“When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born.”
Four lines, simply describing the ungilded, unremarkable, dastardly start of life. Though the first line speaks to the growing and beauty of the scene, there is nothing pretty or memorable about this birth, this first breath. We might make assumptions … poverty, physical disfigurement, flaws, a lacking of gifts.
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things.
The negative descriptives of the narrator’s self-debasement continue … what an image is drawn for the reader! He/she is ugly, unappealing and something to stay away from, like the devil himself … but unable even to cast a spell. Oh, how we have all had such thoughts of our self. Self-deprecating thoughts as we stare into a mirror, as we speak and our words seem to echo in our heads, while those around were immune to their sounds.
Wait! A hint is given … this is not human, this is a creature on four feet.
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
An outlaw! This four-legged creature is despised by society, since the beginning of time. Not the first to be fed (perhaps speaking of more than just nutrition), whipped, ridiculed. This being has been told, been shown how lowly it is … since it’s very beginning. It knows that it. is. nothing … nothing of value. to anyone.
BUT … though it knows it is senseless, unintelligent, even speechless
it has a secret!
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.
An hour. One hour changed this creature forever. It recalls the noise about him, the soft feel of the fresh palms under his hooves.
The secret is revealed! The scales that had blinded this creature to the reality of it’s strength, it’s grand purpose … have fallen away. As Newton learned, also through ugly reality, this creature learned too that though it was once blind, it now can see.
A one hour ride through the city, redeemed this creature, this jackass.
*Though G. K. Chesterton never mentions the one who rode upon the back of this donkey, though Jerusalem is never whispered, both are shouted in the inner transformation of the narrative voice of the donkey. Perhaps, Chesterton knew, as we all do … deep down in our tattered outlaw hearts, that we all begin as a lowly, despised donkeys in need of one hour with our Savior.
I know I don’t know it. When I am praying, I don’t know it. When I am making an important decision, I don’t know it. When I am looking at the future, I don’t know it.
God’s will … I don’t know it.
I have been thinking about God’s will quite often lately. As I have been returning to work after a bit of an absence. As hubby and I look at what a new business could look like. As I have been praying for healing. As I try to envision personal purpose in this life God has given.
Then, just yesterday, as I was driving I heard this quote, definition really, by Nancy Leigh DeMoss
“God’s Will is what we would choose if we knew what God knows”
and I have been mulling this over in my mind ever since.
I think we sometimes use God’s will and God’s heart interchangeably.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us of the importance of the Word of God in knowing his heart, “all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” If the Bible is, indeed the Word of God, to know it, to dig into it often, is the best way to know his heart.
But, his will … that, I think, is a different thing. His word does speak of his will:
We know that we have been instructed to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
We know that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Similarly, that “he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). And our repentance, our redemption is of such value, he made the biggest of sacrifices for us, “for God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
And maybe that is the will of God that we need to keep our focus on. Maybe it is imperative that the goal of our lives be our repentance, be our accepting of his love in our lives? Maybe, if we keep our own focus on the value of his redemption of humankind, we would then see that his will is not just our redemption, but the redemption of all around us. Maybe it would mean that we would live our lives as a sacrificial offering to the one who saves us. Maybe it would mean that we so reflect our God, that others cannot but help to be drawn to him.
A heat dome (a new word for the local vernacular) last month resulted in over 800 heat-related deaths. If you walk around it will quickly become obvious that plants and trees have been dying in this heat in which they are not designed to survive.
Everything is dry!
There has been no rain in July, only 37mm in June … the first half of June.
It is dry.
With the heat dome and the dry conditions forest fire season is upon us. Every day I awaken to updates on the radio, the weather websites. Images of smokey skies, people in shelters and fire racing up tall trees and hillsides are the daily visuals.
The other day, while listening to a podcast about (ironically) Moses and the burning bush, it took on new significance in this hot, dry summer.
The story of Moses is told in Exodus.
Just the other day I wrote about the conditions into which he was born in the post, Hidden in Their Hearts. His destiny at birth, like all the other Hebrew babies, was a permanent water bath (drowning).
So, years later,
Moses,
born in love
given back to God in trust
was in a hard place.
He had been raised in the palace of the Pharaoh,
killed an Egyptian guard,
run away,
protected seven sisters from shepherds who hadn’t allowed them to water their flocks at a well (but … maybe he was the one who was really thirsty?)
was given one of those daughters, in marriage (a Midianite woman who thought he was an Egyptian … so maybe he was still struggling with his identity?),
and now he’s off wandering in the dessert with his (his father-in-laws) flock.
Though it would appear that he knew his location, I think Moses was lost. The identity he portrayed was not that of a Hebrew, but Egyptian. He held within him the unconscious memories of songs and messages and prayers of his mother who buried them into his lovingly nurtured heart.
I think Moses might have been as dry as much of the landscape of British Columbia is currently … ripe for fire to burn it to ashes, to dust. He was a man born to a purpose, one his mother knew was a purpose given by the God who saved him as a baby. Yet, here he was, tending sheep in the hot, dry desert.
“the angel of the Lord appeared to him (Moses) in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.” (Exodus 3:2)
Moses was seeing the impossible. A tree, on fire, yet the tree was not destroyed. That would catch my attention!
Then he said something that reminded Moses who he was,
“I am the God of your father,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (v. 6)
“the God of your father” … in this statement and the following fathers of the Jews, God reminds Moses of his identity, of who he is, of the whispers of his mother, buried in his heart before he could understand. This is the beginning of his rebirth, the beginning of his life of really living. This is his holy ground moment.
As God tells Moses his plan to save the Israelites through him, Moses gets doubtful (the dry bones of doubt). And he says, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (v.11)
Now, if I were God, I would be rolling my eyes (like a parent) and saying, “did you hear me? were you listening? I just told you who you are!”
But God, still burning in that still full of life bush, is much more patient and compassionate (v.12).
“And God said, “I will be with you.””
And this is the God I serve. He reminds me who I am and then he reminds me that
He.
will.
not.
leave.
me.
alone.
Yet, Moses still has doubts …
I think what is happening here is fascinating because there’s a bush on fire, but it’s not destroyed. God is speaking to Moses, telling him who he is, that he will not be left alone and it is Moses who is brought to ash in the face of this fire.
His life so far has been one of confusion and feeling lost and lacking attachment to anything and anyone. There have always been whispers of identity within his soul, yet they have always been out of reach, a jumbled mess. Now, in the midst of an isolated desert, the God of his people, God himself is challenging him to abandon his fear. To make the faith of his fathers HIS OWN FAITH. He has a choice to make … the choice we all have to make … do we chose to live the life God has for us?
And who shall I tell them sent me? This is Moses last question and the answer, though perhaps odd and indefinite to us (and to him) is nothing short of definite,
“I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’
“This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation.”
I am … no beginning, no end. Reliant on nothing and no one.
This is the God who creates, who never leaves our side, and, later in this story of Moses being willing to follow and obey God, we get to hear God’s ultimate promise, to the Israelites and to us all …
I will redeem you
Redemption is the result of obedience, of trust. It is the result of our ashes being born into new life. Only God can make new things out of the rubble of our dry and thirsty lives.
It’s a story I had heard enough times that I could confidently re-tell it to completion. There is a difference, though, between telling a story and fully understanding it’s message.
As I listened attentively to the pastor tell the story of the prodigal son, my mind was illuminated to the details and meaning as never before.
I have never quite understood (or maybe I did) the reaction of the older brother as I did Sunday morning, listening to the pastor share the message … but it was not that which caught my attention, my heart’s attention, the most.
It was the return of the younger son.
He is off in the big city, not a hint of any money from what he had demanded from his father, starving as he watches pigs eat their fill. He decides he will go back home and offer himself as a servant to his father.
He plans what he will say:
“I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants” (Luke 15:18-19).
Then he heads home.
Head bowed. Shoulders slumped. Moving at a snail’s pace. Rumbling in his tummy. Fear and dread in his soul.
Why fear and dread?
Where do you come from? I come from a small town … a very small town, that was still a village when I lived there and the population was under two thousand. Everyone knew everyone, and everything about everyone (at least they thought they did).
This young man, the prodigal son … he knew that returning to his father was the easy part (remember, his father willingly gave his son what he asked for … not what he was required or expected to do … not what was culturally acceptable to ask for). What he was fearing was his return to his village.
In Jewish society, to have left the village in such a shameful way, to go live with, spent his money on, slept with the unclean Gentiles … would all mean that he would face a kezazah (means “cutting off”) ceremony. He knew that as he arrived in the village, the people (older men) would greet him, breaking a large clay pot at his feet, as a public shaming of how he has cut himself off from his village, from his father.
This is what was in his son’s mind as he considered going home, as he took each step closer to the village.
His father knew of this ceremony too.
And the father knew his son.
So …
“ … while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son” (v. 20a).
Aristotle had said, “great men never run in public” and perhaps he knew of the societal norms within the Hebrew society at the time that Jesus told this parable.
It was okay for servants to run, even women were permitted to run (but just a bit), but a man, a patriarch … never. That would be unacceptable, disgraceful!
The father in the story (who we know to understand as representing God himself) saw his son “while he was still a long way off.” This father had to have been looking for his son, perhaps at the village gate. I think we can surmise that he was planning on circumnavigating the villagers and the custom of kezazah.
“(he) threw his arms around him and kissed him” (v. 20b).
The Return of the Prodigal Pompeo Batoni, 1773
I love the image above, of an oil on canvas, by Pompeo Batoni. This painting, more than any other I have seen before, communicates the mercy that this father offers. Not only are his arms open wide, but see his right hand, grabbing onto his cloak, in an effort to wrap it around his son … in an effort to shield his son from the consequences that are due him.
It is then, in that moment of mercy when the father steps between the son (us) and the wages of sin, that the son abandons the speech he planned in his mind, for a confession born in his soul:
“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (v. 21).
And when the father says let’s party, it is a celebration of the lost sheep.
“Behold what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God–and we are!” (1 John 3:1)
Our heavenly father loves us so much that he waits at the gate of the village for our return, prepared to ensure that we will not be “cut off” from a life with him.
” When we find the insufficiency of creatures to make us happy, and have tried all other ways of relief for our poor souls in vain, then it is time to think of returning to God.” Matthew Henry Commentary
As this day dawns, our souls sing Joy to the World, as the Silent Night has birthed a new day with the angels singing, Glory to the new born King.
This is the day that advent prepares us for, the day that love came down.
God sent his son, to give us hope that we might know of his kingdom, that we might have our sins forgiven (and forgotten), that we might have his Spirit to guide us, that we might return to the beauty of Eden, where we can walk and talk with God himself.
There is no message more important, more practical, more true than this:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16
For redemption is the best theme of any story, for it is the theme of our story … we are reminded today of that offering of redemption … we just have to choose to receive it, hands and heart open.
itsawonderfilledlife 