it all.” But instead, with Christ-like habits (save one, to prove his humanity), our could be royal didn’t grasp at “all that” in order to help guide a people to salvation. They were a motely crew who had been led to the edge of slaughter by corrupt and foul leadership, all in God’s name. Again, those leaders are the real enemy. They’re simply petty tyrants, bitter manifestations of fear and hate, despite all that God gave them. But don’t fear those who’ll burn for their own designs with their gods. Fear God.

Oh wait you say? “Balian was just a coward!” Well, okay smoke show… Fortunately, we have the whole movie, not just act III. From the beginning, act I, he was betrayed by the brokenness of his family, a situation most never chose to recover from with earnestness. The religious elites lied to him, lied about him, and murdered his bride in worldly pursuits for their own glory… [Do you smell charred, eternal bar-b-q too?]. Certainly, in act II he discovered the lies of “the powers that be” over him were not just local but global, not just temporal but eternal, and not only unworthy but damnable.

So many battles and offences that anyone would understand if he had quit in the act I, like Hamlet, who is the quintessential gentile ruler. Balian was gloomy like that Dane, at times. But cheese and crackers people, who among us can claim anything like that kind of experience? If you’re meant to help save that many people (and you might be), then Jesus is all right with you being a sour-puss at times… it proves commitment and circumspection. The Christ Jesus himself became glum on occasion. God uses feelings to temper us, as we learn to temper them. The deepest cut to overcome was, like Jesus, Balian found more nobility in his “enemies” than he could in most of his “friends.” And that alone is enough to make any one weep all day over the people who were called to be different.  

Even at that point, don’t stay in despair too long, because God doesn’t waste a single crisis. He’s always there in the fire. He’s using it, if we keep holding on and letting go. And the harder and longer we stay at it, then He uses it in ever mightier ways. We just have to find him and stay close. Instead, imposters and gravy-trainers turn, and return, to worldly powers like dogs to vomit. Let them go, and strive to honor your real Father, the King, and the One who created you. Balian struggled to do that in act II, and look how he finished in act III by honoring and obeying, albeit imperfectly, his father’s code.       

Then there was Paul. Did he persevere? Yes. Did he gripe and moan? Like nobody’s business. In aside just between us, several learned rabbis I studied with commented directly to me that if ever there was a proto-type for the unfair and hateful “Jewish mother” stereotype, it would be Saul. So I honor him in mention, but land upon a quieter co-worker, who actually became great by staying small and holding the rope when Paul dropped it like a drama-king. It was in and by, not despite, the challenge of failed leadership that God used a renowned apostle’s short-comings to draw out, shape, and harden a hero like Balian or Jesus.

Our hero by, not in spite of, Paul’s weaknesses is Barnabas. If you read the Second Witness superficially, then he’s a background figure at best. But if we look at the character of the man, in the rare textual glimpses, then his shyness, short-screen time, or lack of prominence in the writings actually amplify his honor in God’s eyes. Remember the greatest saints are those whose names are only known above, not ever down here. Jesus articulates that principle with vehemence, repeatedly to his disciples. Barnabas was most effective in relative obscurity, his contentedness playing second fiddle delighted God, in the quiet place that matters most to God and ought be likewise for us.   

The “son of encouragement” only appears briefly at spots, but when he does, he’s depicted in ways we’d all hope to be illustrated. He hadn’t met Jesus in the flesh, still, in his emergence, he sells land and gives the money to the apostles to hand over to those in need. When’s the last time you saw a “great man of God” sell just one of their estates and give the proceeds it to the poor? Next, he’s promoting Paul, despite his murderous history with the People of The Way. As a good and faithful man in the Spirit, Barnabas spends a long time taking a backseat to “the star of Acts,” and he shines a greater light with other-centeredness through his caring for fledgling assemblies.

Then they hit the road. And the road is where you really get to know people. I imagine whichever flaws in Paul God used to shape Barnabas, they really came in handy when he first encountered persecution. That social molestation, in turn, prepared him to confront a great strain in the early days of the Messiah’s people, the issue of circumcision both in Antioch and Jerusalem. No doubt, the wear and tear of the internecine fracas, softened, not hardened, because next Barnabas takes up the slack when the apostle to the gentiles bounced John Mark for his refusal to hold on, once in the past. So too, we known he didn’t encourage others, even superiors, in their wrongness, but instead he redirected them with the silent and right witness of action. Paul quit a few times, but we never hear of Barnabas quitting on him or anyone. We’re told the opposite.

I cannot wait to get the time and occasion to hear what all happened with he and the probable writer of my favorite Gospel, as Silas and Paul hogged the rest of Luke’s print. Who else was solely a human mentor to a gospel author? What an amazing honor! Barnabas held the line while others faltered; he supported those who no one else would. He was a Jew among gentiles, but always he’s presented with arms open to all. He made all the hard choices, putting God’s call before security, relative wealth, and friendships. I want to know the rest of that story, from the greatest apostle presented by Luke. I have a deposit of his spirit and I’m willing to sacrifice for the rest. I hold this opinion to be true because the Master himself says to be great you must serve.

My Help and My Deliverer

I waited patiently for the Lord;
    he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the pit of destruction,
    out of the miry bog,
and set my feet upon a rock,
    making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth,
    a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear,
    and put their trust in the Lord.

Blessed is the man who makes
    the Lord his trust,
who does not turn to the proud,
    to those who go astray after a lie!
You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
    your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
    none can compare with you!
I will proclaim and tell of them,
    yet they are more than can be told.

In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted,
    but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
    you have not required.
Then I said, “Behold, I have come;
    in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do your will, O my God;
    your law is within my heart.”

I have told the glad news of deliverance
    in the great congregation;
behold, I have not restrained my lips,
    as you know, O Lord.
I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart;
    I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation;
I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness
    from the great congregation.

As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain
    your mercy from me;
your steadfast love and your faithfulness will
    ever preserve me!
For evils have encompassed me
    beyond number;
my iniquities have overtaken me,
    and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
    my heart fails me.

Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!
    O Lord, make haste to help me!
Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether
    who seek to snatch away my life;
let those be turned back and brought to dishonor
    who delight in my hurt!
Let those be appalled because of their shame
    who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

But may all who seek you
    rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation
    say continually, “Great is the Lord!”
As for me, I am poor and needy,
    but the Lord takes thought for me.
You are my help and my deliverer;
    do not delay, O my God!

The Person for Holding on… and Letting Go

He is real and it is all true, just not the way we want it to be… thank God. Tozer’s resolution for the liminal space in which we find God and still pursue Him, in a paradoxical existence, comes in the anonymous person mentioned above. To say that Western Christians have a complicated relationship with our Paraclete is an understatement, and for some of the worst it is an overstatement. Understatement because it was those doctors who threw off the necessary trials of sanctification and focused on more earthly delights, even in the most hypocritically austere ways. At day’s end they ignored, actually turned from the Holy Spirit. And the worst of them, they simply banished Him. They said He was no longer at work, because they replaced Him! Oh yeah, the stacks are littered with their self-centered words and vain babelings. So to say they have any type of relationship with Him is an overstatement.

Reverend Tozer has an excellent series of sermons concerning the third person of the Trinity. We toyed with the idea of presenting all of them weekly, but it wouldn’t be fair to do demand that kind of effort at the end of just the first year. Again, I wouldn’t say we’d argee on everything, the times have changed substantially. However, I would point you at least to the first wherein he makes my address of the issue pale by comparison. In a nutshell, the best of the known Evangelicals blames the death of the Holy Spirit on Evangelicals at the beginning of the 20^th century in the U.S. of A. I never heard that issue addressed by another, save one, who shared a great message at the close of the 20th century (1998) on “Cousin Itt.” It rocked.

By that character in the Adams Family we mean the Holy Spirit. Ignored, unknown, and often left out by many of “the best” assemblies, it is questionable as to whether they can find him now or ever. It would probably cost them too much by their estimation, since they got things so well in hand. Oh, ‘they know that they know that they know.’ In truth, when it comes to matters of the misunderstood Person in our Trinity, they don’t know the Spirit from skubalon. Jesus says that’s a terminal issue. Even at the first Pentecost, untrained observers reckoned the Spirit quickly made the people drunk and disorderly. And if God completely took over those same leaders would be out of work. Can you imagine what God’s Power would do to their order of all things, which is their treasured social agendas for their desired political economy and news-entertainment industries? “Perish the thought, and proclaim the Holy Spirit has ceased to work because we have our church now!” Those folks make judgment very simple, in a bad way.

“That’s it this author has lost his mind, I am tired of being offended by this ridiculous nothing of a blogger. No more!” Well sir, good and thank you, buh-bye now. I haven’t lost my mind but it certainly ain’t what it used to be, and it ain’t close to what it will ultimately be. I handed it over to God for exhaustive and extensive renovations, and like Barnabas we prefer working in relative anonymity. As for being hateful, My Lord declared it much more angrily and indefatigable finality:

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Oh I know, all kinds of folks manipulate that declaration for all kinds of things and reasons, and honestly that’s much better than pretending it is no longer in effect. Simply put, no matter what, if you do not accept the Holy Spirit transforming you, then at day’s end Jesus won’t see himself in you. Tozer speaks of it in terms of Godly grace, ‘a grace that doesn’t change you will not save you.’

Let’s leave all that scary doom and gloom behind, and I’ll try not to repeat most of the few things that we hear about the Spirit almost exclusively in this season. In that spirit of newness, please allow me to introduce the concept of enjambment:  

Something unexpected? Some *new ground*? Yes, please and thank you! What’s more, you need to get used to the idea of being poetry, or you’ll have problems with the writer of Ephesians… not to mention the rest of the Bible at depth. You don’t want a full stop in your story. From the beginning I encouraged you to embrace the reality that death, the ultimate end stop for too many, is no longer our master. So, please start living eternity today. That’s how the Kingdom comes, literally. If you’re living by Kingdom rules and guided by the Holy Spirit here, then dropping your corruptible threads for Jesus’ heavy suit will hardly be noticeable. In fact, you’re going to love it!

“East of Eden,” or within the liminal bounds of we spirits who are incarcerated, for the most part on the world’s plain, there is always rumor and incompleteness that creates anxiety in our consciousness. I mean for heaven’s sake, we mostly communicate by babbeling… Its a miracle anyone ever makes any actual progress through the fog of misunderstood menaings. Faith enables us to focus on the unseen and unspoken, not the seen and said. Think about it: at root, we are spirits with our souls bound to flesh nodes for a few minutes.  In that time our flesh demands our soul’s attention on the visible and materially static, yet spirit is screaming out for our soul to look above and beyond. Our flesh demands comfort and sameness, yet our spirit yearns to change and rise in a Dynamic way. That’s the etiology of tensions within our threshold stage: it’s ‘being in the world but not of it.’

The world offers many pleasurable ways to resolve that stretchy soul ache. And they work for a time, but ultimately they all turn on us and start destroying us. If we aren’t rising to God we’re falling, still falling. Some use substances like drugs or money, others use people themselves even seeking fame in politics and elsewhere, while still others enlighten themselves with philosophies or even theologies… egad! Some of these help or even heal us, at times, but if we turn to any of them in dependency (read idolatry), then they lead us to an end stop. That’s why Jesus tells and calls us to accept his Spirit and be created a second time, in His image. It is necessary during our life because as the poet cried, we are born in sin and conceived in inequity. So at some point in our life we must, at least, start to repent from sin and live a life of ever-increasing equity, even with our enemies.

In a process of enjambment our beloved cousin Itt, transmutes our pain into Spiritual growth. The only one who can stunt that growth is ourselves or other entities that we willingly rent space to in our heads. Parents or a lack of parenting are usually the first renters, for better or worse. Some of the buttons and issues they bequeath us may take more than a lifetime to let go and fully exorcise in sustained adjuration. Conversely, if we hang on to their healthy lessons and virtues that shaped us, then we live a much richer life. The same goes for a plethora of folks, who in one way or another impress us. Remember, we aren’t responsible for what they did or do. We are responsible to hand whatever we’re given in the world to the Holy Spirit and let him return it to us, as the Son and Father hand their basilica of all things back and forth. This is God’s way to restore all things. I don’t know why theosis seems to be such a mystery to so many people who talk about God so often. I do know you cannot crucify a spirit, but oh how many do try.       

Sometimes the process takes great strides and at other times the Spirit just whispers in our ear. There is only one criteria for judgment: don’t quit, don’t reject what the Spirit is doing, no matter what your opinion of Jesus is… those are his words, not mine, as cited above. Now don’t get me wrong, no one is perfect or fully mature Spiritually. In fact among my own people, I have seen two folks with decades of Spiritual growth and emotional sobriety have a literal fist-fight about who had more serenity. My friend told them that if that is what they have, then they should take their asses to church and stay there. It was funny, really, really funny, for several reasons but not for either of the participants.

So it is the Holy Spirit, not our friends, our fists, or even our asses who we should trust in this threshold process because only He was here before all things came into being and will be forever with us, for God’s restoration of His order in everything. He encourages us, strides with us with greater speed and energy, to act in sometimes tense or curious ways to draw ourselves and others out of a static world with all its confusion and anxiety to a place of greater peace and a life that neither all the money in the world nor any legislation could ever build. Avoid those dark towers, because your eternal life depends on it. Moreover, we are called to follow Jesus, the Spirit ain’t changing God’s prime directive no matter who says what in any place or by any number. Following Jesus means we sacrifice for others to fulfill our Father’s commands. Remember, the Spirit is with us in all that faith-stretching and bodily suffering, so that we might come to maturity by those pangs, not in spite of them. In the end, Jesus deserves to delight in a full-grown bride.  

Call me mister revision. I more than anyone I’ve met has lived either enamored to God’s call or made every effort to blind and deafen myself to it. Mother Theresa lamented in the final years she spent in her mortal coil that she no longer heard from God. For much of my life that sounded like a vacation, so I never considered myself holy. No matter what I said or believed about Jesus, I was nothing like her. It even looks hateful on the page, but let me put it to you this way. If God showed you things while you had been sober for years that made an acid trip feel like a sugar cookie only to make you stare at the true wickedness of things, while “holy people” cheered… Then you might have a glimmer of insight as to why I desired what an almost perfect human feared.

It’s all so messed up for so many reasons. 2011-2018 was the most time I was given by God to accept Him at my own pace. Since then, at His pleasure, in a Spiritual Détente of sorts, for the umpteenth time, He’s handed me an entirely new peace that I am still learning. Point is this Enjambment never seems to end, so perseverance simply comes by way of my acceptance. The only pretense I might have for knowing any quality like perseverance is a simple desire to see the great things that He’s disclosed to me come to pass in the land of the living…. That and an occasional animal desire to survive on some odd occasions. I can see the virtue in others but not myself. On the rare occasions when others attributed that quality to my face, I was often feeling like God was revising me. It isn’t comfortable. I’m naturally averse to personal revision but it is a Spiritual requirement for every one. I am a natural born rebel, so steadfastness came hard to me.

As a teen, I had the mental chops and emotional desire to attend the Air Force Academy to become an aerospace engineer and fighter pilot. I made two visits and passed the cognitive military tests with flying colors. By age 16 I had secured the necessary references and my childish vision for my life seemed to be well on its way to being realized. Next, I would become a test pilot, and finally, with strings in place, I’d get a shot at becoming an astronaut.

Well, a funny thing happened on my way to the Academy. At 17 my GP informed me that I had an irreparable, congenital heart murmur. I’d be fine and could live normally, but it would keep me out of jets. The military still wanted me. Within a week of withdrawing my application all three other service branches had contacted me. The Marines even bought me a really nice dinner. I love the marines, “Semper Fidelis!” To their credit, they stayed at it until I accepted a scholarship elsewhere. But I got angry, back then, because every time those good folks tried to make me a wonderful offer I had to re-suffer the loss of a dream I had since I was three.

Revision made, I went to a state school closer to home. I was gifted and paid to be involved with the development of something that would change life on the planet for the better and greatly increase our knowledge of the cosmos. Here’s a public facing, watered-down necropsy of the project: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-supercollider-that-never-was/. Following retooling, I became very enthusiastic about the theoretical study of light and time. I was then told, after only one semester, that my section had been canceled. I was “invited” to convert to applied sciences where the money had been reallocated. They wanted me to build rail-beam guns. The useful and important work was abandoned for imperial military pipe dreams. Any first year student could’ve explained why it was never going to happen, not in that century nor probably the next.

Next revision, I returned home and went to work in the family business. My grandfather was thrilled and my father was happy we could fish together more, but he knew that my heart was re-broken, so he loved me through it. The work was easy and paid well; I was never going to miss a meal. But my brain needed exercise so I went to a local community college. From the lawns of Fermi Labs to the commissary at Alvin Community College… at first I was understandably down cast. But over the next 18 months God did an amazing thing, he showed me that the best teachers aren’t indecipherable know-it-alls, but instead they were kind, humble, and patient. Also, not becoming a theoretical physicist at that time saved me from the heartache of a collapsing field, as within a few years the fall of the wall flooded the world market with more acomplished scholars.

That simple revelation led me to completely recast my vision for my future. It wasn’t going to happen where I had been headed… not ever. And I had no idea of the academic and career trials ahead. Also, perhaps more importantly, it revealed my mother’s long-suffering for my childhood dreams. It was the beginning of the end of the last great imperial oil wars, 1991. I came home from Alvin and I heard my mother wailing, not crying but shaking the house audibly. I ran in there for a hug or a fight. On the TV were images of the first pilots shot down and tortured by the Iraqi Army. I screamed it’s okay, we’ll get them back home (and we did). But she couldn’t stop wailing. Finally, when she could begin to talk, she barely got it out: “I am just so grateful! That could have been you!” Well, heck, talk about unwelcome, next-level insight. I was still so selfish all I could think was, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to love anyone like that.”  

Famous last words again, because over the decade that followed I travelled all over the world to learn how to help the most vulnerable and forgotten, not oppressed necessarily but just flat-out ignored and left to die peoples. I cannot tell you how many graves I dug or how many wailing sessions I had. Is it wrong to grieve people you barely knew more than those you do? It must be at some level, but God got what He wanted in me. In that period of stretching, God made my diagnostically broken heart more pliable in so many ways. And plans? I never knew from one year to the next where I’d be flying back home from come September. I wound up at UTMB to do a PhD in international family health to serve those who most just call collateral damage in the wars men make and the plagues that Satan’s servants bring into the world while blaspheming the name of the Most High. I was set, locked and loaded. I knew where I would be and what I would do the rest of my silly life.

Not… Yup, you guessed it. Light to dark, over the next few years through personal losses beyond my control, a cascade of noble causes, and following Jesus ever-more closely I wound up in a place few know. Everyone knows about pits, burning trash valleys, and hell. But did you know there’s a place that’s worse? There is, but that’s another whole year of posts. So, let’s just metaphor-ize it the way the sage does in the story of Job. I was under a dung heap with open wounds hoping to die. In short, I was done with all personal, social, and cultural expectations. And that dear reader is exactly where God wanted me again. I strongly suggest seeking an easier path by way of Godly obedience.

That time, without any of my own ideas in the way, God did what He’s predictably famous for: He lifted me up, showed me great and terrible things, all just to send me on His merry way. His way, because it wasn’t merry for me, but it was better than where I had just been. It was really weird, so I turned pro, leaned into Him, and didn’t look back. I wondered as a child what it was like for Mr. Yeager to kick down the door of the sound barrier. Penny-ante childish dreams sister, the Spirit blew out the wall to the cosmos for me. But who was I? I had always tried to want the right things, set personal healthy goals, which were beneficial and needed by others. I did my best to conform and exercised conventional desires. But in the Kingdom, I do not get to decide what I need in “my world,” once God has literally pulled me out of it. I cannot go back, once we’re a pickle we can’t be a cucumber ever again… c’est la vie to the yellow brick road paved and maintained by the servants of alien gods. I was terminally God’s, and I had been given eternal vision, which only recently began to come into focus. I was patient about it only because I was the happiest I’d ever been in my life so I didn’t want to change much again, not because I am some spiritual giant.

As my last romatic vision of things dissolved, there were many strange and curious events, and more than a few witnesses at different points. I never made much of them because, by then, I feared if I did, then something far more weird or terrifying would happen. And I wasn’t in a rush. In fact, I became so mundane as to doubt any of it had ever occurred. Then I went to get a clinical stress test as part of my bodily recovery, and God proved His work in me to a couple of kind agnostic doctors. How can I doubt if God used the “miraculous” condition of my flesh to inspire a pair of professional doubters?

So, this is where we land today. To hear tell by monks and prophets, perseverance sounds like a learned and enjoyed virtue. For me it is not. It is like a coronary stress test. Ever had one? Avoid it if you can. They put me on a tread mill and said “run.” So, I did my best Gump impression, again, for the latent observation of specialists. There were many machines hooked-up to me with multiple displays. So I looked at the displays, thinking once I hit a magic number, then they’d say stop. Nope. I learned at a full sprint that they were just waiting for me to drop. The bastards! They hadn’t told me because that might impair my effort. I was supposed to try and run myself to death and they’d be there to catch me. That’s my illustration for God “gifting” me with perseverance. He cheers me on to complete exhaustion.

I don’t remember the finally tally, and I did quit before I passed out, so no effort was required by my spotters. The point is they claimed my heart was in perfect condition. I had told them I had a heart murmur from birth. They said, “No, you didn’t.” I had such a pecker-pulling with them that they immediately gave me an echo-cardiogram. No, I didn’t! You talk about pissed, I called my childhood GP and gave him what for. He immediately sent tests, records, and notes to my cardiologist. Their tune changed, “Well, you did… (Enjambment)… now you don’t.” My former GP invited me in for a free checkup just so he hear and see for himself. Both doctors agreed that I had had an irreversible heart condition, which, apparently reversed. And believe you me I did everything humanly possible the previous few years to die as pleasurably as possible. I did my body no favors. But despite the world’s and my own worst efforts, God literally revised my heart, and bragged about it to skeptics, straight in their faces. More importantly, He had revised all my good hopes and dreams. Apparently, all I needed do was survive and accept His changes.

Now, there are many lessons one might draw from this vignette, God’s architecture of that whole scene. Please feel free, mine aren’t written in stone. And until I meet someone who can poop marble, I ain’t trusting anyone else’s take too much. I only ask that no one believe that I am suggesting the way to fix an inoperable heart condition is through wretched physical self-abuse. So much for authorial attempts to shape reader-response. All I know is that there are facts, and the strongest facts will change the minds of honest doubters, even if it never changes their feelings. Further, I know that most often the most effective witness I can give is simply being present and willing to work with others in any salutary effort, then great and wonderful things come to pass. The trick is to learn and remember what God thinks is great and wonderful.

I can’t say that I am as saintly as Barnabas, because it took much longer for me to accept the dissolution of my desires and promptly accept God’s changing desires for my life. I lamented in ways that would have made Paul blush. I believe God did that because He involved me in things that are difficult to locate in the previous patterns of His works. But I like to think that’s the way Barnabas felt meeting and leaving Paul: it was all new to him too. For me, I like to see a precedent, in God’s Word, for whatever it is that God is asking me to do, because I think of myself as a ‘transient shadow cast upon a brief morrow.’ I used to think I should just imitate, not innovate, because if it doesn’t make money most people will tell you to take a hike, or I might just be wrong. I was wrong, God wants to do new things in real ways. The few people who’ve known me for a long time say I’ve changed… I think I really haven’t, but I am certain that God has changed me in real and demonstrable ways. I’ve just shared one today.     

One truth about Barnabas that God did realize in me, by making me realize it finally, is that I have grown Spiritually because of the failures of people that I should’ve been able to trust, not despite them. This point is numinously central, as it frees us from grievance and resentment, so we can grow and change… sometimes change everything. It liberates us from a victim mentality. Please hear me on this: It is one case for the oppressed to cry out, that is just to God, and He will receive them because they, like prophets, cry out for God’s will to be done. It is an entirely different case for the wealthy and empowered to lie about justice and pervert God’s will to keep harming others, so He will never accept them or their father, the Liar. There is nothing more disgusting before the eyes of a righteous God than some of history’s most privileged humans in world playing “the victims” and attempting to justify their vile works by hammering the scales and blaspheming His name. The kindest thing I can say about them is I might have become one of them if God had not allowed wicked and greedy “friends” to destroy my hopes and dreams, repeatedly. By keeping on and letting go in the Spirit, following Jesus, our Father took the world’s worst historic curse and turned it into my greatest blessing… and then some. What’s more? They’ve already lost. I was told “the living will turn,” and I can prove it by simply breathing.

I do not curse them in response, as I’ve learned a great pneumatological reality by coming out of them and looking back. If a person’s words and actions do not match, then their words are meaningless, just more toxic fumes. Action is far more indicative of who people are than any words ever could be. I am sorry this Truth was lost in poorly framed, speculative, and self-centered doctrines and institutes. If you’ve honestly accepted the reality of Jesus in your heart, then he will manifest in your life, his image will bare changes in your day to day, everything, from your clothes to your heart, overtime if you stay willing. So too, you will change the lives of others just by being, not really trying at all. Ultimately, you’ll love others sacrifically, never curse their existence like a devil.

Lastly, I’ve discovered that riches in the Spirit aren’t measured by what one has, but by what one gives. Certainly, you’ve noticed that the people with the most material wealth and power want it the most. People often say, “You’ve got to want it more than the other guy!” There’s a vaporous wisdom to that rusty logic. But my picker was broke, so first I had to learn to want what God wanted for me (remember discipline), then follow the Wind over time, then I could work at His choices harder than the other guy. It’s often tedious, but on occasion it’s been the greatest rush I ever had. Believing anyone else, for any length of time, to doubt God was my greatest mistake. In fairness, I was “supposed to trust” most of them.

Afterwards, even when I withdrew, God did not. He ain’t fragile or needy like some folks imagine or argue, so they can cultivate worldly controls. They’re dead. If we keep choosing Life, then He can take our doubt and use it to make us stronger. He can take our rebellion and bring His peace to the world. You won’t find a better deal. You’ll certainly find much easier terms from all the other gods, but every one of them ends in death, the end stop. For Enjambment, the only requirement is to humble ourselves and stay at our Father’s agenda. Then the Holy Spirit will invest in us eternally. That’s exactly what Jesus did, no matter what, and I am following hot after him. In final return, it is the oddest thing that He, not I, calls all that mess His glory… every… dang… day.

Your Throne, O God, Is Forever

My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;
    I address my verses to the king;
    my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.

You are the most handsome of the sons of men;
    grace is poured upon your lips;
    therefore God has blessed you forever.
Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one,
    in your splendor and majesty!

In your majesty ride out victoriously
    for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness;
    let your right hand teach you awesome deeds!
Your arrows are sharp
    in the heart of the king’s enemies;
    the peoples fall under you.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
    The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness;
    you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
    with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;
     your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia.
From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad;
     daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor;
    at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

 Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear:
    forget your people and your father’s house,
     and the king will desire your beauty.
Since he is your lord, bow to him.
     The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts,
    the richest of the people.

All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold.
    In many-colored robes she is led to the king,
    with her virgin companions following behind her.
 With joy and gladness they are led along
    as they enter the palace of the king.

 In place of your fathers shall be your sons;
  you will make them princes in all the earth.
 I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations;
    therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.

No matter what comes, let us endevour to persevere over this time. Heck, let’s use the Spirit’s word: overcome. If we have a bad day in the meantime just reflect on most any quote from the close of any of Paul’s letters. We need the time because there is a lot of work to do on all sides. Perhaps, “we must stand fast a little-even at the risk of being heroes.” I am sorry that so, so many were not prepared properly. That miseducation is not the fault of followers, but how they respond now is their resposibilty. So, let’s get through August and then see what is what in God’s New Year. Get low and love hard.

(next post, sunrise September 17th)