A heart redeemed

Let not my heart be, O Prime Mover...
A 'home for a time',
A divided house,
A riddle of locked doors,
A place of sinister slumber, peacefully and soundlessly sliding to destruction
Where we sup once a year in dusty, sharded crockery,
By compulsion and goaded by bridle, chaffing at the bit
Where live I by proxy,
To where I cannot remember the way,
The rubbish-tip of my being, a hovel,
Shifting sands moving with the wind,
A shanty where I live in the cold and in the rain,
In want, in defiance and independence, yet a prisoner of myself;
Me in a sealed space and thee in another
Me an entrenched, estranged son
And thou an utter stranger, sometimes admitted, mostly irrelevant.

If thou wouldst live in my heart, let it be...
First of all, thy residence, and thine forever
Where I live in unbroken, flowing relationship with thee, my Father,
In the eternal light of unending day.
A place of safety, of bridges to the wood burned;
Of no doors ajar for wind to blow in an unclean spirit,
Where we sup together in unbounded joy and unfettered trust,
No inner rooms barred from thine indwelling,
A place where every corner thy presence strangely warms and illuminates,
Where, turn where one will, knowledge of thee overshadows,
And the deathly chill has forever thawed, never to frost again.
Where thy light casts out all darkness,
Where thy fires burn brighter than day,
And thy good purpose and will are enduring themes,
Beacons to guide unerringly in a storm,
Where your Cross is never far away,
Where your blood covers all.

Sweep my soul clean, O Merciful One!
Let my heart burn within me as I walk to Emmaus by your side.
My heart only for thee, as thou hast shown thine for me!

Death's aloneness

In the finality and aloneness of death's still corridors
Walks one.
The only one allowed there....by the angel of death.
And He spans the gulf between the living and the dead.
We should live so He'd like to meet us when we die....
And then I care not for death's still, dim corridors
And neither for death's angel.
It's probably one of the clearest moments when we know Him....
When we cross that river.
Then, there, He is realer than He ever was, ever will be...on this shore.
And He spans the gulf between those we leave behind.....and us.

The dark corridors swept pale clean have no memories
of Sunday mornings and the band
Ones we love and ones that love us
Smiling faces, bubbling joy
Of emotional Good Fridays or the gaiety of Easter
Eternity lies before, and a life behind.....with the power of decision removed from our grasp.
No one comes to plead our case
No one comes to cry
No one.
There is, even, no strong silent grief to buoy the spirit, no reservoir of hope within
Tears have no power to heal anymore
Dungeons open, chains clink on to stone floors
A decision remains, just one.....but not ours to make anymore.

But hark.....I hear not the victor's laugh
Nor any echo of voices humming
Just stillness. No one lives here......no one gloats here.
Both victim and seeming victor are silenced
While the Arbiter's will, and His will alone, prevails
The Arbiter says nothing, but transacts firmly ..... in these eerie walls
The victor did not win
And the victim was set free
There are no more spoils of war.
The dungeons hold no one.

Now this happened one day long ago ...... when an innocent was killed on a bloody altar.
Whose body bore all that we were never made to bear
Death's fury.....with the hordes from the pit
Spent on that frail human body.
There was a silent weekend....spent in a pale, antiseptic, unreal, swept-clean, dim corridor.
At dawn on the third day, the Arbiter transacted......and we were free.
Death, the victor, gave up the battle
and fled the field.
Dungeon doors broke their locks......some walked free.
Blinding, cleansing light burst down those dim, clean walls, coiling deep within
a fjord cutting through and bursting out the other shore
Some walked free. Others stayed.....did not know what had happened.

So what happens when we die?
No cold dark dungeon....no waiting for the Arbiter's decision.
The decision is over, and death's jurisdiction ends.
Dungeon doors have locks no more.
Death is the only true alone-moment.
No human being comes with us.
Only the Arbiter.
If Jesus were only lord of my joys...... I'd still be alone at death.
But Jesus is lord of my sorrows.....and that makes Him Jesus to me.
Jesus is Lord...over the moment I cross the shore.
It is but a moment, with fear and unknowing on the known shore....
to wake SAFE, in full knowing and in the light of an awesome presence....on the other, unknown shore.
Jesus, but our fondest and only hope and saviour on the known shore,
The Son, with all His radiance, STILL WITH US...on the unknown shore.
Death is the last enemy......and still, Jesus the only true victor.

Why the Christians cannot and did not "conjure up" God

No human mind can "conjure up" god. A "god" who is the product of "conjuring up" cannot be god at all but merely a human construct who can be dismantled at ease, at will, for convenience, and can have no answers for our humanness.

To borrow from C.S. Lewis, all human beings have these "uncanny" feelings - a sense of awe (bordering on DREAD), and a sense of being under a moral law.

The feeling of awe at someone or something too big for us, or dread at "the unknown", though universally experienced, is absolutely inexplicable because there seems no reason why we should feel it....unless there really exists someone or something to be in awe of, to DREAD. C.S. Lewis uses the word Numinous for this someone or something that inspires dread in us - dread that is not based on KNOWING but actually on UNKNOWING. We do not know, nor can we guess at the STUFF of what we dread; if we did; we wouldn't be using the word dread, because knowledge does usually dispel fear. Simply, these are irrational fears of the unknown.

The same can be said of the moral law; we seem to universally know instinctively know its existence and its operation on us, but more importantly, we know, most of the time, that we are contravening this law. There is no use trying to explain away this law, or say that each individual determines his or her OWN law, it's relative, subjective and so on and so forth. If we just look inside ourselves and see how our thought processes work and our decisions are made, we will discover very shortly that we indeed operate by this moral law, even WHILE we vehemently and vociferously deny it on the outside. And we will also discover that we actually do not like it very much when we see others violating a moral code. Also, we will find that though this moral law may SEEM different for people in different cultures and in different histories, it never really has strayed very far apart so as to be polar-different.

Now, we are also aware of someone or something that wields this moral law. As with the feeling of dread, it's inexplicable, unless there really exists someone or something behind this law, which set it up to operate in our experience.

Now this being, if it exists:

1. cannot be made of the same human material or stuff as us, for if this were so, we would not fear, dread or feel awe about something or someone we can see, know and explain to a reasonable degree
2. unlike us, has got to know ALL THINGS, because as human beings we cannot explain much about our origins, our purpose, the WHY's of our existence

Such a being, is, however, what we all USUALLY call God.

Carrying on, because of point 1 above, we as human beings, with our minds, cannot conjure up what this God might be like. We have nowhere to start. There is only one way we can know what this God is like - if He took the initiative and revealed Himself to us in a way we can understand, as human beings. That is a very important conclusion to come to. This is precisely what the Christians have been claiming - that this God who exists has revealed Himself to us (not the other way round). And how do they say this God revealed Himself? Through the person we know in history as Jesus, and in the document known to us as The Bible.

Because of this, it would be unreasonable (at least) to say that Christians "made up" or "conjured up" a God. We can no more explain this God into being as we can explain Him away, using our minds. This explodes the charge that has been laid at Christianity's door all along - that Christians used a"conjured up" God to deceive and enslave the world through slavery to guilt and fear.

This also unmasks the poverty of the human mind and its ineffectiveness, when used in isolation, in helping us to know God. Not that the mind should NEVER be used, but it can never be the primary and exclusive vehicle of knowing. There is equal value in experience as a means of knowing - in fact, both reason (logic) and experience have to correspond - otherwise the KNOWING is compartmentalised and likely inaccurate or flawed.

Infallibility of the Bible as the revealed Word of God

Now we have established that Christians COULD NOT HAVE CONJURED UP GOD.

If this is so, it is very reasonable to understand HOW Christians can claim that the Bible is a God-inspired and written document in which this God who exists has fully revealed Himself. And since it is God-authored, for the purpose of revealing Himself, it can be nothing but infallible, being free in every respect from human taint (except the scribing of it - and the very meaning of the word 'scribe' here underscores the mere part human beings played in bringing the Bible into being - exactly as Christians claim).

So, just as the Christians claim, the Bible does not say what HUMAN BEINGS conceive God to be, but what God says to human beings in order to reveal Himself to people who cannot POSSIBLY have a clue about Him.

This throws out of the window the old humbug that people keep accusing Christianity of - "misinterpreting" the Bible. If the Bible was God-authored, only God can interpret it to us human beings. Or, to develop that point, if at all we human beings want to know what the Bible is REALLY SAYING, there is NO POSSIBLE WAY for us to do that (where and how can we hope to start??) unless we know the author and He chooses to actually INTERPRET it to us. This is PRECISELY what Christians claim - that the Bible is God-authored, and interpreted by God to people who know God.

The identity of Jesus

All along, we've been saying that God is made of different stuff than us human beings, and unless He took the initiative to reveal Himself to us, there can be no way for us to conceive what He is like, or what He has to say to us human beings by way of "revealing Himself" to us.

Now to go further, how would we understand unless we are told in HUMAN language? I mean, unless we saw this revelation IN HUMAN FORM, we cannot know this God. This, precisely, is what the Christians proclaim about the person we know in history as Jesus. If there ever was a way for us human beings to understand God, it is through Jesus.

Now Jesus, while in earthly human form, would still have to be God Himself, because no one other than God can reveal God. So, He would have to be perfectly God and perfectly man at the same time. This, precisely, is what the Christians claim - that Jesus, the man, was also God in earthly form during His time here on earth. Also, this explains why the Christians say that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit - if he were born of human seed, he could NOT have been perfectly God or perfectly man. God would HAVE to be his father.

The Bible has more to say about Jesus than this - it reveals that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity - the Son. The Son of God existed with God from the beginning. Only through Jesus does history have purpose and make some sense - looked at from any other angle, history makes NO sense whatsoever and seems to (frighteningly) lack any discernible purpose.

The Cross

Let's go back to the moral law. Now we strongly SUSPECT, as human beings, that if there is a moral law, someone behind it wields the law, to whom we are answerable. This, again, is a universal suspicion.

Now our predicament is that we are judged guilty by an agent who we DO NOT KNOW (unless we are Christians, in which case there is a more than reasonable explanation for all these things), for contravening a law WE DID NOT SET UP. Who can help us, or build a bridge to this "unknowable" one? We cannot come up with any plan, because we, just like all the other times, haven't the faintest clue where to begin. The Christian has an answer here as well - Jesus.

Jesus is, at once, the one who helps us know the unknowable one, and also the one who buys our pardon from this unknowable one. How? The Christians claim that this is through Jesus' death on the cross.

Here again I borrow from C.S. Lewis - Jesus could perfectly pay the price only because He was a perfect, innocent man - and He could only do this PERFECTLY because he was God. Only such a penitent, a perfect God-Man, can help us, and as the Christians claim, this can only be Jesus.

***********************************************************************************

So what are the odds that Christianity "conjured up" God? In reality, Biblical Christianity is not neat, tidy, ordered or always predictable, like something "conjured up" can be. If the Christians had made it up, they'd have come up with something more believable and tidy.

Truth, in reality, must be stranger than fiction, because we have made fiction to suit ourselves.
- G.K. Chesterton

God comforts us in ALL our troubles... not just SOME troubles

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

- II Corinthians 1:3-4

Two things spoke God's heart to me in these verses:

1. God definitely COMFORTS us in trouble - He doesn't leave us to wonder, analyse or strive in feverish excitement.
2. God comforts us in ALL our troubles, not just some. We would sometimes think that God's comfort is selective - and foolishly go through SOME of our troubles alone, drawing on our own hoarded resources.

I make it a point to write down every comforting thought and verse that God brings to me when I'm in the valley. I do that because I know that my experiences are not for me alone, but the comfort I receive will be desperately needed and sought by someone else who goes through something similar. The writing I have included below happened on May 25, 2007 (for some circumstance I no longer remember) - but I do remember the weight of these thoughts pressing on me to write them down.

After writing them down, I didn't like what emerged. The fussy writer in me said, NOOOOO!!!! It's too cloying. But now I think - who am I to think this?

I'm thankful that I did preserve it, because what I think about it as a writer is of negligible importance and is totally irrelevant - what's important is that God in His FAITHFULNESS over the years continues to remind me of past deliverance, and His commitment to see me through, no matter how dark the night and how deep the valley. So, here it is, with a few refining touches, otherwise unexpurgated.

May the LORD bless these words to your heart and touch you at your point of need today. He is indeed the God of all comfort, who comforts us in ALL our troubles.

I don't know quite how to begin saying this or indeed, what to say. May the good LORD guide me.

A few minutes ago some thoughts occurred to me. They raced through my mind like piercing swords of light through the dark, blanketing fog that enshrouds my mind. Many stories in the Bible began to make a lot of sense and stood out like beacons.

It all has to do with this question - WHY?

Why does God allow things to happen to us? What does He do, where is He when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, as it were?

Often, I would venture to say, more often than not, things come up on us without warning. Bookmark that phrase "without warning" because that is what the LORD seems to be saying. Many of our experiences, especially the "bad" ones....they seem to come, in our understanding, WITHOUT WARNING. There is almost NO WAY to answer questions like "Why this? Why me? Why now?"

Some answers that came to me are these. Does God allow bad experiences to come to us? Everyone would answer, YES! Does God always tell us about impending tragic circumstances? NO. Of course there are many people in the Bible to whom God revealed exactly what they were to go through BEFORE the circumstances came up on them. In our experience, however, it is only those who are deeply in tune with His heart and His leading, who are able to comprehend what the LORD is saying when He tells us about things to come. The vast majority of us, in practice, are like sheep - we neither are able to meaningfully understand how the LORD led us in our past, nor have we any inkling of how future days will be. Even in the event of being told about the future, prophetically, if you will, we lack the intimacy with God we need to be prepared in any way for the future.

So even if we are told about the future, it does not stand to reason that we go into the future PREPARED and EQUIPPED. Knowledge of impending events does not mean preparedness for them. This, of course, is our own fault every time, because God can never be blamed for our lack of intimacy and trust in Him.

So what we do have is a situation where, in regard to future events, we might know a few specifics, or know nothing at all. In effect, therefore, PRACTICALLY, if you will, most (bad) events OVERTAKE us without any seeming prior warning.

Having come into these situations, we have questions. Where is God now? Most of the time, we don't know. What will God do? Don't be too disillusioned....but we have to face the fact that God in many cases DOES NOTHING. Will He deliver us in a way that we can understand? Maybe, but that doesn't seem to be a given.

There is another set of questions. Has God knowingly and willingly allowed bad things? The answer here is, if they are happening and He hasn't stopped them, YES. Is God in control of things? YES, or He wouldn't be God. Will God lose control of things? No, or He wouldn't be God.

Then the biggest question and the biggest consternation - what about His promises? What about all that He has unquestionably promised in the Bible - all those verses (millions, actually) about NEVER LEAVING US OR FORSAKING US TILL THE END, about delivering us from disaster, about having plans only to bless and prosper us, and not to harm us?

The answer that came to me is this - God wants us to know Him. He wants us to walk closer. He wants to talk to us, and teach us to hear His voice and RECOGNIZE it. He wants us to TRUST in Him and let go of ourselves. He wants us in unbroken, deep, intimate RELATIONSHIP with Him not just one day or two, but for a lifetime. He wants us to learn what He really thinks about us, so that we may never doubt Him.

I sometimes wonder - if God always delivered us in ways that we would like, and whenever we asked, from the smallest of our difficulties, what are we really learning about Him? Would we be so deeply imprinted with His love, would we comprehend his control over the universe, would we know Him as truly God? I think not.

The fact is, when bad situations overtake us......He is in control. He isn't a control freak who needs to compulsively DEMONSTRATE His control, but nothing can happen, not even the smallest thing, without His touch. I ask, why are we worried when He knows what is going on? Has He left us? How can He - He promised to not leave us ever! Just because He doesn't show us His control in bad situations in ways that we would like, we cannot surmise that He isn't in control.

What will happen to us? Should we look out for ourselves? I answer with another question - please do tell me how far we would have to go to "fall out" of His hands. Is it possible for us to go someplace where indeed, God cannot save us? Try and answer that. Here's another telling question - okay, so we take things into our own hands. Can we indeed save ourselves? So why struggle at all? Why waste the analytical striving? Why the fretting and the feverish activity? The bombarding of the mind with thoughts? Leave it to Jesus. But walk towards Him. Walk towards any little light He provides. If He offers a hand, don't just take it - develop a LIFE-HOLD on Him and refuse to let Him go. Don't just settle for His deliverance - settle only for HIM. Walk as if He is always carrying you, because He is INDEED always carrying us. That isn't a lie.

Another thought that came to me is this - the things that happen to us, good or bad, are just THINGS, mere EVENTS, mere CIRCUMSTANCES. Don't label everything as either ONLY good, or ONLY bad. If "bad" things happen, it doesn't mean the LORD has left us. If "good" things happen, it doesn't mean that we have learned everything there is to know about the LORD. Just accept everything as from His hand. Do not analyse needlessly or spend time WORKING IT OUT.

THINGS, EVENTS, CIRCUMSTANCES, EXPERIENCES - all of these are not The LORD to us. Don't let them take His place.

On the other hand, TRY TO TRACE HIS HAND ON YOU. Learn those precious moments when He saved you. Think about what He did, to you and to others....take your eyes off WHAT "is happening", and focus on what GOD is doing.

What, indeed, is God doing? For those of us who know Him and have accepted His death on the cross for us, He has a blood-covenant with us. Get this - God has not broken even SIMPLER covenants with the animals and the birds!! How much more then, a blood-covenant? If He breaks it, He isn't God. And He never will. For those out there who do not know about His saving grace - He still knows every hair on each one's head - not one falls out but that He allows it.

Are you in bereavement today? discouragement? debt? disease? guilt? fear? suicidal feelings? worthlessness? unfulfilled longings? doubt? facing death? Do you feel the keen edge of a freshly-sharpened sword at your throat? Do you want to "give up and die"?

Then know this - The LORD is with you. Where? Right there - by your side - "He's as close as the mention of His name". What is He going to do? NOTHING. He is going to wait for you to turn, look into His eyes and fall into His arms. YOU HAVE TO DO THAT - HE CANNOT MAKE YOU DO IT. He will wait till you do it.......even if it takes forever. He will still wait......till the day you die.

But YOU HAVE TO FALL INTO HIS ARMS. You have to turn, and look into His eyes.
In His eyes, you will see.....

What He thinks about you. Not the you in YOUR SITUATION, not the you others see, not even the you YOU SEE. The YOU HE MADE. He is going to tell you, in great, excruciating detail, what He thinks of you. What He did for you before, and what He wants to do for you now. He will tell you of His love, as many times as you want to know it. He will tell you of His grace, as many times as you need to know it. He will tell you of His power - as many times as you need to have it.

You need only look into His eyes.

Feel His arms - they never stopped holding you. Feel His embrace - you never fell out of it. Feel His strength - stop feeling yours, it was never enough!! Feel his favour - it always LAY HEAVILY ON YOU, on your life, like a blanket that cannot be lifted.

And lastly, HEAR HIS VOICE.

It will never be stilled. Learn its tone, learn to recognize the words it speaks....learn the pictures it paints, learn never to forget it. LISTEN TO IT. Let it be always in your ears.

The LORD isn't in our circumstances - He is in our lives!! He isn't just out there making a way - He is our way!! The LORD isn't in our experiences - He wants to be our experience. He isn't JUST our deliverer, He is our DELIVERANCE.

Now tell me, what will you go through without Him? (Don't answer it - it's a stupid question!!!!)

"At the very thought of Jesus, His presence can be found,
He's as close as the mention of His name,
There is never any distance between my Lord and me,
He's as close as the mention of His name.

He's as close as the mention of His name,
Jesus, Jesus
He's as close as the mention of His name,
Jesus, Jesus

In my hour of struggle, so many times I've found,
He's as close as the mention of His name,
Just breathe the name of Jesus and turn everything around,
He's as close as the mention of His name,

He's as close as the mention of His name,
Jesus, Jesus
He's as close as the mention of His name,
Jesus, Jesus"

- May 25, 2007

re-store

re-store
- verb (used with object), -stored, -stor⋅ing.

1. to bring back into existence, use, or the like; reestablish: to restore order.
2. to bring back to a former, original, or normal condition, as a building, statue, or painting.
3. to bring back to a state of health, soundness, or vigor.
4. to put back to a former place, or to a former position, rank, etc.: to restore the king to his throne.
5. to give back; make return or restitution of (anything taken away or lost).
6. to reproduce or reconstruct (an ancient building, extinct animal, etc.) in the original state.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.
- Joel 2:25

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
- Psalm 23:3

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of the earth
you will again bring me up.
You will increase my honor
and comfort me once again.
- Psalm 71:20-21

So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning....
- Job 42:12

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.
And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.
- Isaiah 61:1-4

Some of us live in perpetual brokenness of our own making.

Of all ruins, that which we have caused ourselves is the most steely foe we face. Isn't it somehow astronomically harder to forgive ourselves than to forgive someone else? For many of us, the accusing voices are none but our own; our stains are none but those we have caused. WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMIES.

And yet, I have been asked to tell us, I don't care what we've done to ourselves! There is no ruin so complete; no accusing voices so vehement, no self-caused stains so indelible, that Jesus cannot restore.

Complete restoration is not a dream or a wish. It is a promised certainty, a guaranteed hope, an accomplished reality even. It is not something we believe in wishfully; it is something we must live in as if it is already in fullness accomplished.

It's interesting that Isaiah 61 talks about ruins and their rebuilding - it is in our areas of failure and defeat that the restoration will come; where we failed, there, in the place of defeat, will be a glorious future and the heaven-given opportunity to make right again; to RESTORE! Thank you Jesus!

And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.
- John 11:43-44

Take off the graveclothes...... and walk free.