Flight Risk

And I say, Oh, that I had wings like a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest;

yes, I would wander far away;

I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah

I would hurry to find a shelter

from the raging wind and tempest.

 – Psalm 55:6-8

It used to be the fashion and possibly it is still to think this psalm was written by David as he fled from his son, Absalom.  Some of the elements could suggest that, but it is often the case that, as Jesus said, our enemies are those of our own household.  My worst enemy cannot be escaped by flight for I drag him with me wherever I go.  Aside from that, all of us have probably had a faithless friend or a family member who has betrayed or turned against us in some way.  The loss of trust, and what often appears from our point of view as a sudden, inexplicable change in attitude, may leave us devastated. 

Of course, the cause of our seeking an escape doesn’t have to be dramatic.  Sometimes the daily drudge, the minor but cumulative trials of living in the 21^st Century have us gazing with longing at our wallpaper of a remote tropical paradise or a secluded mountain cabin or, in my case, something with two wheels rather than two wings.  Just to think of getting away from the usual suspects of pressures, demands and responsibilities can give us a respite. 

As my trigonometry teacher used to say, “The whole world’s insane.  I’m the only sane one left.”  It’s not hard to think as we look around that somehow we have put the deranged in control of the ship.  Yeats wrote nearly a hundred years ago “Things fall apart … The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  The plague has only spread in the decades intervening.  There is no remedy within the world.  We must rise out of it and get above it, until the flood subsides. 

And it will subside. 

It may be a hundred more years or five hundred more or a hundred thousand. I do not know.  I only know the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove, and that He gives wings to our soul as He dwells in us.   He is the Comforter, and nothing, save our own foolish obstinacy, can separate us from Him.  He keeps us in the innocence of the dove even as He gives us subtle wisdom to make us more than a match for the serpent’s guile. 

At the End of the World is a Well

Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. – Genesis 21:19

The idea that what we as humans can know is all that exists is hardly worth dismissing.  The most materialistic of materialists might wax eloquent on the existence of the vast quantum world which we can experience only indirectly and speak of sensibly only through intricate mathematics.  We have been able to create new instruments and tools that extend  our human senses and inform us that the natural eye sees only a narrow range of the spectrum and that the natural ear responds to only a segment of the sound waves striking it continually. 

The verse above is taken from the story of Hagar and Ishmael.  After the birth of the promised heir, Isaac, his mother, Sarah, insisted that her servant Hagar and her son Ishmael, fathered by Abraham, be sent away.  Sarah perceived Ishmael as a threat to Isaac and potentially a negative influence upon his development.  Putting aside that it was Sarah’s idea to have a “proxy” son by her servant, she was probably right in demanding a separation.  We see later in Genesis how the jealousy of an older sibling toward a favored younger brother created difficulties on a couple of occasions. 

Driven into the wilderness with only a skin of water and some bread, Hagar and her fourteen-year-old son wander rather hopelessness without apparent direction until the water is gone.  Did she intend to try to return to her people in Egypt?  Did she have a destination in mind and lose her way?  Or was she so distraught by the uprooting of her life and her loss of purpose and status that she simply gave up?

 There were established settlements in that region.  There were trade and travel routes that could be followed where water could be obtained at regular intervals.  Hagar apparently sought out none of those roads.  Abraham did not provision Hagar and Ishmael in the way that he did with the intent that they would simply go away and die somewhere out of sight.  He loved Ishmael and had received a promise from the Lord on the boy’s behalf.  Being a wealthy and generous person, we can be assured that he gave the exiles enough to allow them to reach some other camp.  Perhaps he even directed them to the encampment of one of his friends or allies.  It was Hagar who squandered their resources. 

Her life was settled, so she thought.  Hagar was more than a servant in Abraham’s entourage, she was the birth-mother of the patriarch’s son.  I have no doubt that Hagar loved her son, but she also viewed him as her prize, the thing that distinguished her from everybody else.  It was Ishmael’s relationship to Abraham that heightened Hagar’s self-image and made her feel slightly elevated above the other servants.  She had pride and position.  When her status was lost, Hagar decided that her life was over.  She gave up and walked aimlessly into a deserted area until she and her son reached a point where they were about to die of thirst.  Unwilling to watch the death of her son, she left him in the shade of a bush and moved away.  Ishmael means “God hears”.  As the boy began to cry in need, the Lord heard him.  God roused Hagar and spoke to her, opening her eyes to the boy’s future.  It was not to end in agony as a pitiful feast for scavengers.  This child, too, was Abraham’s seed.  Despite not being the chosen line for the Seed of Abraham, Ishmael would still found a great nation, and, ultimately, a great adversary for the Chosen. 

We can take a spiritual lesson from Hagar’s trouble.  We can see that our lives have lost purpose and direction, and we have wandered until death was upon us.  We gave up, but something in us cried out to God, and He opened our eyes.  We saw our Well of Living Water, finding Christ and a renewed destiny. 

But we lose something if we “over spiritualize” the reality.  Was there a well there?  Yes.  Was there a well there before Hagar saw it?  We don’t know.  Perhaps in her extremity, Hagar missed seeing something that was plainly before her.  She would hardly be the first or the last.  The most reasonable explanation would be that Hagar knew there was a well in the area and was looking for it but had been unable to locate it.  After sitting in the shade for a bit and recovering, she was able to process the visual information correctly and figure out where she was. 

Reasonable, though, is not always true.  There is a reality that underlies what we normally see and experience.  When that reality breaks through, we are apt to call the event a miracle.  That which we need is ever before us.  We long for what is at hand, unless we have allowed our minds to be so perverted and twisted by lies that repentance has become for us impossible.  Hagar could have rejected the voice of God, denied it and died, but she was not far gone in self-absorption. 

I really do not think God minds all that much if we struggle to find a more “reasonable” explanation, if, in the end, we rise, go to the Well, and drink.  Reality can be pretty disturbing to humans who have grown so accustomed to this derived manifestation, which is, after all, God’s creation.  He is satisfied if, when we are in need, we remember, He hears. 

Mystics of many countries and many centuries have spoken of this memory; and the honest men and charlatans, who keep the magical traditions which will some day be studied as a part of folk-lore, base most that is of importance in their claims upon this memory. …  It is perhaps well that so few believe in it, for if many did many would go out of parliaments and universities and libraries and run into the wilderness to so waste the body, and to so hush the unquiet mind that, still living, they might pass the doors the dead pass daily; for who among the wise would trouble himself with making laws or in writing history or in weighing the earth if the things of eternity seemed ready to hand? 

        -  W. B. Yeats from “Magic” in Ideas of Good and Evil.

Wheel in the Sky

Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!”  And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.  When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!”  And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.  When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand.  And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”  When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!”  And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth. – Revelation 6:1-8

My wife bought a book recently.  It was written by one of the popular teachers on prophecy.  He points out that “end times” does not mean “the end of time”, which is true if somewhat obvious.  I like to think about it like the Ages in Lord of the Rings.  Certain elements have ascendancy in a given age.  Those elements may weaken or even disappear in a subsequent age.  This is different from the natural cycles of history, though those cycles are part of any age.  A prophetic book whether the Revelation of John, the prophecies of Jeremiah, or The Chronicles of Narnia will be applicable in any epoch or administration and fulfillment may be glimpsed in types more than once.  Humanity has seen in Christ the anti-type that casts all of the shadows of the Law and the Prophets.  Some dark day humanity may see the ultimate anti-type of the many antichrists that pop up in history.  I do not know. 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been around and may come around again.  They speak of a process that breaks down civilization.  It begins with the rider on the white horse.  Some say this is Christ, some say it is the Antichrist.  My interpretation is my own, but I see this first rider as tyranny, for tyranny almost always arises in a Good Cause -- on a white horse.  The tyrant comes as a rescuer, as one who can solve the problems inherent in, as Bill Clinton once said, too much freedom.  The sword of the red horse rider is a weapon symbolic of war in general, so perhaps the bow is meant to be a more specific symbol of suppression.  After all, the white horse rider comes as a conqueror rather than a warrior.  He is not fighting defensively.  He is the invader, the usurper and, ultimately, the despot. 

Tyranny and conquest are naturally tied to war and conflict.  Thus the conqueror is followed by one who takes peace from the earth and initiates great slaughter among humanity.  We see this played out on a small scale throughout the world as people find it impossible from time to time to live without killing their neighbors.  Many of these conflicts threaten to flare up and engulf much larger regions in blood red flames of war. 

The third rider is on a black horse and is the harbinger of economic hardship, famine, and lack.  Again this is a natural extension of the destruction of war which hampers the production of food and other resources along with trade and transport. In addition to hampering production and displacing resources, war itself is directly demanding in terms of food, fuel, and material.  There is nothing constructive or productive about war.  It is the ultimate form of broken-glass business stimulation.  It creates only to destroy.  The lives of many are disrupted.  Many become refugees, losing their own power to produce and becoming a drain on the productivity of others.   

Displaced people without enough food, lacking adequate shelter, often crowded together in unsanitary conditions are near perfect incubators for epidemics.  We are not surprised when the pale horse of pestilence follows hard in the footsteps of war and economic collapse.  As in our own American Civil War, disease often kills more than the war machines themselves.

What is unveiled to us is the dance of history, the cyclical destruction of humanity’s best efforts.  We build our civilizations and systems, determined to eliminate the flaws and weaknesses of prior systems only to find that we have created a weakness of a different kind.   There is only one kingdom that has a sure Foundation, and even that one must be tested, purged, purified, and refined.  The Church will endure, though at times it must be reduced to the Remnant, so it seems.  A company or two of prophets will be hidden away, and the Lord will find His seven thousand who have not bowed to Baal, and, in the end, we will come, not to another cycle of exaltation and destruction, but "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ".  And He shall reign.    

Until then, while the horsemen ride their rounds and the old earth rolls as a sleeper in a recurring dream, the sun goes down each day, and I hear Yeats reading the evening news.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?