Sighed, Be

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.   And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 4:5b-7

When we hear someone say, "The Lord is at hand", it is often followed by talk about the Second Coming of Christ.  Jesus said He would never leave us.  He says that He is the Vine, and we are the branches.  He says that, if we abide in Him, He abides in us.  That's close.  That's at hand.  It's that kind of "at hand" that Paul is talking about in his letter to the believers at Philippi.  If the Lord is near to us, so close that "in Him we live and move and have our being", if that is our reality and understanding, the implications are powerful, and we are, or should be, free from anxiety.

A co-worker and good friend of mine just IM'ed me a little while ago.  He is one of our database administrators.  I am still making the transition from Sybase to DB2, and some things still cause me problems.  He's the guy I contact if I can't figure something out.  He is at hand via email, phone or instant message. 

If we have problems and trials and quandaries in life, why do we not bring Jesus in on those difficulties? 

Paul makes a guarantee — not that gold will rain from heaven to pay off your mortgage, not that lightning will strike all of your adversaries.  He says that if we will tell our troubles to the Lord, pray and ask for help, admitting, in effect, that the solution is beyond us, our minds will be surrounded and garrisoned by the peace of God, not a peace that necessarily makes sense, rather one that goes beyond the horizon of our understanding.  The road disappears over rise.  The peace of God assures me He is as much in control of the part that I cannot see as He is the part I can see.         

"For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin," says Romans 14:23 — strong words.  This classifies worry and fear right alongside hatred, lust, greed, and envy as being neck-deep in unrighteousness.  (By the way, if you are reading this and haven't figured it out already, I'm just preaching to myself.)  I always think I can figure everything out for myself.  There is no doubt that, in some ways, I'm not a complete idiot — not that being an incomplete idiot is anything to brag about — but I can solve problems sometimes.  I ought to do that.  There's a difference, though, between problem-solving and fretting.  Both might keep you awake, but the latter is driven by and based in fear; the former is a function of confidence or conviction.

The bad thing about the Lord is that He gives people freedom to be stupid.  The good thing about the Lord is that He gives all of us freedom.  I don't want to be a marionette.  I cannot ask for others to be.  Those around us can make our lives in this world more difficult through their bad choices, evil actions, and sinful behavior.  God is not going to stop that.  But what He will do, like the One and Only Grand Master Eleven-Dimensional Chess Player that He is, is make all things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

Tell Him about it.  Prayer in; peace out.

Camouflage

Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.  – John 20:17

I considered this passage a year or two ago, but I came back to it the last couple of days because it is so poetic and unique in its perspective. 

Mary weeps among the tombs filled with remains, clutching at the straw of the wheat after the reaping.  One approaches with the rising sun behind, his face in shadows.  Perhaps he knows.  She pleads with him.  He tells her who He is by calling her name and warns her not to cling to Him for He must ascend.  He goes to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, the Comforter of the same kind as Jesus Himself who will be with them and in them. 

This is our question:  will we know Him when He comes if we insist on clinging to a single mode of understanding Christ?  When He comes instead in rushing winds and tongues of fire, in a strange, new selfless love, in persecutions that scatter the seeding saints as a dandelion’s fertile cloud, will we know Him?  When He comes to Jerusalem in judgment and destruction, as the besieging armies of the heathen, will we recognize Him?

To those seekers looking into the light, His face will always be in shadow and mystery.  It is not to forms and appearances and surfaces but to the voice, the word, and the truth that we cling.  In darkness and shadow or in blinding light we cannot trust our eyes so we listen.  It is not another’s name He will call but yours, and mine.  Only then are we sure to be undeceived.    

The Lord asks us if we are willing to know Him when we meet Him as brother or sister, mother or child, friend or stranger.  Can we forget the shade of human limitation and sin and hear the voice that calls?  He has kept His promise to never leave nor forsake us, in the storm, in the stones.  He is the stake, the flint and steel and the spark struck.  He is the passing angel who whispers forewarning to our presumptuousness; the one who pours courage like molten metal into our collapsing hope.   He is the Unchanging God of Infinite Guises, rising in circumstances like gale-driven winds of the sea, always calm as the depths.

Paul, standing amid the Athenians on Mars Hill, references the poet Epimenides of Crete, “Yet [God] is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’”.  It is our own ignorance that creates a distance between ourselves and God.  We can find Him everyday, everywhere in everything.  Without light and shadow, color and contrast, the world would be flat and dimensionless in our eyes.  God stands above, but He also permeates the world, and it is His presence in and around us that gives us the ability to discern and perceive, to understand and apprehend.  He gives us our depth of vision.  He causes us to hear the music. 

How we doubt Him in the grind and the pain. 

How we forget Him in the joy and the gain.

In a voice like rain, He calls me: 

 When you drown in My love as the ocean,

When you are devoured by My love as a beast,

 When as a sword My love descends

To unburden you for release,

Will you know Me?