The Parable of the Mudhole

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me. -- Micah 7:8

For various reasons, most of which probably should not be discussed in detail, darkness falls on me from time to time.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing (Romans 7:19).  If I have learned anything, it is that when I can’t see where I am going, the best thing to do is stop and wait for the light.  It’s a good thought, but what if the light does not come?  Wait for it. 

I have screwed up just about everything it is possible to screw up, but the worst screw ups all too often result from trying to fix a screw up.  Let’s say that you are trying to put something together, and you drop some essential fastener down a duct.  Not that that would ever happen in real life.  You’re a little peeved as you pull the grate, but the fastener is right there hanging.  Then it falls down into the duct, but it’s still in sight, not yet around the bend.  You reach for it and almost have it, but it slips and rolls away over the event horizon.  You wonder why they didn’t put the ductwork in the attic.  An hour later, the fastener has been joined in the black hole under your floor by a magnet that came loose from the string and some vacuum cleaner attachments.   Meanwhile the original projects remains in disarray, all but forgotten in the angst and frustration.

We had to plow up a ten-acre section of our biggest hay field.  Dad did the plowing one evening while I milked.  The next morning was too good a hunting day to pass up, so he loaded his hounds and told me to hook up the disk and get the field ready to sow.  I might have been thirteen at the time, old enough to be trusted with some things.  The disk was an old heavy drag type.  It may have originally been horse-drawn.  It certainly wasn’t designed for three-point equipment.  We hooked it to a drawbar.  If I remember right, there was a lever that raised the plates a little for transport. 

I got over to the field and started around.  This field has a natural pond in it, and several places near the pond, it is seepy.  I didn’t really think it through too well and just assumed that I was supposed to disk what was plowed.  Right next to the pond, I hit a spot that had no bottom and stuck it. 

OK, I could go do something else and leave the tractor and disk buried.  I knew that would make Dad mad because it would have made me mad:  nothing accomplished and more work to do.  I got off the tractor, walked away and sat down on the broken ground.  The tractor wasn’t buried or high-centered.  It looked like it would come out.  If I could have raised the disk, the whole she-bang looked like it would come out, but I couldn’t do that.  I got down in the mud and disconnected then drove the tractor onto solid ground.  It was a matter of feet.  Then, instead of giving up and going to the house, I walked away and sat down again to think. 

I don’t remember – this was most of a half century ago – if the log chain was on something nearby or if I saw it in a vision.  Anyway, I got the chain, put one end around the hitch on the disk and the other around the drawbar on the tractor.  To my utter amazement, the disk came right out, nothing busted, nothing hurt.  A couple of short ruts and a wallowed spot were the only remaining indications of my struggle.  I kept the chain with me the rest of the day but had no more need for it.

I’ll bet I sat on that tractor ten minutes cussing myself and my stupidity.  I could have sat there all day and never figured a way out.  It was walking away and getting a different perspective that allowed me to see the solution. 

It was my fault that I got stuck there.  When I experience a moral or spiritual failure and fall that, too, is my own fault.   There’s no point in blaming anyone else, but there’s also no point in wasting too much time blaming myself.  If I can somehow rectify the situation, I need to find a way to do that.  Repentance is changing the way we think about something.  We could depict it as getting off the tractor and looking at the place in which we have been mired from a different angle, from the solid ground of God’s viewpoint. 

We can’t pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and we can’t get out of a pit by digging the hole deeper.  We have to find an anchor that will hold.  We have to have a purchase on the Rock of reality if we are going to pull our lives out of the muck and the mire. 

Sometimes when we are sitting in the dark, God will shine his light on the key we would never have seen in the broad glare of day. 

More Than We Bargained For

In my distress I called upon the Lord; to my God I cried for help.  From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears.  Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry.   ...  He bowed the heavens and came down;  thick darkness was under his feet ...  He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him ...  — Psalm 18:6-11

Like most everyone else, I have had a few close calls in life, a few times when only inches or milliseconds separated me from a sudden, messy death.  Other times I may have missed a mortal blow and been completely unaware.  The first time I recall hearing Tom T. Hall was on a record called "Salute to a Switchblade".  The song tells the story of an American soldier in Germany who got into a little trouble over a fraulein.  She was married to another American soldier, but the narrator, due to the absence of a ring on the lady's hand and the limitations of his proficiency in German, was unaware of this fact.  The woman's husband produced a switchblade and pursued the narrator who deftly escaped.  When he got back to his quarters, he was somewhat shocked to find that his coat had been "split right down the back" by his pursuer's slash. 

On other occasions we may have time to pray and cry out because the distress we are in is obvious and more prolonged.  But what is it we expect God to do for us?  How is the Creator supposed to step into our situation and rectify it?  A friend of mine was fond of quoting Luke 6:38, the last phrase of which says in the KJV, "...shall men give into your bosom."  He emphasized that point because he said God is not a counterfeiter to rain down twenty dollar bills from heaven (yet another difference between God and the Federal Reserve).  Our faith will cause God to move upon other people to "do the right thing" to help us out. 

Grace is sometimes defined as the "unmerited favor of God".  The grace of God can give us favor with other people to our benefit.  When that has happened to me, as it has so often, I see it as my job to justify the provision of that grace, to repay those who have been kind to me.  We cannot simply say, "The Lord has been good to me" and ignore the implied obligation.  I have been forgiven; I must forgive.  I have been given much; of me, much is required.  For all those who seem to not understand how privilege works, you might want to re-read this paragraph. 

But the thing that impresses me about the passage I quoted from Psalm 18 is the frightening implication of it.  If God really does help us, if He does answer our prayers, then "...the earth reeled and rocked..." is a pretty good description of what has to be going on.  We do not always see it because of the accompanying "thick darkness".  But when God comes down, He must, of necessity, bow the heavens.  Things are going to be moved around.  Reality itself is being altered, not the ultimate and the unchangeable, but the derived reality where we live day to day.  When God answers our prayers, reality is being reshaped to look more like heaven ("Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth..."). 

Our prayers are part of the real evolutionary process that is taking place.  We, by our crying out to God, are moving the world more and more toward the kingdom.  We are being transformed which in turn transforms all of creation.  When we stir God up against injustice and unrighteousness, the foundations get shaken up.  This is the power of prayer.  This is the responsibility that we have been handed when we bind and loose.  More than a few Christians need to think this through and sober up.   

Those who choose not to believe can get away with it because the Lord mostly cloaks Himself.  The unbelieving see only the moving, impenetrable darkness, only the catastrophic consequences.  They fail to perceive the Mover. 

Sometimes He escapes even the notice of His children. 

The Glory Road

I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge.
And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshipped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands.
They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. -- Revelation 20:4

If America falls darkness will cover the earth for a thousand years. -- Tagline of an unknown Free Republic poster

I’m not sure what the person has in mind by the phrase “if America falls”. Perhaps it is that the Old World is falling already, falling to apathy, to bureaucratic tyranny, falling to economic stupidity, to nihilism, to Islam. The shadow of self-indulgence falls deep and very dark across the homeland of western civilization, and it dims the light even in America.

A new Dark Age is imminent, but I don’t think that’s necessarily bad news, and I don’t think it will happen tomorrow. As the daily cycles of a human life must follow one another, so the millennial cycles of civilizations must come one after the other, from vision to blindness, from glory to corruption, from prosperity to collapse. That is easy enough to see. What is probably unknowable until it happens is whether we go down in steps, in stages, or whether we go off a precipice.

We are on a downward trend at the moment, but, as an individual or a civilization, we almost always must go down in order to go up. Like the sea, life comes in waves – peaks precede troughs which precede peaks. The valley of the shadow of death seems to be a place where we lose growth and lose ground, but it is only preparing us for the next ascent. The pruning produces more fruit. He who will not enter into the little death will never know the greater life.

Any civilization, in the long run, is only temporary. Only the kingdom of God endures. Nations all pass away in time. The most insignificant and unknown souls who have ever existed exist forever – world without end.

I pray that America will not fall for many generations; I pray this nation may long endure. For if she should fall, there will be darkness and chaos and blood and death. Yet it will not be the end, only another wave, only another valley to cross that man might climb a higher peak and draw closer to the King and the Kingdom, to that reign of Christ when all shall be peace.

A little before the verse I quoted above, you will find in this book of the Apocalypse, another saying that is one of my favorites. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophesy (Revelation 19:10). While we are not all prophets, we all have what you might call a prophetic duty. We are every one called to pass on those things which are important, which are eternal. If we are as a culture approaching a valley, our duty to pass on the essential is more vital than it would be in more benevolent times.

Every life is a story. I have heard that only twenty percent of people will reach the end of their story, look back, and see that they have reached the end that God wrote for them when they entered the world. I don’t know how anyone arrived at that percentage or if it is anywhere near correct. I do know I don’t want my last breath to be a sigh of regret.

My own story is very common and undistinguished. The magnitude of my destiny matters not at all, only my willingness to be true to it.

Strange as it seems, part of the plot that I must live out is a calling to tell my small narratives, my little travelogues -- like filling in a small white spot on a map. It doesn't seem to amount to much, but who am I to say? Besides it's in my blood. My father loved telling stories, and I can't help myself. Then all my friends are storytellers. Some tell stories with words -- some with pictures -- some with paint. And that’s just to name a few.

I listen. I hear a Voice behind such soul chronicles say, Walk this way. And I add my hobbling legends, occasional marks on a map -- old when it came to me. If by grace I may pass it on for another to see a path through the shadowed valleys and crossed ways to the mountain of his destiny: Pisgah, Tabor, Moriah, or Olivet.

On Waking

What a wonderful thing waking is! The time of the ghostly moonshine passes by, and the great positive sunlight comes. A man who dreams, and knows that he is dreaming, thinks he knows what waking is; but knows it so little, that he mistakes, one after another, many a vague and dim change in his dream for an awaking. When the true waking comes at last, he is filled and overflowed with the power of its reality. So, likewise, one who, in the darkness, lies waiting for the light about to be struck, and trying to conceive, with all the force of his imagination, what the light will be like, is yet, when the reality flames up before him, seized as by a new and unexpected thing, different from and beyond all his imagining. He feels as if the darkness were cast to an infinite distance behind him. So shall it be with us when we wake from this dream of life into the truer life beyond, and find all our present notions of being, thrown back as into a dim, vapoury region of dreamland, where yet we thought we knew, and whence we looked forward into the present. This must be what Novalis means when he says: "Our life is not a dream; but it may become a dream, and perhaps ought to become one."

From The Portent by George MacDonald

Batteries Not Included

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the groom. Five of them were foolish and five were sensible. When the foolish ones took their lamps, they didn’t take oil with them. But the sensible ones took oil in their flasks with their lamps. Since the groom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night [at the midnight hour -- traditional] there was a shout: ‘Here’s the groom! Come out to meet him!’ – Matthew 25:1-6

Oil, we were always reminded, is a type of the Holy Spirit. But the story isn’t just about oil, it is about fire and light. As long as the sun is up and everything is evident and exposed to the natural eye, oil, to the mind of the foolish, is superfluous.

I used to read this story and picture in my mind the coal oil lamps that all of us country folks had sitting around for those quite frequent times when the power failed. They are antiques now, but we had to use them any time there was lightning, high winds, heavy rain, or, sometimes, for no apparent reason. Electricity was considerably less reliable in our part of the country fifty years ago. Our lamps, of course, had a big reservoir from which the wick drew kerosene, as well as a tall, very fragile chimney that bellied around the flame to both protect and feed it. The lamps of the virgins were not like that. They might have been terra cotta vessels about two inches deep and four inches across – the width of a man’s palm. Those lamps had one larger center opening an inch or so across in which to pour the oil, with a smaller opening at the nose of the lamp for the wick. Some were even less elaborate – simply an open, clamshell-shaped dish with a narrow, elevated slot to hold the wick. These were not lamps with a long burning time. The first five virgins were foolish, not because they had only a little oil, but because they had none. Without batteries even a Surefire M6 isn’t illuminating.

We should do our work in the day, preparing for the coming, inevitable night. Part of that preparation is to provision ourselves with light for those long dark hours when the sun is as far away as it can get, when life reaches the nadir, when natural perception faces the blackness of incomprehension.

My daughter gave birth to a healthy, normal baby -- on Lincoln’s birthday. Given her age and the problems she has had over the past few years – including foolishly totaling a perfectly good car shortly after she became pregnant, this is miraculous. On the other hand, there is my niece. She is younger than my daughter and in better health. She had two previous pregnancies with no problems at all. She has a stable life, a loving husband, and no bad habits of which I am aware. My niece is as beautiful, intelligent, kind, and loving a person as you are ever likely to meet. Yet, the same day that my new grandson arrived, my niece learned that the child she is carrying will likely not be born alive, and, if by some wondrous chance he is, he would require immediate surgery. The prospects are not good. For her, it is midnight. I believe, though, my niece and her husband are numbered among the wise. They can trim their lamps and go on knowing the light they have will not fail even in the darkness of sorrow, grief, loss, and disappointment.

As long as the good are rewarded and the bad are punished, I’m OK. The mind of modern man tends to think his judgment is less fallible than that of his predecessors, perhaps less fallible even than the relatively primitive mind of Christ. We are more evolved and enlightened. We are better able to judge right and wrong. Some of us think ourselves capable of judging God and calling His actions into question. Call me a stop sign, but that is a bad road, if a sure one, to Midnight itself.

The odd thing is that the midnight hour is supposed to be a joyous occasion, a celebration, not because it is dark, but because of our being reunited with the Groom. If we are ready, if we have prepared ourselves, built up our reserve ahead of the times of darkness, we will welcome Him and come to know Him in a greater and more intimate way. Otherwise, we will flee in shame. I cannot speak where others are concerned, but, for myself, I know that God always gives me grace to prepare. I may allow myself to be distracted, to become foolish in my thinking, to be turned aside to other things and neglect the filling of my flask, but I can never say that I had no opportunity to be ready. In a moment’s time really, I can have all the oil I need to feed the flame of truth all through the darkest of nights.

Get ready.

Light Conversation

If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. – 1 John 1:6-7

I always thought honesty and truth were closed related -- silly old paleo-conservative, classical liberal me. The postmodern progressive, the materialist, men like Hitchens and the former OC jester can be honest enough, even pure in a sense, yet be completely in the dark with regard to truth. When the concept of truth is divorced from its Source, it becomes nothing more than a consensus interpretation of derivative existence, conveniently useful in some cases, but devoid of light. Honest self-evaluation won't automatically lead to enlightenment, especially if we are only comparing ourselves to others or people in general.

And then there are some people who manage to be blithely unaware of their own inconsistencies while seeking Truth. In fact there are people whom I would have to acknowledge as Christians, recipients of the grace of God in Christ, who are at best blunt instruments with regard to self-examination. I have a relative by marriage that is the perfect example of this. I was talking to her the other day about her late husband, who really was a saint. She commented on how hard the man was to live with and the fact that he had a quick temper. I told my wife afterward that I was surprised blood wasn’t running out of my mouth from biting my tongue. The woman is rigid, demanding, and arrogantly self-righteous. Is she a Christian? Obviously, it’s God’s call, and I can’t be certain – I mean, but for the grace of God, she could be an ax-murderer. Always remember: when you meet an idiot who claims to be a Christian, the Lord may be doing the best He can with what He has to work with.

That brings us to the idea of walking in the light and practicing the truth. The tension in our relationship with the Lord is always about how much control we are willing to surrender. How much are we going to give Him to work with? Surrender is function of trust, of the extent of our belief, our faith in the Father. We talked yesterday about having no need to fear God, for He is pure and true in Himself with no shadow of deception. He can be fully trusted. Yet we hold back.

I think I am afraid of not being myself. If I let God have too much control, control of everything, will I cease to be me? Will I become bland and homogenized? Will I just be part of the herd?

“I Gotta Be Me” is the world’s favorite song, yet it is the world system that is peopled by poor imitations, by slavish devotion to fashion and the herd mentality. That is not God’s way. The Lord does not try to categorize us and make us fit into little pre-formed pigeonholes. He wants us to be more than we are, not less.

In my better moments I thought walking in the light meant being aware that I can’t do anything behind God’s back, and that’s true, but it doesn’t go far enough. The King James Bible uses the word ‘conversation’ in contexts which seem odd to the modern reader. Conversation once had additional meanings beyond simply talking to someone. It could mean behavior, manner of living, social intercourse, and it could even have a sexual connotation. It could mean to understand through study and contemplation, as we still speak of being ‘conversant’ with regard to some subject or body of knowledge.

We are called to have conversation with God, with light and truth. To walk in the light means that we are conversing with the Lord, aware, speaking, listening, and interacting with Him in every chamber of our being. That’s my goal today, to let the Son shine in.

The Cure for Theophobia

And this is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all – 1 John 1:5

God is light. That’s the message that Jesus gave His disciples. We are assured that darkness -- a more comprehensive term than evil -- does not exist in Him. In fact, it is the darkness in us that is repulsed by the overwhelming light of God. We don’t really want a search light in our guts. It is too illuminating. Religion can have built in shadows for comfort. As I mentioned yesterday, we can walk through the rituals of religion without letting the light hit us in full, though nearly every ceremony is saturated with glory. When the language of religion becomes jargon, it, too, provides a little shade. We can talk about sanctification, practical or positional, all day long, but that is less illuminating to the soul than one moment of living as a holy dwelling place inhabited by Christ.

I often talk about “experiencing” Jesus but in a way that is misleading for He is too big and too glorious for me to contain. It might be better to say that I experience the anchoring of my faith upon His absoluteness. My faith touches the immovable, solid Rock of His Being and finds its rest. This is the hardest thing for most of us, and there is no sense in trying to deny it by analogies. We are constantly put in a position where we must trust without fully comprehending. But the message is that God is “of a piece” – what He is to us in a small thing, He is through and through. He doesn’t just give light; He is light. A lamp or the sun is a source of light but not light itself. A lamp may be turned off or burn out. Millions of years in the future perhaps the sun will be extinguished, but light will not cease to be.

We can know that God is not slippery or deceitful. He does not give with one hand and take with another. He does not advertise eternal life and then disappoint us with an existence as shades or a ghostly quasi-reality. When I rise in Christ, I do not know what I will be but I know I will be like Him, and I know that my life will be more not less than it is now, more, perhaps, because the stains and shadows have been taken away, but more.

There is nothing to fear in walking with God. First, there is nothing to fear from man or any other entity for God is greater and well able to see us through any difficulty or circumstance. We can rest assured that the Lord is in control of all that comes to us (I think I’ll write that on my hand). He does not allow what is not ultimately for our good. Second, there is nothing to fear from God Himself for He is good and incapable of evil. Some will dispute this. The doubters want to force the Lord into a chess match on their standard two-dimensional board. If you think you’ve checkmated God, all you’ve really done is to discover that you not only can’t see the board, you don’t even know the name of the game.

All our fears are wicked, and we fear because we will not nourish ourselves in our faith (Oswald Chambers). Reverence good. Fear bad.

The message of light is not just about God. If we are His children, we partake of His nature. The darkness we find in ourselves – well, it may be in us but it is not of us. We, too, are children of light.

But you, brethren, are not in darkness that the day should overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us to wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:4-9)