I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (I Thess. 5:23).

If you agree with God's purpose, He will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your life which you cannot get at, into harmony (Oswald Chambers: My Utmost for His Highest).

"The glory of God is man fully alive!" (St. Ireneaus: 130-200).

God did not create man to die, but to live.  To this day, science has still not discovered the 'death' gene in the human body.  But we die anyway.  The Book of Proverbs says "Guard well your heart, for out of it flow all the issues of life" (4:23).  When the Bible speaks of the "heart' of man, it is speaking of the "spirit," which is not the same as the "soul," even though in popular usage, we tend to interchange the terms.  The "soul" of man more properly refers to the part of us the Greeks called "Psyche," the mind and the emotions. 

Once the spirit of man is led by the Spirit of God, the life-energy (zoe, in Greek) overflows to the soul (mind and emotions) and to the body.  We are meant to live --on all levels -- by the breath of God in us.  Whatever is deepest in our hearts will control our minds and our bodies:  the mind of the sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace....if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you (Romans 8:6&11).

We all recognize how stress and anger affects our minds and bodies, causing all kinds of confusion and illness.  What is less recognized is how peace and joy also affect our minds and bodies:  we think more clearly, we recover from trauma more easily.  God desires our health of mind, body, and spirit, but it is only by walking with him, trusting him for the next moment, that we can finally begin to give up the anxiety that we use for protection against the future. 

Romans 8:28 says, And we know that all things work together unto the good of those who love Him...and Psalm 27 says, I am still confident of this:  I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (v.13).  If our confidence is in ourselves, we will be anxious, for none of us is immune from evil, and our resources are limited.  But if we know that God works everything that happens toward our good, if our confidence is in His love and His ability, we can be at peace in all circumstances.

When I first began reading the Bible, I was reading The Living Bible, a paraphrased edition.  (The translation does not aim at accuracy, but at readability.)  I have since given away my copy, but I remember being struck by a phrase from Psalms in TLB:  My body, too, knows full well that you are my God!"

That phrase has remained with me all these years, and I still say it often:  my mind and my body know full well that He is my God, and I will rest securely.  Surely, goodness and kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever! (Ps. 23).

Sacred Spaces

In his autobiography, Thomas Merton describes walking into a Catholic church before a service and finding people there -- all in prayer.  Some were praying the rosary; one was praying from a book of prayers; some were just kneeling before the Tabernacle and praying silently -- but all were in prayer.  That, for him, was the moment of conversion.  (More about this on another day.)  It did not matter what forms the prayers took; what struck Merton the most was that everyone in the place was in communion with God.

We consider all of our churches/ temples/ houses of prayer as 'sacred spaces,' and indeed, they are.  They are the places we tend to go to meet with God.  But our souls are also temples, meeting places of the human and the Divine.  That's the way it was in the beginning, from the time of Genesis forward. God never waited for a Temple or a church to be constructed before coming to meet with man. He met Adam and Eve in the garden; He spoke to Cain out in the field; He took Abraham from the land of Ur and spoke to him as he traveled. 

Once the Temple had been built by Solomon, the Jews tended to put their faith in the building as the meeting place.  After all, in the desert, before they had entered the Promised Land, Moses used to enter the Tent of Meeting and emerge full of light, so much so that he had to pull a veil over his face until the light diminished.  But even before the Tent had been constructed, God had come to meet Moses on the back side of the desert, in the burning bush: "Take off your sandals," God said, "for the place you are standing is holy ground."

Wherever we meet God is holy ground -- and from that 'ground,' there is a Divine-Life radius that goes out from us, as the light went out from the face of Moses.  One time, as I was driving home from school in five-o-clock traffic on the expressway, I needed to change lanes, but could not find an opening.  I asked the Lord to open a space for me, and immediately, I was able to move over to the lane I needed.  When I thanked God for the space, He spoke in my heart:  "I'll always open a space for you, because you open a space for my people."  And with those words came a clear image of open space all around me, a space where people could meet God if they but walked into that area.  I was awed and humbled, but recognized the truth it showed me:  whoever makes space for God in his/her life opens space around himself for others to walk into -- and that is sacred space, the meeting-place of God and man. 

Today, in God Calling 2, this was the reading:

As you recognize My dealings with you, Eternal Life flows through your being in all Its sanctifying, invigorating and remedial force.  Eternal Life is awareness of the the things of Eternity, Awareness of My Father, and awareness of Me.  Not merely a knowledge of our existence, even of our God-head, but an awareness of Us in all.  As you become aware of Me, all for whom you care are linked to Me, too.  Yielding Me your service, you draw, by the magnetic power of Love, all your dear ones within the Divine-Life radius.

No one is perfect; no one is "God-like" by nature, but the transformation of our inner man begins with worship, with acknowledging God as Lord.  We become like whatever we worship -- that is why the worship of idols will eventually destroy us from the inside.  Those who worship the god of war become war-like; those who worship the god of wine become drunk and confused.  That is why it is so important to know Who God Is -- because in communion with Him, His Spirit passes into us, and changes us forever.  As Oswald Chambers has said, "The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God-likeness.  God's life in us expresses itself as God's life, not as human life trying to be godly." [My Utmost for His Highest]

During the Babylonian captivity, the Jews came to know that it was not the Temple (which had been destroyed) that was the meeting place of God with man, but their own souls.  The Temple, the church, is where those who have met God within themselves go to celebrate and to share the overflow of that Divine Energy -- much as a couple in love go to church to celebrate their love with friends and family, to witness to the world around them the love that has transformed them into a 'new creation.'  And in their 'sacred space,' in the radius of their mutual love, we are all transformed for that moment into people of love and hope. 

Faith is Knowledge

The disciples said, "Lord, increase our faith...."  What they did not realize at the time was that as they walked with Jesus for three years, and as they were later to experience the Gift of the Father, the Holy Spirit, their faith was growing. 

Faith (Knowledge of Who God Is) is not theory; it is not "I think," or "I believe," even though those are the only words we have to describe our experience.  Faith is our experience:  we can be sure of what we know (believe) because we have walked it, breathed it, lived it.  Someone once said, "The man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument." 

When Peter's head went below the angry sea, and he knew he was drowning, he felt the saving grasp of a strong hand on his, pulling him up and out of the crashing waves that threatened to overcome him.  After that experience, Psalm 18, when he heard it sung in the Temple, would never have a "poetic" meaning -- a metaphor-- but would always describe reality as he had experienced it:

The waves of death rose about me;

the torrents of destruction assailed me;

the snares of the grave surrounded me;

the traps of death confronted me.

In my anguish I called to the Lord;

I cried to my God for help.

From his temple he heard my voice;

my cry to him reached his ears.

From on high, he reached down and seized me;

he drew me forth from the mighty waters.

He saved me from my powerful foe,

from my enemies, whose strength I could not match.

If Peter was later to lead the new church, he had to know, to have lived, Psalm 18.  He had not to "believe" it as a theory, but to know it in his cells, in his DNA.  His experience on a physical plane would undoubtedly have transferred to a spiritual plane after he had betrayed the Lord, his friend.  Surely Peter would have wanted to, like Judas, throw himself headlong from the Temple mount and commit suicide.  He was dying inside from what he had done.  Again, if he was the lead a church of sinners, he had to experience the strong, saving, restoring-to-life hand of Jesus, pulling him out of his depression and oppression, and "setting him on a high place," as Psalm 18 goes on to say:

It is God who arms me with strength

and makes my way perfect.

He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;

He enables me to stand on the heights....

(read the rest; it's strength to the soul). 

Peter would be ready to lead the church only after he had experienced his own weakness and the strength of Jesus.  His confidence could not be in his own gifts and strengths, but in God who saves us despite our own foolishness. 

It is only the person who says, "I was hard-pressed and I was falling ---but God opened a way for me" that I believe.  And for each one of us, "hard-pressed" has a different scenario.  We do not all have to be lying in a gutter in order to experience the loving and saving action of God in our lives.  I once felt guilty for feeling "hard-pressed" when, compared to my neighbors and to the third-world of poverty, hunger, despair, and oppression, my life was so easy.  But for each one of us, the path seems to close around us at some point, and we do not know where to go. 

There, there, is the doorway to faith -- to experiencing the strong hand on God reaching down to draw us clear and to set us on a high place.  Only then are we able to say to others, "Our God Saves!"  Only then do we have faith; we know what we know and nothing can convince us otherwise.

Leaning Into the Heart of God

One of the defining moments of my life as a grandmother came when my grandchild was two years old.  The family had been visiting us for Christmas, a week when A. and I spent every waking moment together -- going for walks, talking, eating together, and grandma just watching, watching, watching every precious thing she did. 

The morning they were leaving, A. and I sat on the bottom step together as her parents loaded suitcases in the car and rushed around making sure that nothing had been left behind.  Somehow, even at the age of two, she must have realized that they were leaving me behind, and as we sat there without a word being spoken between us, she leaned into my side as if to embrace me.  At that moment, I recognized the intimate and very special bond between grandparent and grandchild.  For the first time in my life, I myself was not responsible for getting things done -- for getting to the airport on time, for making sure that life's tasks were completed responsibly, for any accomplishment.  For the first time in my life, I had the luxury to just sit and love. 

That morning, we both leaned into one another's hearts.  She felt my sadness; I felt hers -- even though she was only two, there was a true communion of hearts.  As she has grown older, that bond continues, despite the physical distance between us.  We "lean into" one another with no words spoken.  When she was nine, we took a walk together, and she said, "You know why I like talking to you?  You listen!"  I listen because there is nothing more important to me; there is nothing I have to be doing at the moment.  Listening is what I am there for---and nothing else demands my immediate attention.

Now that I am fortunate enough to be retired, I am experiencing the same relationship with God.  There is nothing I have to be doing at the moment; I am free to lean into the heart of God and to listen to Him.  No words are spoken; no words need to be spoken.  I can sit on the front porch with my book un-read, dishes un-washed, garden un-weeded and lean into the heart of my God, who leans lovingly into my heart also.

Once I said to my grandchild, "I'm a terrible grandmother.  I don't write and I don't call."  Her response:  "But I know you're there!"  That about sums up the relationship.  We are both "there" when it comes to each other -- and nothing else is between us, interfering with that bond.  When Scripture says, "Be still, and know that I am God," does it not mean the same relationship?  When we are still, when there is nothing more important that must be done, we can lean into the heart of the Most High God and know that He is "there."

What is My Purpose in Life?

Our modern assumption is that God no longer "meddles' with us like this, that we are stuck with having to create ourselves and find our own meaning.  And when we fail at this ill-conceived venture, we are plunged into despair.  Indeed, some of our most dangerous contemporary afflictions---anxiety, depression, and soul-killing nihilism -- are directly tied to this loss of a transcendent purpose for our lives.  -- Paula Huston

One of my modern heroes is General Honore, the man who stepped off the helicopter in New Orleans a week or so after Hurricane Katrina had reduced that city to chaos and confusion.  In a time when city leaders had abandoned the people to destruction, looting, and shooting; when first-responders could not communicate with one another or even locate their own leaders; when people were trapped in attics without resources, General Honore took charge.  He did not call a committee to study the situation; he did not worry about being sued, or federal regulations -- He was a man called to a mission, and he responded with all of his knowledge, wisdom, authority, command, and talent.  In just a few days, order was restored; buses were taking people to places of safety, and the work of restoration could begin.

One year later, General Honore was to tell a group of men seeking leadership that the two greatest days of a person's life were (1) the day he/she is born, and (2) the day that person discovers why God put him/her on earth.  Honore knew that his entire life, he had been prepared for his mission.  Queen Esther was told that she was prepared and sent "for such a time as this," a time of great crisis for the Jewish people.  In the Book of Judges, God always had prepared a leader (a "judge") to rise up and take charge when His people were being attacked on every side.  We are all sent "for such a time as this."

When Paula Huston says that we assume God no longer "meddles with us like this," she is referring to the birth of John the Baptist, who was called to his mission in his mother's womb, before he was born.  Indeed, his very name was given to his parents before he was born.  We assume that first we are born, and then we have to create our lives and find our own meaning.  But the Biblical perspective is that we are created to do a work which God has prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10):  For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

When we are born, all of us have natural tendencies and inclinations toward some kind of interest or creativity.  Wise parents do not impose their inclinations upon their children, but watch and listen for the child's 'inner man,' the spirit that guides the child -- and they nourish it whenever possible.  All of the prophets speak of being called from their mother's womb to their mission.  Isaiah:  The Lord called me from birth; from my mother's womb, He gave me my name...(49:1).  Jeremiah:  Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart.  I appointed you a prophet to the nations (1:4). 

John the Baptist lept in his mother's womb when he heard Mary's voice and knew the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah he was sent to announce.  From birth, his parents had been prepared to nouish his calling as the forerunner of the Messiah. 

Psalm 139 is a wonderful source of meditation for those of us who are asking, "What was I born to do?"

What is the "work" God has prepared in advance for me to do?

Truly you have formed by inmost being;

you knit me in my mother's womb.

I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;

wonderful are your works.

My soul also you knew full well;

nor was my frame unknown to you

when I was made in secret,

when I was fashioned in the depths of the earth.

We do not have to create our own meaning; it has been given to us -- but we do have to bow before the One Who sends us if we are to fulfill the purpose for which we have been sent.  Praying Psalm 139 until the light breaks in our hearts is a wonderful place to begin.

Has God Commanded the Impossible?

You shall love the Lord [Yahweh] your God with your whole heart and with your whole mind and with your whole strength (Deut. 6:5).

This was the commandment given to Moses and re-iterated by Jesus as the greatest of all the commandments.  Is it possible?  Has God commanded something impossible, or at the least, impractical?

Many of the words of God we walk away from, as from an impossible dream.  We shrug our shoulders, thinking that we could not even begin to approach such a goal.  What we fail to realize is that we cannot keep even the least of the commandments, the ones we think are in our power to obey, by ourselves.  The more we read the Scriptures, the more we realize that one Scripture alone is not the whole story.  It is only when the Spirit begins to illuminate (teach us) the Scriptures by lining up one next to another, that we begin to understand what before seemed obscure or at least unrealistic.

The Bible does not yield its depths to those who read its surface; that is why we cannot take one Scripture only and expect it to "work," so to speak -- unless that one Scripture has been put into our hands as 'the sword of the Spirit' for the moment we need it.  The Bible is the word of God, but there are two Hebrew words for "word."  One is Logos, the stated, written Word; the other is Rhema, the spoken, living Word.

Both are revelation, but it takes the Spirit "hovering" over the Logos to make it live in our hearts.  Without the Spirit, the Word is like the land -- all the seeds and nourishment are in place, but it takes water to bring them to life. 

The Book of Zechariah says, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit," says the Lord Almighty.  That "word" is a clue to how we might love the Lord with our whole hearts, our whole minds, and our whole strengths -- not by "trying," but by yielding.  We cannot love God until we submit our hearts to Him.  When that happens, His Spirit rushes in to change our hearts, to spread throughout them the love of God.  And since the Spirit is infinite, His love continues to grow in us until we do indeed, love God with our whole hearts. 

The same is true of our minds.  A mind not yet submitted to God will never grasp the things of God, for they are taught to us by the Spirit.  We do not have to "try" to understand -- we cannot, anyway.  All we need do is to submit our minds to God, who is willing, indeed, Who loves to teach us.  His Spirit enters into the yielded mind and reveals to us the things of God -- things we will never know otherwise, no matter how much we study.

And our "strength."  Paul said that God's weakness is greater than our (greatest) strength.  When Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," He was not talking about weakness.  The word "Meek" in Aramaic has the connotations of a strong thoroughbred racehorse which is entirely under the control of its master.  Our "strength" must be yielded to God so that He can direct it to His purposes.  The Holy Spirit cares about our bodies as much as He does about our hearts and minds -- our souls.  He too will pour strength into us that we cannot even know we have, when we need that strength for God's purpose. 

God does not command the impossible -- He just wants us to ask Him how it might be done.



Consider the lilies....

This morning, as the sun was rising, I wandered out into my garden to survey its beauty.  As  I literally watched the lilies come to life, I sang songs of praise and thanksgiving for all the Lord has given me.  Everything is so beautiful that just observing what is growing makes me want to pray.

When I came to my desk and turned the calendar page, I read this:

"Consider the lilies," said the Master.  Truly, there is no more prayerful business than this "consideration" of all the flowers that grow.  And in the garden, they are planted especially to feast the souls that hunger for beauty, and within doors as well as without, they delight the spirit of man.

----Celia Thaxter

Reading that after my morning stroll through the garden sent me straight to Solomon's Song of Songs to re-read some of my favorite verses:

My lover has gone down to his garden,

to the beds of spices,

to browse in the gardens

and to gather lilies.

I am my lover's and he is mine;

he browses among the lilies.....

I went down to the grove of nut trees

to look at the new growth in the valley,

to see if the vines had budded

or the pomegranates were in bloom.

Before I realized it,

my desire set me among the royal chariots of my people....

Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside,

let us spend the night in the villages.

Let us go early to the vineyards

to see if the vines have budded,

if their blossoms have opened,

and if the pomegranates are in bloom--

there I will give you my love.....

Lover:  You who dwell in the gardens

with friends in attendance,

let me hear your voice!

I guess all of us have seen the garden sign that reads something to the effect that in the garden, we are closer to God's heart than anyplace else on earth.  C. S. Lewis, in his autobiography, tells of his very first intimation of joy, when he was seven years old.  His older brother had constructed a miniature garden of stones and twigs on a platter.  When Lewis saw it, his heart was filled with something he could not name, but as he grew older, he recognized the same feeling at times when he was out of doors and observing nature.  Later, he wrote that this unnamed hunger for beauty was the thing that led him to Christ and Christianity. 

Lewis reasoned that if the heart had a hunger for joy, then there must be an object that satisfies that hunger.  As a man who thirsts for water indicates that we are creatures meant to receive water, so our spiritual hungers also must have their proper objects that satisfy our hunger.  Satisfying our souls with the beauty of nature is the first step for many toward God.  As I wrote yesterday, Matthew Vermuti, even as a child, was attracted to religious art and to music, attractions that ultimately led him to the spiritual life and to God.

When we experience great beauty, when we are still and peaceful, when we are overcome by joy, let us sing to the Creator of heaven and earth.  He wants to hear our voice!  That is why He draws us with cords of beauty and of love.

History in the Making!

Wow!  I never thought I'd see this day in my own lifetime.  Yesterday's paper carried an article about the first married priest, who was ordained in Mobile.  His wife and six-month-old baby were present for the ordination. Matthew Venuti was an atheist growing up, became an Episcopalian in his early 20's, was ordained an Episcopal priest in 2011, and a year later, was ordained in the Catholic church.

Venuti was born in New Orleans to Catholic parents who had rejected the faith.  As hippies, they raised their children to be ardently atheist.  But they did take their children to museums, where Matthew was always drawn to religious art.  He studied music in New York, and became a heavy metal guitarist; rock and roll was his passion.  While in college, he met students that he called "happy Christians," and then, while reading the Bible for one of his classes, he suddenly one night thought, "I think this is true!"  Scared, he put away the Bible and for the next six months tried to immerse himself in other faith traditions --Buddhism, Hinduism -- whatever he could find -- but something kept pulling him back to Christianity.  He became a secret Christian through talking to other people on the Internet.

One day, he wandered into an Episcopal church, where the usher seated him next to a young woman who handed him a prayer book.  Later, he was to say, "The first time I walked into that church, I knew two things: this woman was going to be my wife, and I'm going to be a priest."

He married first, but the day he was ordained in the Episcopal church was the worst day of his life.  The moment he was ordained, he knew he had made a great mistake.  In tears, he told his wife, "I think I need to be a Catholic."  Eighteen months later, he was ordained by Bishop Rodi for the Catholic Ordinate of the Chair of St. Peter.  Pope Benedict XVI had created this U.S. Ordinate to welcome Anglican groups and clergy seeking to become Catholic while retaining elements of the Anglican heritage. 

Venuti will say Mass at the Cathedral, but his main responsibility is to minister to others following a path similar to his -- former Anglicans who are becoming Catholic.  There are 29 more Episcopal priests who will become Catholic clergy this summer.  Sixty more are studying now for ordination as Catholic priests. 

His story, and the fact that so many other Episcopalian groups are migrating towards the Catholic church, tells me that God is doing "a new thing" in our lifetimes.  There was clearly a kind of guidance going on in Matthew Venuti that he could not have seen ahead of time.  No one could have foreseen or predicted the Charismatic movement in the Catholic church in the 1970's, but that movement of the Holy Spirit renewed the church from within.  Far from being a separte sect, it has now infiltrated every aspect of the Church, and breathed new life into old ways.  I see Matthew Venuti's ordination as the beginning of a similar sea-change that will ultimately affect the entire church.  The Spirit of God is always full of surprises!

Even More Beautiful!

 When the Japanese repair a broken object, they embellish it with gold, believing that once something is damaged,

it has a history that makes it even more beautiful.

 

"The time is coming," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers

when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant,

though I was a husband to them."

 

"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,"

declares the Lord.

"I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor,

or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest"  (Jer. 31:33-34).

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

 

It has been said that our choice is to live either by the law or by the Spirit. The law, written on tablets of stone, is unremitting (blind, according to our image of "Lady Justice" with the scales in her hand.)  But, as I wrote yesterday about the murderer who became a monk, the Spirit can lead even the worst sinner into a life of glory -- something the law can never do!

 

(Apologies for the bold font -- I just cannot get it out for some reason)

 

Our hearts are broken by sin -- our own, or that of others -- but God's repair work can make them even more beautiful than they were at birth.  According to Semetic or Biblical expression, the "heart" is the dwelling place of our person, the place where we live, the place to which we withdraw.  The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others, and no one can fathom the human heart and know it fully (including ourselves).  Only the Spirit of God knows the treasures lying at the core of our being.  Only He can draw them out of us, if we are willing to surrender to His action in our lives.

 

The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives.  It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death.  It is the place of encounter, because as the image of God, we live in relationship.  The heart is the place of covenant.

 

The grace of God, given to us in Christ Jesus is "...the union of the entire holy and royal Trinity...with the whole human spirit" (Catechism of the Catholic Church).  Prayer, for us, is entering into communion with the Father, with the Son, and with the Holy Spirit, entering into the dynamic of their loving relationship with one another, of standing in the Presence of One Who is eternally active on our behalf, Who is even at this moment "writing His law" on our hearts so that we may enter even more fully into His joy and do even more the work on earth for which He has ordained us.

Heaven Begins Now!

In heaven, there are no religions or creeds; there are only relationships -- with God and with one another.  In the Book of Revelation, the new heaven and the new earth are described this way:

Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away (Rev. 21:3-4)

In the New Jerusalem, where the "Old order of things has passed away," there will be no longer marriage, or temples/ mosques/ churches -- but all will be one: the whirling dervishes of the Sufi religion, the Buddhist monks and practitioners, and the Christian believers.  Jesus said there would be one flock and one shepherd, and He prayed that they would all be one as He and the Father are one.  In John's vision, he says, "I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.  The nations will walk by its light...nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life" (Rev. 21:22-27).

The aim of religion is to lead us to union with God, and in Him, union with one another.  Sometimes the work of His hands in creation, in music, in art can also move us forward into momentary union with the Creator, but few of us can sustain that moment of union in our daily lives.  We need a more structured way, something that goes beyond the senses to our core, something that can overcome our natural tendencies to separate ourselves from one another.  We recognize that in this life, we are not united; there is much that separates us from one another, especially our religions.  So, then, how can union with God and with one another be attained? 

In the Book of Galatians, Paul says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise...Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." (Gal. 3:26-4:6).

Many people have questioned whether it is possible that someone like Hitler could be saved.  I think we might refine the question to ask whether Hitler could receive God's Holy Spirit in his heart, uniting him with the Father as a son and uniting him with the Jewish people he hated so much.  As C.S.Lewis points out, there is a difference between a woman who grumbles and a woman who has become a grumble.  With each choice we make, we gradually turn ourselves into more and more of what we choose.  It is possible, I think, to erase our humanity, our souls, the spark of divinity within us, althogether as we turn ourselves into sin, which cannot abide the Presence of God or of other people.  Sin separates and divides; but in Christ, who conquered sin, we find union of spirit.  He reconciles us to God and to one another.  If we cannot accept that Spirit that comes from God, it is impossible to be saved.

When Jesus came, he announced that the kingdom of God was within (or among) us.  He had already begun the work of reconciliation, of giving His Spirit, a work that would continue even more after His death on the cross and resurrection to a new kind of life.  Heaven begins now, if we can but receive it from Him!

Descent into Hell

I'm reading A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk by W. Paul Jones.  In this fascinating true story, Father Jones, a Trappist monk at Assumption Abbey in the Ozarks, recounts his friendship with Clayton Fountain, called "the most violent criminal with which our country's federal penal system has ever had to deal."

Fountain suffered severe beatings from a vicious father as he was growing up. Once his father beat him with a board, even hitting him over the head with it.  At 17, lying about his age, he joined the Marines, but wound up shooting his abusive staff sergeant point-blank.  While in prison for that murder, he managed to kill four men at different times, and in different prisons.  Finally, he was sent to Marion, Illinois, where a special impenetrable cell was constructed for him and where he had absolutely no contact with any human being at all.  His meal were slid through a slot in the door, but the door itself did not permit even visual contact with the guards.  He was to spend 5 consecutive life sentences behind that door.  He was so notorious that a newspaper did a feature article on him, hoping to support the death penalty as a choice of punishment in that state.

As a result of the article, a woman whose life had been totally depraved, but who had not committed murder, wrote to him to tell him how God had found her in the worst of circumstances.  He carried her letter in his pocket, and somehow it encouraged him to turn to God.  Eventually, he wrote to the Abbey, asking for help, and the monks there agreed to visit him -- although they were required to remain three feet away from his cell door and to speak with him through the meal slot.  He began working on his GED, and then on a college degree through correspondence, and eventually on a Master's Degree in Social Service, taking as his field of study the penal system in its social structure and the psychological effects it produces on inmates. During all this time, his behavior changed to peaceful and quiet submission.  He wrote to the wife of one of his victims, sending her all the money he had -- $800 ---earned through work he was eventually allowed to do in prison (typing in his cell).

Eventually, he requested permission to study for the priesthood, asking the bishop to consider him a hermit who would spend his life in prayer and penance for the good of others, a goal he pursued until his death from a heart attack.

The book raises questions about whether education and spiritual mentoring might help others hardened by evil, but its greatest message is how the love of God was able to reach this man through a simple woman whose life was almost as wrecked as was his, and how the love of God changed this man from a murderer to a contemplative.  He learned to structure his days in his cell around the monastic hours of prayer and meditation. 

Reading this book reminded me of our creed, which says that Jesus "descended into hell," and then rose on the third day.  I went to the first book of Peter and read this:  For Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.  Put to death in the flesh, he was brought to life in the spirit.  In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison....(I Peter 3:18-19). 

If he descended into hell once, he is willing and able to do it again and again, to bring back its captives. If this man was not beyond the reach of God's love and compassion, we have hope for everyone, whether living or dead.  God is not limited by what we see as impossible -- or even dead -- situations!

On Mentors and Guides

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road -- the desert road -- that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian enuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians.  This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet.  The Spirit told Philip, "Go to that chariot and stay near it."

Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet.  "Do you understand what you are reading?" Philip asked.  "How can I," he said, "unless some explains it to me?"  So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him....."Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?"  Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus (Acts 8:26-35).

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

With many such parables he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it.  Without parables he did not speak to them, but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.

(Mark 4: 34)

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

Everyone who seeks the Truth needs a guide or a mentor.  Like the Ethiopian enuch, how can we understand the words of God unless someone explains them to us?  The enuch was reading Isaiah, hoping to understand for himself, and God sent Philip right up to the carriage.  Was that because the enuch had gone to Jerusalem "to worship" that God sent him an answer to what he was seeking? 

Recently, I watched Captains Courageous, a movie about a spoiled young boy who thought he owned the world, until he fell off an ocean liner and was rescued by a fishing schooner.  Under the discipline of the schooner's captain, the young boy began to learn that he was not the center of the universe.  The captain said of him, "He's growing up:  when he came to us, he knew all the answers; now, he's beginning to ask questions."  I think when we are willing to accept a mentor, a guide, we too begin to grow spiritually.

When Jesus told the crowds that his flesh was the life of the world and that whoever ate his flesh and drank his blood would live forever, He said this: "The Spirit gives lives; the flesh counts for nothing.  The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life."  From this time, many of his disciples turned back nd no longer followed him. 

"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.

Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life." (Jn. 6: 53-68).

I think each one of us must come to the place where we decide who it is that "has the words of eternal life."  We must abandon the idea that "we shall be as gods, knowing for ourselves" good and evil, and bow down in worship before the only One Who can lead, teach, and guide us.  We must find our mentor, our guide, Who alone has the words of eternal life.  The prayer of an honest man avails much, and the quest for Truth, without predisposed "knowing" is the most honest and pure prayer we can pray.

I believe that the journey, like that of the enuch, begins in worship.  God will speak to our hearts and send someone to teach us as we ask Him to lead us into the Truth.  Only He knows where we need to begin to learn.  If we are willing to begin with acknowledging Him, "our hearts will burn within us" as we recognize the mentors and guides He sends:  Spirit speaks to spirit.  

Acknowledging God is the greatest adventure of all; it leads us in paths that continually open before us.  He does not save us by ourselves, but in communion with others who have gone before us in the spiritual life -- and that communion with Him and with others who have been taught by Him is richer than anything the world can offer us. 

Celebration!

35 years ago today, June 15, 1977, I entered the hospital for major surgery.  That morning, my roommate, whose last name I still do not know, prayed for me to receive the Holy Spirit, and my life changed forever.  On that day, in the words of Isaiah 61, I received "a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment or praise instead of a spirit of despair (or faintness)."

I knew immediately that with her simple prayer, I was different.  What I could not know then was that the Gift for which she prayed would remain with me forever.  In fact, when I went back to my doctor for a follow-up visit after surgery, I expressed concern that I would lose the Gift, let it go through neglect or indifference. He assured me that I did not "have" the Holy Spirit, but that He had me, and He would not let me go, no matter what.  He spoke wisdom.  All these years, despite my own craziness and wandering around, the Holy Spirit has remained faithful to me.  He has continued to do His part, even when I was not doing mine.

Before that morning, I was worried about everything that "might" happen: world-wide famine (as predicted by Edgar Cayce for the late 70's and 80's), sickness, etc.  Afterwards, my fears disappeared and were replaced by confidence in the care of God, no matter what.  Before that morning, I seemed to be angry over everything and about nothing; afterwards, my anger slowly dissolved into peace and joy.  Before then, I was timid, shy, and afraid to let "my light shine."  Afterwards, I found myself, even in the hospital after surgery, going into people's rooms and telling them about the love and compassion of God -- who was this strange person that I had become?

Before that prayer, I never read the Bible and never intended to read the Bible.  Afterwards, I could not stop reading the Bible.  Beginning that day with the Acts of the Apostles, and reading about Pentecost, I realized that that was what had happened to me!  I was intrigued and kept reading all the way to the end.  And then I began from Genesis and read it all again.  And then I began to study the Bible:  history, geography, commentaries.  Even today, when I open the first page of Genesis, I am in awe, as if reading it for the first time!

Before that day, my prayer was a cry for help, and a cry of despair:  "What do you want from me?"  Afterwards, I heard praise and thanksgiving and singing coming out of my heart and soul.  I started noticing other people on the street and praying for them, loving them without knowing why or how.  When I read "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit," I understood what was happening to me.  God's own love was replacing my shriveled, selfish heart, and the Holy Spirit was creating in me a new heart, made after His image and likeness.

Before then, I was put off by the "emotionalism" expressed by Charismatic worship and evangelistic people; afterwards, I was drawn to them and wanted to learn all I could about the Holy Spirit and His work.  I began to attend prayer meetings and even became a leader in our local group.  Before, I was afraid to allow God to enter my life, afraid of what He might ask me to do.  Afterwards, I welcomed His Presence, knowing that whatever He did was good and perfect and for my joy, not my hurt.

I still turn away from all that God wants to do; I still remain unfinished and incomplete -- but He continues to work on me.  And I am forever thankful for the dramatic change He effected in me.  As my doctor told me, His love becomes deeper and greater with each passing year, and He is faithful to complete what He has begun in me.  I look forward to 35 more years of the Holy Spirit's action in my life:  He brings me into the Presence of God, and God's Presence into me.  What more could anyone ask or desire?

Truth Comes Last

Plato located the soul of man in the head; Jesus, in the heart.

(source unknown)

We tend to think that because Jesus said, "Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free," that Truth comes first -- and then we believe it.  However, reading Mysticism by E. Underhill, I am realizing that Truth comes last.  Jesus told the Apostles that they would know the Truth only after having been with them for three years.  They had had many opportunities to walk away from Him because they did not understand Him, but they could not.  They were drawn by something more powerful than intellectual understanding; they were drawn to Him by a powerful and irresistible love. 

Many times He said to them:  Are you so slow to understand?    It was not intellectual enlightenment that held them fast to Him.  As simple men, fishermen, they probably had not cared too much about the fine points that fascinated the scribes and Pharisees; they just wanted to catch fish and eat them.  They just wanted to provide for their families and share a laugh with their friends.  But His Love -- well, that was something else. 

It is only after passion has awakened interest that we want to know all we can about the person who has awakened our passion.  The desire of knowledge is a part of the desire of love.  We want to know in the deepest, fullest, closest sense, the thing we adore.  Love is a quest which moves us out of ourselves toward something or someone that can be fully known only when possessed.  The aim of religion, like that of love, is communion, union with another.  Intimacy is its essence -- and in being intimate with Someone or someone, we come to know that Person/ person in a way we could not know them otherwise.

Love is energetic, moving us forward toward the other.  Knowledge tends to be passive, receptive. 

Love is stimulated by emotion and interest; we act because we feel we must.  All of our achievements in life are born of love, never of mere thought.  "The intellect by itself moves nothing," said Aristotle.  Our reasoning powers are analytic, not exploratory, and our thoughts do not probe that in which we have no interest, attraction, or desire.

That is why we cannot teach children or teens about God unless we touch some part of their emotional life.  In religion, the "God known of the heart" is more important than "God guessed at by the brain."  Loving intuition is more fruitful than intellectual proofs.  "Life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is in the last analysis the end of religion" (Leuba).

At the touch of passion, doors fly open which logic has battered on in vain, for passion rouses to activity not merely the mind, but the whole vitality of man.  It is the lover, the poet, the mourner, the convert, who shares for a moment the mystic's privilege of lifting that Veil of Isis which science handles so helplessly, leaving only her dirty fingermarks behind.  The heart, eager and restless, goes out into the unknown and brings home, literally and actually, 'fresh food for thought' ."  (Underhill: Mysticism)

God can be known only from within, as is true of other people and all of nature.  That is why a small child can "know" God in a way the scholastics cannot.  I remember being drawn to the tabernacle, to Mass, to prayer before I knew anything at all.  And later in life, much of what I thought I "knew" was based on something, I don't know what, but something outside of God Himself.  It was as if my heart had been coated over by my mind -- but in one moment, all that "knowledge" was swept away and "I knew the Real God," in the words of someone for whom I myself prayed many years afterwards.

Being born again I think means letting go of what we "know" through our senses and through our minds and going with our hearts, our spirits, our inner cores -- letting them love, for the first time, without reserve, and without understanding, and without caring to understand.  Once we "fall deeply, passionately, hopelessly in love" with the Living Presence of God, we can begin our walk into the Truth as led by the Spirit, as revealed by God Himself to our open hearts.

Mysticism and Encounter

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) wrote  much about the relevance of mysticism for ordinary people living in the modern world.  In her book Mysticism (1911), she wrote that mysticism was "the art of union with Reality," and she expressed mysticism, "the soul of religion," as the experiential dimension of faith.

About the same time, Watchman Nee, who spent the last 25 years of his life in a Chinese prison for his Christian beliefs, was writing The Normal Christian Life, expressing the experience of God's Presence as "normal" for believers.

I wonder how many people have really experienced God as the "normal."  We tend to think only saints and crazy people "experience" God, that it is not a "normal" experience for most of us.  But when I begin at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; with Moses and with all the prophets; with Jesus and the Apostles, and with all the saints who followed up to Evelyn Underhill (1941) and people who are writing up to our time, I see that "mysticism," if you want to call it that, IS the normal Christian life.  Even as a child, I can remember experiencing God as a Reality, not a myth.  And that experience has but grown stronger and deeper with every year of my life.

If we could line up on one side of the road all those who have experienced God as a living Being, and on the other side of the road those who have not, I wonder which side we would choose.  Does God want us to experience Him, or just to "follow the rules of our faith?"  I think the "rules and regulations" are supposed to hold us in place until such time as we encounter the Living God behind our religion.  Once that encounter has taken place, we are never the same again.  In fact, 2 Cor. 4:18 says that once the veil is removed, we are transformed from glory to glory in our encounter with the Living God.

Like any Person, God wants us to know Who He is.  He wants to reveal Himself to us in Truth, in Faithfulness, in Love, in Compassion.  He wants us to see Him as He is.  Because of who we are, the revelation must be a gradual one, from the slight gleaning of dawn to the full light of day.  And as we see Him, we are changed.  Many people believe (wrongly) that first we must change, and then we'll see God -- but He always reveals Himself to those who are helpless to change before they see Him. 

To the helpless Hagar in the desert, dying for lack of water, He revealed Himself as "the One Who sees, the One Who hears."  To Moses, on the back side of the desert, He revealed Himself as "the One Who has heard the cries of His people (in slavery.)"  Jesus is the New Moses, who, beholding the Face of God, set His people free from the bondage of sin.  Now, we too can behold the Face of God, Who hears the cry of the poor. 

If we do not believe that God wants us to know Him and to love Him because we know Him, maybe reading Underhill's Mysticism would be a good place to begin.

Reprograming Our Tapes

No matter how perfect our parents were, we all have tapes running in our heads that were programmed into us before we knew how to verbalize or even understand the words.  Those tapes, because they are not "rational," sabotage us all the time -- telling us we didn't do it right, or we're not good enough, or that God will punish us.  If we try to talk ourselves into the opposite beliefs, the tapes keep running anyway, because they don't believe our rational explanations; they exist at a sub-conscious level. 

Sometimes our guilt programs us; we failed in some area, and so we are now convinced that we will fail again.  We constantly hear the voices in our heads, telling us what the tapes are saying about us.  And there's no arguing with them.  They almost seem to be a part of our very souls.

But there is a way to "re-program" our tapes.  The most important information for our souls is not what our parents said in their imperfect states, but what God says about us.  If we don't know what God thinks or says about us, we can find it in the Bible, the "library" of God's own revelation, so that we would not have to guess or make up what He thinks.  If a person never reveals to us his innermost thoughts, we are always in the dark about how they feel.  But when they tell us what they are thinking, we feel safe.

After Moses died, Joshua became the leader of Israel, and God said to him:  As I was with Moses, so I am with you; I will never leave you or forsake you.  Now Joshua had seen how God was with Moses; he had walked with Moses a long time.  When God said to him, "As I was with Moses....," Joshua had a living picture, a memory, a visual, an inner knowledge, or experience to go by.  And God gave him further instructions:

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth;

meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful in everything written in it.

Then you will be prosperous and successful.

The first Psalm reiterates these words:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,

or stand in the way of sinners

or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the Law of the Lord,

and on his law, he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted near steams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever he does prospers.

The Hebrew word we translate into English as "meditates" actually means "mutters," but that word in English has the overtones of insanity, so we can't really translate it accurately.  But here's the key:  We have all heard the quotation "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."  For years, Charles Capps has been preaching that we have to hear ourselves "muttering," repeating what God says, as seeds sown in our spirits that will eventually bear fruit.  That is, when we begin to "mutter" what God says about us instead of what we or our parents have said about us, we in a sense re-program and  re-create ourselves. 

We believe what we hear before we are rational, the seeds that are sown into us as infants and children.  And those seeds have bourne much fruit in our lives, even if we have been trying to reject them.  What I know about gardening is this:  the weeds keep growing back again, no matter how many times we pull them out ---- unless we plant something else in their place, something stronger than the weeds.

What our spirits desperately need is God's word, God's seed, that will bear much fruit, even to 100 fold, in our spirits.  God told Joshua to be strong and courageous.  Those characteristics come only from being convinced that God is with us as He was with Moses, and that we cannot fail, even though we are still our weak and not-strong selves. 

No one was weaker than Mother Teresa, and she knew it.  But she also knew that God was with her as He was with Moses.  When we become convinced of that truth at the deepest levels of our being, we are at last free to walk forward unafraid.  We don't know where we are going, but we know the One who is with us.  I would challenge anyone to take one Scripture that he/she would like to believe and to repeat it, mutter it, until it become a reality, a truth to him/her.  God told the Israelites to write His commands on their doorposts, to bind them to their foreheads and wrists, to repeat them to their children.  He knew what He was about.  It take more than hearing something one time for us to believe it; some say the key to good teaching is repetition, repetition, repetition. 

I have a bracelet with Ps. 46:1 inscribed on it; I wear it everytime I leave the house, and I read it often while I am out:  God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress.  The morning I found out there was a mass on my right lung, on the way to the doctor's office, I heard Charles Stanley teach for half an hour on how to deal with a crisis, from Ps. 57:1:  I will take refuge under the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.  As I left the doctor's office, I knew that God had sent His word to me even before I knew I would need it, so I repeated it to myself over and over until it "took" in my spirit. 

We need to not just read, but hear, the Word that God says to us.  And we need to hear it not with our ears, but with our spirits.  So we need to say it until we finally hear and believe it at the deepest levels of our being.





In Miracles, published in 1947, C.S.Lewis tells of the first step from atheism and materialism toward Christianity.  It happened while he was riding a bus in Oxford, but the event was not related to anything that happened externally.  He felt as if suddenly a door appeared before him that he could push open, or leave shut.  He chose in that moment to go through the door, and it felt to him that he was shedding his skin of harsh clothes, like a cumbersome suit of armor.  In that moment, he experienced a kind of freedom he had never before felt.  He had made a choice demanded by his deepest nature, yet it was the freest choice he had ever made.

Shortly after that, Lewis knelt for the first time in his life and prayed to his unknown God, describing himself as the "most reluctant convert in all of England."  At that time, God was barely, if at all, personal to him, but later, he was to confess:

I never had the experience of looking for God.  It was the other way round; He was the hunter (or so it seemed to me), and I was the deer.  He stalked me like a redskin, took unerring aim, and fired.  And I am very thankful that that is how the first (conscious) meeting occurred.  It forearms one against subsequent fears that the whole thing was only wish fulfillment.  Something one didn't wish for can hardly be that."

I think Lewis' experience is more common than we imagine.  Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote a book called God in Search of Man, in which he says the same thing about the Jewish people that Lewis reported about himself --- God was the One in search of companionship, not the other way around.  And if we look carefully at the stories in the Old Testament, we do see a kind of "Hey, you!" initiative on God's part. 

He called Abraham; He told Abraham that his destiny was to be "Father of Many Nations."  He called Moses, and told him his destiny was to free the Israelites from Egypt.  He named the prophets before birth and would not take His hand from them until they fulfilled the purpose for which they were sent. 

None of these men could have been accused of "wishful thinking."  They were as reluctant a bunch as you'll ever meet -- outside of the 12 Apostles, maybe.  The history keeps repeating itself again and again in all the saints of the church.  They are called to their destinies by a power beyond themselves. 

Something to think about.          

I will be traveling until June 15. 

The Breath of God

The first chapter of Genesis always holds the power to wow me.  I never get tired of "seeing" it unfold before my eyes and in my heart. 

The book opens with the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of chaos, the dark and unformed abyss.  The Hebrew word "ruah" translated as "Spirit of God" can also mean "breath, breeze, wind, zephyr."  When the waters begin to stir, the breath of God is upon them.  Then He speaks:  Light! Be!

And light was!  God saw how good it was!  God separated the light from the darkness -- and He named both for what they were -- He called the light: Day! and the darkness He called: Night!

Whenever I read this chapter, I cannot help but see it as the pattern of our spiritual lives.  The Breath of God hovers over what in the Hebrew reads as tohu va-vohu, meaning "emptiness."  And the waters of our soul begin to stir.  God sends the Light by the Word of His mouth, and He separates the light from the darkness, naming both for what they are. 

John's Gospel begins with the same words as the Book of Genesis:  In the beginning....., but then he says was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  That "Word" first spoken over the emptiness of chaos was "Light! Be!"  And so it was.

John goes on to say, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood/ comprehended/ grasped/ overcome it....the true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

In the beginning was the Creator, the Word, and the Ruah/ the Spirit.  All three created the heavens and the earth, not all at once, but gradually unfolding the fullness of life.  In the first three days, the spaces were made, separating the waters for the earth, the heavens, and the sea.  Only after space was made for new life did the new life begin to appear:  the land produced vegetation; the heavens were filled with the sun and moon; the sea teemed with living creatures, and the sky with birds of the air.

Our spirits grow with the same progression -- first comes the Light of the world, separating in us the light from the dark.  As we begin to follow the light, our "earth" is filled with good things, from "glory to glory."
Our world gradually becomes more and more ordered and orderly, making sense as the chaos is pushed back.  The light grows stronger and stronger, and the darkness can no longer overcome us.

Like all of creation, we develop and come to perfection under the action of the Creator, the Light, and the Spirit -- the Breath of God.  All that is required is that we continued to look up, to allow Him to breathe into us, to send His creative Word into our souls:  Light! Be!  As long as we do not walk back into the darkness and embrace the chaos, His creation in us continues. 

But He created man to "rule" over the work of His hands.  If we choose, we can also refuse the Creator, the Light, and the Breath and decide to 'become as gods,' knowing good and evil.  (In Hebrew, "knowing" means experiencing, or embracing wholly.)  When we do that, we confuse, or mingle the light with the darkness, eventually bringing about chaos, where there is no longer a separation of light and dark.  Again, the waters threaten to overwhelm us.

Fortunately, though, the work of God did not end with the beginning.  It is forever ongoing and active.  Each day it begins again, and it is the same as it was in the beginning:  The Spirit of God hovers over our chaos, the Light once again enters into our darkness, and the Creator does a new thing -- can you not perceive it?

Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth.

The former things will not be remembered,

nor will they come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever

in what I will create....(Is. 65:17).

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me (Jn. 14:6).

When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me; but you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning (Jn. 15:26).

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.  But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth...He will take from what is mine and make it known to you (Jn. 16:12 & 15).

You diligently search the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life.  These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life (Jn. 5:39).

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

"Like Judaism, Islam sees [the journey of Abraham] as being as much of an inner journey as an outer one. 'All spiritual-minded Muslims say that when we pray we should try to be in an Abrahamic state,' says Sheikh Abdul Rauf. 'We should take Abraham's viewpoint toward the world. We should try to be Abrahamic in our being.'

"And how would he describe being Abrahamic?"

'First, complete devotion to God, even if it involves leaving your family and leaving your town.  On another level, making our own contractual agreement with God.  Each of us has a covenant to make with God, 'I will worship you as my God and you will take care of me.'

'And finally, knowing yourself on the deepest level.  The prime objective of religion is to know God, but the only way to do that is to discover God within our own consciousness.  This happened to Abraham, and it can happen to us.  And anybody that happens to will choose to live a life in accordance with God's practice.'

."....Departure is paramount to Christian identity....The message of Abraham is to be alone, to be quiet, and to listen.  If you never hear the Call in the first place, you'll never know which way to go."

                                        [ -- all taken from Abraham by Bruce Feiler]

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

The "What" of Faith follows the "HOW."   Neither Abraham in the Old Testament nor the disciples in the New knew What they believed until they had surrendered to a Person who called them out of darkness into Light.  The "HOW" is the act of surrender to a Person.  Truth, like Love, is of God and in God, and comes from God.  We can know the Truth only by knowing God.  The Pharisees made it their life's mission to study the Scriptures, but the study somehow had not led to the Abrahamic surrender, to the covenant that each person must make with God.

We don't begin our journey by knowing the Truth, but after we say, "You are my God, and I trust You to lead me," He sends the Spirit of Truth, who leads us into all Truth.  It is a gradual process of discovery, like the dawn rising to the full light of day.  And it is always an individual journey:  God has no grandchildren.  We cannot "inherit" the faith.  What we have heard from our forefathers and mothers is only the prelude to our journey. 

In each generation, the journey occurs.  And on the way, we meet the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob:

He says to us, "I am the God you have heard about from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and.....; now it is between you and Me.  Will I be your God also?"

And it is only after that encounter that the Scriptures begin to unfold to us, that we discover that what we have heard previously was truth, our truth.  Many people who have never read the Bible have discovered its truth by knowing the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

Isn't it strange that Abraham is considered the Father of the three major world religions--Islam, Judaism, and Christianity?  I have experienced more fellowship of spirit with Moslems at times than with nominal Christians.  And I have certainly experienced fellowship of spirit with Jews who worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Not all Christians are "children of Abraham;" not all Jews are "children of Abraham," despite their blood-lines; and not all Moslems are "children of Abraham."  But Truth is from the Spirit of God, and He knows how to unite those who belong to Him and who hear His voice.

The "Rocking Chair" Class

When I was teaching the Bible as Literature at Delgado Community College, my favorite class of the semester (and the students' also) was what came to be known as the "Rocking Chair Class."  I would bring in a rocking chair and place it at the front of the room, facing the students.  Then I would sit down and tell "my story" of how the Lord had brought me to the Community College -- how I got to be where I was then.  When I finished my story, I would invite the students to come sit in the rocking chair and tell their stories of how God led them through some difficult or confusing passage to where they now were -- to tell the story of their life journey in part.  We had an hour and a half for that class, and it was never enough time.  People who would never stand up in front of a class and speak were very comfortable in the rocking chair.  The chair "said" that they were not expected to pronounce, teach, or know anything except their own experience; they were the only ones who could tell their own stories.  And the stories spoke volumes.

This class was always my introduction to the story of Abraham.  And it worked.  His story was our story then, for everyone in the class had made some kind of journey to get where they were "today."  Of course, the students who enrolled in this class tended to be older students, not the 18-year-olds whose own journies typically had not yet begun.

It is on the journey that we learn who God is.  It is recalling the moments of the journey -- how it began, where it broke down, how it ended-- that we come to know the God Who Called us out of darkness into the light.  St. Paul had a great education and knew a lot of stuff, but his "story," his "journey," did not really begin until he encountered the Living Christ on his way to Damascus.  That was his story!  Everything else was just prelude.

In the same way, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are just prelude, the background setting, for the call of Abraham.  That is where the story begins -- with the journey to a place he knew not where.  On the way, he came to know the God Who Called him, who guided him to a good place, who overcame with divine grace all the obstacles along the way, and who ultimately fulfilled His promises.  That was my own experience, and the experience of my students -- and we recognized it in the stories we told.  There is a great and remarkable similiarities in people's stories (and their response) once they have experienced the Living God!

There is also a great and remarkable similarity in the "stories" or patterns of those who do not recall what God has done for them.  That pattern is outlined in Psalm 106; it is a predictable progression (or regression) from one state to another:

But they soon forgot what he had done

and did not wait for his counsel....

They gave in to craving...

grew envious....

worshipped idols...

despised His inheritance....

did not believe His promise...

grumbled in their tents...

did not obey the Lord...

yoked themselves to Baal...

sacrificed to lifeless gods....

rebelled against the Spirit of God...

shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters....

and descrated the land by their blood.

Our journey is always from darkness to light, or from light to darkness, based on whether we remember or forget what God has done for us.  Moses warned the people just before they entered the Promised Land:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you--- a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant ---then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Deut. 6:10-12).

If we want to sing every day, the best place to begin is by recalling our life's journey -- how we got from where we began to where we are now.  Those are the stories worth remembering and telling to the next generation.  The Jews did not first develop theology; they first celebrated with annual feasts the great events of their lives -- like we do birthdays, our memorial stones along the way.  Their faith eventually grew out of their feasts, their remembrances of their great journey from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light.  They never forgot what God had done for them, and they gave us a great pattern for worship based on their experience.