Down By The Riverside

… [A]s we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. -- 2 Corinthians 4:18

All that is seen is temporary.  I look at photographs that captured the images of a moment.  Perhaps I can go back to the spot and some of the same things are there, but nothing is the same.  That moment in the stream of time has moved beyond us. 

The Missouri River is not the same water traversed by Lewis and Clark.  Why do we call it by the same name?  The water is seen, the stream bed may even be seen.  The water in the river changes constantly as does the exact course over which it runs.  That which is much more lasting is this great and vast drainage, these many watercourses coming together and pouring into this channel. 

Spiritual reality is much like that.  The experiences, events, and existences that we see in time are but the current manifestations of that which underlies and creates.  The present is always pouring out of and over eternity, being created and shaped by the eternal which may not now be perceived directly.  Just as the water’s surface can tell us something about what lies below, we may learn much about the nature of unseen reality by that which is manifest to us.  In addition, like a topographical map of terrain or a depth chart of a body of water, special revelation gives us greater insight into truth. 

The unseen is not invisible; it is not yet visible.  Scripture tells us that the elements will be consumed by fire and the heavens will roll back like a scroll.  There will come a point where the temporal and the eternal will converge and the veil of transience will be put aside and cast away. 

The wise will not ignore the visible but will look through it to that which lies behind.  They will see the impermanent for what it is and be neither seduced nor intimidated by it.  We will know the Truth, and we will be free.

The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place (Revelation 6:14).

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed (2 Peter 3:10).

 

The Beginning of Wisdom

All the words of my mouth are righteous; there is nothing twisted or crooked in them. -- Proverbs 8:8

I have an older brother and two older sisters.  My brother is the “good one”.  My oldest sister is the defiant one, and my other sister is the conniving one.  It’s not really bragging in this field if I say that I’m the smart one.  My father was not a person who put up with defiant children.  I got in trouble a time or two and was surprised that it didn’t bother him that much.  On the other hand, if I had ever defied him, I would have suffered.  He and my sister, his first-born child, were very much alike, and they clashed a lot.  My sister loved her father, but she just couldn’t take orders.

I always did what Dad said.  I never learned to take orders from anyone else, not even my wife, as letting her have her way was more like being indulgent with a child than being under orders.  But by the time I could walk and talk, I had figured out that I was going to do what Dad told me to do one way or another.  There didn’t seem to be much point in getting a beating beforehand -- hence, the smart one. 

The other thing I figured out was that Dad wasn’t going to tell me to do anything actually “bad”.  Sometimes we played practical jokes on people.  Sometimes we did things that would be considered illegal – but never immoral (hillbillies know about Romans 13; we also know we are the authority).  Sometimes I had to do things that were unpleasant, even painful, but there’s no point in getting bigger without getting tougher.    

This is not to say I did not have my time of rebellion.  I did, but it was against teachers and cops and bosses and rules in general, and against God.  What I eventually found was that God is a lot like Dad.

Defying God is self-destructive, and it runs counter to our own good.  Remember, I was only the smart one in a cohort of four where there was little to no competition.  In the bigger world, among all God’s children, I had to learn the hard way. 

God doesn’t give His law, revelation, guidance, and wisdom to my hurt.  He will never tell me to do wrong, which is one of the tests to let me know whether it was actually God talking or not.  It will sometimes be unpleasant, challenging, and, yes, even painful to do what He says.  But there’s no point in going to heaven if I’m not fit for it.    

All and Not All

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 

By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged. – Romans 3:3-4

One of Paul’s main points in his Epistle to the Romans is the universality of both sin and redemption.  Sin pervades every heart and soils every soul.  Yet the Cross is raised to trump our fall and deliver every soul from both iniquity’s penalty and power. 

To the believer, the nearness of salvation is axiomatic.  When one realizes – and that’s really what it is – that one is saved, the power of God becomes an ever-present reality that is, at times, almost tangible.  Before we believe, though, God often seems distant both in location and time.  After all, God’s throne is in heaven – wherever that is.   Up there, we say.  We are down here in the dirt of earth.  The miracles of the Bible happened a long time ago.  God used to speak to prophets, but He doesn’t do that anymore.  Jesus was crucified back two thousand years ago.  The Apostles died and were buried.  The men and women who heard them and were taught by them are dead and decayed, and so on for generations and generations.    

Nevertheless, we … seek God, in the hope that [we] might feel [our] way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ … For we are indeed his offspring (Acts 17:27-28).  This is the truth, not for some only but for all.  The truth is true whether everyone believes it or no one believes.  That some of us fail to accept, refuse to hear or acknowledge the truth does not negate the price that Jesus paid for our redemption; it does not restrict His grace or void His faithfulness to us. 

All are redeemed in Christ, just as all in Israel were God’s chosen, just as we are all His offspring.  Any given individual may realize and recognize this, or he or she may continue to follow the gods of self and sense, dust and dung, metal, matter and mortality. 

Paul continued in his warning to those very religious Athenians:  Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man (Acts 17:29).  The carnal mind craves a carnal god.  Christians have no quarrel with physics, chemistry or biology.  We only reject the dumb god, Chance, and its imaginary brethren dwelling atop the dung heap that is their holy hill. 

There are many reasons not to believe – pride, fear, ignorance, rebellion, misunderstanding, et al.  Many will embrace those reasons, rationalizations, and excuses and continue to bow to dead idols.  I wish there was a way to change that, for through disobedience and unbelief the world will be rocked and racked with suffering and destruction and turmoil.  Still, God reigns, and all who enter His kingdom will know His peace.

I Didn't Run Into House

Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.  -- Deuteronomy 10:14

This is just a brief summary of all that I have learned from our recent trials:  We know less than we think.  I mean, we live in the country and everything, but all these doctors graduated from accredited medical programs, and some of them are pretty smart.  I didn’t run into House because he doesn’t exist -- neither do the eccentric geniuses in CSI or Sherlock Holmes or Captain America or happy, cute, funny gay couples or Magic Negroes or 98-pound women who can kick my rapidly aging butt in a fist fight without messing up their make-up. 

We laugh about “first-world problems”, but we do live in a first-world fantasy.  Perhaps even the concept of first-world versus developing nations versus third-world nations is mostly illusion – a bubble that is about to burst, a fluffy castle in the air that is really a glowering thunderhead.

We must know a lot because we have these amazing devices like smart phones and the internet and lasers, and we have mapped the human genome.  No doubt we are a clever species.  We are where we are because some of our ancient ancestors figured out that fire was a good thing, and they figured out how to create it.   

Try to imagine the leap that some humanoid, running from a grass fire on the savannah, made when he or she decided that it was possible to intentionally ignite and control this deadly and terrifying phenomenon.  I have a book on the shelf called Caveman Chemistry, but where did those first fire-makers get their PhDs in chemistry?  The point is that being able to create a new technology or device doesn’t mean we have a grasp of all the things that go into it.   

One of these days we might figure out why and how gravity acts the way it does and create anti-gravity, but our knowledge about how it works has taken us to the moon and sent our probes out beyond the solar system.

Ultimately, as Moses said, all of it belongs to God.  He alone knows not only how it works but why it works this way.  He knows, most importantly, the purpose for all of it.  That purpose is in Him, as both origination and destination – Alpha and Omega.  The universe may have been necessary to bring us about, and, in that sense, we could say that the world revolves around us, but we live to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  Find God and you will find the center of the cosmos. 

The truth and reality are much more powerful and elegant and beautiful than our myths, our maps and our theories, as insightful, pragmatic and useful as those may be.  We don’t have to throw away the map to enjoy the scenery.  We just have to know when to look up.