The Agreement

Agree with God, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you. -- Job 22:21

If we are made in the “image and likeness” of God, how can we know who we are without knowing Him?  How can we know Him without being willing to accept who we are?  This is not a catch we can resolve apart from God’s revelation of Himself, and such an unveiling disturbs the pride and self-sufficiency of man. 

When we see the holiness and power of the Almighty in contrast to our sin, weakness, and mortality, we are abashed and without hope that we could ever meet His standards.  Simply reading through the Sermon on the Mount is enough to leave the swiftest and most ardent pursuer of God gasping in the dust.  But this is who we are in Christ.  The Cross makes all the difference, the exchange of His life for our death, His strength for our weakness, His conquest for our defeat. 

All the Lord asks is that we agree with Him, accept His revelation – especially of Himself in Christ Jesus.  We will never find peace in this world until we acquaint ourselves with Him. 

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18)

The Thing in the Attic

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. – 2 Corinthians 3:18 (KJV)

I said yesterday that we should smash the mirror and that’s not right.  I got carried away with my own line.  What we should really do is pass through the mirror. 

I gazed with a strange mingling of awe and pleasure: the wide expanse of garret was my own, and unexplored!

In the middle of it stood an unpainted inclosure of rough planks, the door of which was ajar. Thinking Mr. Raven might be there, I pushed the door, and entered.

The small chamber was full of light, but such as dwells in places deserted: it had a dull, disconsolate look, as if it found itself of no use, and regretted having come. A few rather dim sunrays, marking their track through the cloud of motes that had just been stirred up, fell upon a tall mirror with a dusty face, old-fashioned and rather narrow--in appearance an ordinary glass. It had an ebony frame, on the top of which stood a black eagle, with outstretched wings, in his beak a golden chain, from whose end hung a black ball.

I had been looking at rather than into the mirror, when suddenly I became aware that it reflected neither the chamber nor my own person. I have an impression of having seen the wall melt away, but what followed is enough to account for any uncertainty: -- could I have mistaken for a mirror the glass that protected a wonderful picture? – George MacDonald, Lilith.

All mirrors are magic mirrors as MacDonald elsewhere explains, and as Robin sometimes illustrates.

Being weary and busy, I think I’ll let the canny Scot himself round it out:  

"I did not come through any door," I rejoined.

"I saw you come through it!--saw you with my own ancient eyes!" asserted the raven, positively but not disrespectfully.

"I never saw any door!" I persisted.

"Of course not!" he returned; "all the doors you had yet seen--and you haven't seen many--were doors in; here you came upon a door out! The strange thing to you," he went on thoughtfully, "will be, that the more doors you go out of, the farther you get in!"

I'm so lazy I even stole my title from James Blish, but it seems appropriate.  Always be careful when exploring your own attic.  It's a dangerous place.

An Infinity of Mirrors

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." – Matthew 22:35-40

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. -- John 15:7

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.   – 1 John 5:14-15

Saint Augustine said, “Love God, and then do what you please.”  This has long struck me as a sort of Catch-22 since love, as best I can define it, seeks to please the object of love.  For example, I am simply happy to be in the presence of my grandchildren, to see them filled with joy even when it costs me aches and pains, time and money.  In a perfectly balanced love relationship, each party would try to ensure that the other was happier in order to derive his or her own happiness, which brings to mind, immediately, O. Henry’s famous story.

If we are not careful, we may find ourselves thinking that, if God wants us to be happy, we might please Him by pleasing ourselves.  This would be akin to a married person thinking that if the spouse’s foremost desire is the happiness of the beloved then, if the beloved desires to engage another person, the spouse would be happy.  In truth, I know that my wife would be very unhappy if I cheated on her, especially at the funeral.  What actions like adultery say is that the one does not find full pleasure in the pleasure of the other. 

Over and over in the Bible, God assures us that we will find our joy in Him and Him alone.  Everything else, every pleasure, every success, every achievement in life can derive its meaning and fulfillment only from Him and our love for Him.  When Jesus said that we cannot serve both God and mammon, He did not say that we would not have to work for a living, that we could get by without money, or that we should all go off and live as hermits.  There are some who are called to a life of solitary prayer, but the vast majority of us are called to live for and to love God in the midst of a contrary and often hostile system.  I have gotten through many difficult days by offering the pressures and stresses to the Lord, saying I do not work for the supervisor, the manager, the CEO, or the company but for Jesus.  And, of course, some days I have forgotten and suffered needlessly for it. 

Somehow I must know that what I go through in life and, more importantly, how I go through the trials of life will bring honor and glory to the God that I love.  No man or woman will sacrifice their lives, labor long hours, and endure deprivation and hardship for nothing, but all will do just that and more for someone or even something that they love.  Every day men and women lay down their lives for a country they love or a cause to which they are devoted.  Parents sacrifice present pleasures and future dreams that their children might have better opportunities in life. 

Ultimately, an old saying gets close to the truth, “Love is not a feeling; it’s an act of the will.”  If I find, as I sometimes do, that the joy has gone from my life, that I am struggling and suffering in what seems to be a pointless existence then perhaps I need to stop where I am and renew my love to God, to find what it is in my life that pleases Him, and to pursue it even sacrificially.  For when God rejoices in me, I will rejoice. 

But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into that same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Hard Looks

Don’t wear yourself out to get rich; stop giving attention to it. As soon as your eyes fly to it, it disappears – Proverbs 22:4-5

Today we see how to tell the difference between the temporal and the timeless, between the living and the dead, between the wheat and the chaff.

That which is eternal is glorious. Glory connotes weight, a certain substantiality of existence and a heaviness that bears down upon our perception. Perhaps density would be a good way to think of it. When we attend to that which is eternal, it stays put and becomes clearer, ever deeper, and more authentic. When we attend to the temporal – whether wealth or fame or worldly acclaim, when we live for satisfaction, we find that it flits away, seeming always just a little out of reach. If we make the “necessities” of this life our focus, we will never have enough of those necessities, either because we will fall into poverty or because we will never know when we have enough. It’s similar to two forms of malnutrition – the starving Ethiopian version and the Michael Moore version.

We can see it in religion, business, government, sports, art, even in relationships. Trying to grasp the good is like trying to embrace a vapor. In order to draw good out of the world, we look long at and love the Good.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

We all, with unveiled faces, are looking at as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18)

…We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2)