Here I AM

I was sought by those who did not ask [for Me];
I was found by those who did not seek Me.
I said: Here I am, here I am, to a nation that was not called by My name.
I spread My hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in the wrong path, following their own thoughts — Isaiah 65:1

The earth belonged to Satan. I wonder if he even noticed that evolution was taking place, that there was a subtle, sometimes unnoticeable direction to all that was happening. What did the Adversary think when the great, mindless saurian eating machines were driven into extinction? Did he view it as some sort of victory because he revels in death and destruction, or did he understand they were making way for an even more dominant, and, to him, dangerous species that would arise? Did the devil imagine that those ape-like creatures were God's invasion force? Did he know that someday One would defeat him — wrest from him the keys of hell, death, and the grave, and invade even hell itself? Did he rejoice as they founded religions on blood, trying to appease some unknown force they called a god? Or, even as he lapped up the wine of pain and suffering in his ever futile attempt to ease that everlasting hunger and thirst, was he still plagued with a vague foreboding of his own future torment?

I wonder.

We were certainly blind enough, confused enough. What were we supposed to do with all this inner turmoil, this thought and not-thought, this darkness? Where did it come from? What did it mean? Why did some thoughts and actions seem wrong — though they appealed to us and even satisfied us for a time? What were we doing here?

I don't pretend to know the answers. I know that God is the Caller and the Chooser. 'Many are called; few are chosen.' We were homo, but were we sapiens before the chosen one entered the gates of the Garden? Probably not. After that, the revelation begins. I don't have to speculate so much. I know that the Adversary sought to undo God's choice, and that man fell, joining himself to the rebellion.

I know, too, that God never stopped calling, or choosing. He chose Noah and Abraham and Jacob and Joseph and Moses. He chose them to come out of degraded, blood-thirsty heathen cultures and sophisticated, humanist empires. He called them to follow Him into deserts and to fiery mountaintops and to suffering for His Word as He had once called Adam to follow Him into paradise. As the Lord revealed Himself to those saviors and patriarchs, those covenant-makers, altar-builders, and lawgivers, the truth began to be known through them. Until at last the Truth was known in Person, in the Son, in Christ who went to the ultimate altar, made the ultimate sacrifice to establish the ultimate covenant in His own blood.

Not that there weren't plenty of the devil's kind — even among the "chosen" people, following after their own thoughts, their own temporary satisfactions, after the lies and rebellion of the Adversary who held most of the world in thrall. It's so even today, even after the Adversary has been struck down. The serpent writhes in the dust though his head is crushed. His venomous lies have a life of their own, poisoning still, destroying still.

Time after time, the antichrists have arisen. They rise and will rise, deceptive golems, mudmen made desirable by delusion. As the Living God calls, so calls the dying Adversary. Shining sequin scales adorn angels of light, throwing back false reflections of man made in his own image.

There is, though, light. Despite the blinding dazzle of endless, empty, circular reflections, we — even we who are outsiders, not a part of the frozen chosen, who have no heritage, no history, no maps, perhaps — seek Him. Somehow we know there is a Source of light behind the deluding shining, a Source that the Adversary cannot darken so he breaks it into a myriad of confusing points to lead us astray. And yet we find Him Whom we did not know enough to seek.