Teach me Your way, LORD, and I will live by Your truth. Give me an undivided mind to fear Your name. – Psalm 86:11
The talent of the illusionist is to hold the attention of the audience and focus it where he wants it. An illusion is effective because what we see is more convincing than what we know.
Even as we seek the truth, we find what our eyes see so convincing that our mind is too often divided. James reminds us: For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. I have more than once gained some insight only to be overwhelmed by the winds of circumstances, driven away from a solid anchorage in a gale of doubt when it came time to live by the truth I knew. Knowing the truth will set us free when we know to the point that our mind is undivided.
The illusion today is that things are out of control. This is the case for me personally, and, I suspect, for many others on a grander scale. It appears that chaos reigns, from senseless acts of violence to crashing financial markets to incompetent, power-hungry politicians. Who can but wonder: is anyone at the helm?
On a personal level, I see the people around me, the people I love, trapped in illusions. They are cast about from one crisis to another, suffering, yet refusing even the attempt to live by the truth, saying, in effect, there is no reality beyond the shifting relativity of the surface. I am rejected because I refuse to agree with their point of view and offer them, instead, a place to stand on the solid Rock. They would grasp the wind in their defiant fist as they are blown they know not where.
The psalmist called on the Lord to teach him His truth. The writer may have regretted that prayer, for when the Lord sets out to teach us, He teaches by trial and experience. James reminds us again: Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work … (James 1:3-4).
Endurance, patience, perseverance – to be tried is to be delivered from a divided mind.
Why am I caught off guard or surprised by the trial that follows my insight? Of course if the Lord is teaching me He will send the trial to make the new understanding real, to incorporate the truth in my very being, my heart rather than in my head.
Do not be surprised. Each time the low gong sounds it calls us to the arena. It is the shallow intellectual in me that fails to realize grasping truth is a little like Bilbo taking treasure from the dragon’s lair. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations.
It could be that we have the beginnings of an awakening, both of truth and the trials that accompany it.
I been standin’ on the rock
Waitin’ for the wind to blow.
I been standin’ on the rock
Waitin’ for the wind to blow.
I been standin’ on the rock
Waitin’ for my seeds to grow.
--“Standin’ on the Rock”, John Dillon (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
