Christ Invictus

In Judah God is known; his name is great in Israel. 

His abode has been established in Salem,

his dwelling place in Zion.

There he broke the flashing arrows,

the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. Selah

-- Psalm 76:1-3

God is known in Judah – in praise, and He abides in Salem – peace. 

You don’t have to read any further.  

 The last few days have been hectic, calls for help from every quarter, everybody needing something right now.  It is my nature to try and please everyone.  One of the things I say most often is, “Don’t worry.  I will take care of it.”  Sometimes I can’t.  It might be because there aren’t enough hours in the day, because I’m not Ironman, or Einstein, or Jesus. 

Jesus, however, is Jesus, and His power exceeds that of any genius or superhero as the oceans exceed a raindrop carried on the breeze.  I can, on occasion, evade my enemies and solve my problems.  The hero can win the battle.  Jesus gives us peace. 

The Cross destroys all of the enemy’s weapons, and renders both the adversity and its allies powerless.  Heroes are conquerors.  We are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.  Not on some distant battlefield resplendent with banners and trumpets, not in the hazy, honeyed realm of heavenly imaginings, but right here, surrounded by challenges and difficulties, amid our pain and hurt, our anger and anguish, our suffering and our fears, we are at peace. 

In the dust and dirt and decay of everyday life, we speak the praises of God and make His presence known to our circumstances.  As we are pressed, we are at peace.  We are in the light, though thick darkness may obscure the path ahead.  As we move forward, the light goes with us.  We are not the Light, but the Light abides in us, and we in Him, and the darkness cannot overcome us.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed … (2 Corinthians 4:7-9)

In Case I Get Too Busy Today

Eye on the Sky

Then Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh-gilead, and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, “Make a treaty with us, and we will serve you.”  But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, “On this condition I will make a treaty with you, that I gouge out all your right eyes, and thus bring disgrace on all Israel.” – 1 Samuel 11:1-2

The right eye represents wisdom whereas the left eye speaks of knowledge.  Jesus talks about having an eye that is “single”, clear in its vision and balanced.  Spiritually speaking, a lot of us have a much better left eye than right eye.  We acquire a lot of knowledge.  People think we are smart.  We even think we are smart.  Yet our eye for wisdom is short-sighted.

The world and the devil are not enemies of knowledge.  The natural order is not threatened by information or even by cunning and cleverness.  We are told, though, that the fear of (i.e., respect for) the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  Godly wisdom will mess up our relationship with the world system.  We may end up seeming foolish, since the wisdom of God is foolishness to man.  Our thinking and behavior will not always line up with the logic of the Flatlanders because we are operating in additional dimensions. 

Nahash typifies the devil in desiring to blind us to those divine, vertical realities.  He states his case plainly and reveals the enemy’s plot throughout the ages:  to enslave humanity to the material and deny us access to divine revelation, wisdom and understanding. 

All the “Left Behind” scenarios and typical evangelical thinking and descriptions of the beast and the mark of the beast and the antichrist always rang a little hollow to me.  If you want to see the beast at work, turn on your television.  The news is mostly partisan propaganda.  Commercials play with our lusts, our fears, and our appetites to control our habits.  Some of the programs numb our minds and anesthetize our thinking allowing still others to perform the surgery necessary to render us blind to truth.  

The beast is not in retirement.  The antichrist is not in hiding, waiting for some snatching away of the righteous that he might be revealed.  The enemy adapts new methods but never a new end.  The history of the one-eyed is a bloody history.  Those who could see only with the eye of knowledge have dug mass graves and slaughtered their fellow men by the millions in the last century alone.  We do not need to fear them, but we cannot trust them or submit to them.  We need both eyes.  Open.

Crossing the Valley of Shadows

Looking down, they could not tell whether the valley below was a grassy plain or a great still lake. They had never seen any place look like it. The way to it was difficult and dangerous, but down the narrow path they went, and reached the bottom in safety. They found it composed of smooth, light-coloured sandstone, undulating in parts, but mostly level. It was no wonder to them now that they had not been able to tell what it was, for this surface was everywhere crowded with shadows. It was a sea of shadows. The mass was chiefly made up of the shadows of leaves innumerable, of all lovely and imaginative forms, waving to and fro, floating and quivering in the breath of a breeze whose motion was unfelt, whose sound was unheard. No forests clothed the mountain-sides, no trees were anywhere to be seen, and yet the shadows of the leaves, branches, and stems of all various trees covered the valley as far as their eyes could reach. They soon spied the shadows of flowers mingled with those of the leaves, and now and then the shadow of a bird with open beak, and throat distended with song. At times would appear the forms of strange, graceful creatures, running up and down the shadow-boles and along the branches, to disappear in the wind-tossed foliage. As they walked they waded knee-deep in the lovely lake. For the shadows were not merely lying on the surface of the ground, but heaped up above it like substantial forms of darkness, as if they had been cast upon a thousand different planes of the air. Tangle and Mossy often lifted their heads and gazed upwards to descry whence the shadows came; but they could see nothing more than a bright mist spread above them, higher than the tops of the mountains, which stood clear against it. No forests, no leaves, no birds were visible.

After a while, they reached more open spaces, where the shadows were thinner; and came even to portions over which shadows only flitted, leaving them clear for such as might follow. Now a wonderful form, half bird-like half human, would float across on outspread sailing pinions. Anon an exquisite shadow group of gambolling children would be followed by the loveliest female form, and that again by the grand stride of a Titanic shape, each disappearing in the surrounding press of shadowy foliage. Sometimes a profile of unspeakable beauty or grandeur would appear for a moment and vanish. Sometimes they seemed lovers that passed linked arm in arm, sometimes father and son, sometimes brothers in loving contest, sometimes sisters entwined in gracefullest community of complex form. Sometimes wild horses would tear across, free, or bestrode by noble shadows of ruling men. But some of the things which pleased them most they never knew how to describe.

About the middle of the plain they sat down to rest in the heart of a heap of shadows. After sitting for a while, each, looking up, saw the other in tears: they were each longing after the country whence the shadows fell.

"We MUST find the country from which the shadows come," said Mossy.

"We must, dear Mossy," responded Tangle. "What if your golden key should be the key to it?

"Ah! that would be grand," returned Mossy.--" But we must rest here for a little, and then we shall be able to cross the plain before night."

So he lay down on the ground, and about him on every side, and over his head, was the constant play of the wonderful shadows. He could look through them, and see the one behind the other, till they mixed in a mass of darkness. Tangle, too, lay admiring, and wondering, and longing after the country whence the shadows came. When they were rested they rose and pursued their journey.

How long they were in crossing this plain I cannot tell; but before night Mossy's hair was streaked with grey, and Tangle had got wrinkles on her forehead.

As evening drew on, the shadows fell deeper and rose higher. At length they reached a place where they rose above their heads, and made all dark around them. Then they took hold of each other's hand, and walked on in silence and in some dismay. They felt the gathering darkness, and something strangely solemn besides, and the beauty of the shadows ceased to delight them. All at once Tangle found that she had not a hold of Mossy's hand, though when she lost it she could not tell.

"Mossy, Mossy!" she cried aloud in terror.

But no Mossy replied.

A moment after, the shadows sank to her feet, and down under her feet, and the mountains rose before her. She turned towards the gloomy region she had left, and called once more upon Mossy. There the gloom lay tossing and heaving, a dark stormy, foamless sea of shadows, but no Mossy rose out of it, or came climbing up the hill on which she stood. She threw herself down and wept in despair.

Suddenly she remembered that the beautiful lady had told them, if they lost each other in a country of which she could not remember the name, they were not to be afraid, but to go straight on.

"And besides," she said to herself, "Mossy has the golden key, and so no harm will come to him, I do believe."

She rose from the ground, and went on.

-- excerpt from George MacDonald's The Golden Key

So Long, Patti

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  – Matthew 6:19-21

Today there is another priceless treasure in heaven.  Our hearts are broken until the circle is once more unbroken.

The Hideout

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.  The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.  Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. – Romans 13:11-14

Sometimes it is hard to believe that we have a choice.  Sometimes we feel compelled to do the wrong thing.  “I just snapped” as Mike Tyson famously pronounced after taking out a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear.  I actually have some empathy for the Mike formerly known as Iron.  I got so frustrated the other day about something that I grabbed a floppy house shoe and beat the wall.  It made no sense whatsoever, but it got rid of some adrenaline, and I was calmer afterward.  Plus because I didn’t use my fist like I used to, I didn’t have to fix a hole.  I really need to break down and buy a heavy bag. 

The truth is, though, that we always have a choice.  Where our problem comes is that we do not always make the choice at the right point.  Once we start to go down the dead-end road or the one where the bridge is out, our choices are more limited and possibly more painful. 

The right decision is the one I can make in the light.  My mind has two sides.  No, not dumb and dumber, although I can understand where some folks might get that idea -- the light side and the dark side, or the flesh and the Spirit.  Perhaps the thing that confuses me is that there is not always a conflict between the two sides.  There are times when I want to do what I ought to do, or I ought to do what I want to do.  Everything is harmonious. 

Other times, I’d kind of like to slip something by over on the dark side.  My siblings are between thirteen and seventeen years older than I am.  I was probably still in grade school when I happened across a stash of my brother-in-law’s “men’s magazines” – nothing very extreme, Argosy and stuff like that, but they had different theme than Outdoor Life and Sports Afield.  I was reading one of the articles in the attic when my sister came up and caught me, almost.  I shoved the magazine under an old mattress.  She asked me what I was doing, and I made up some farfetched story which even she wasn’t dumb enough to believe.  I don’t know if I would have gotten in much trouble, but I didn’t want to find out.  Perhaps more importantly, and what I’m trying to get at is that I didn’t want to risk losing access to my dirty little secret.

I think that’s a lot of my problem with walking in the Spirit.  I don’t want to completely eliminate my access to the dark side.  I just want to be able to toy with it a little, mull it over, like Billy Ray Cyrus (it may take a while to get that one and all you'll do is groan).  Walking in the light twelve hours a day is not that hard.  I don’t even think walking in the light 23 hours and 45 minutes a day is too much for me to handle.  I just don’t want to give up that last fifteen minutes.  I want to keep a little old nature preserve, over there in the shadows. 

Prophecy and History

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. – Romans 12:6-8

Some of that seems a little redundant to me.  If your gift is serving, teaching, or exhorting, those are the things you ought to do.  By the way, to exhort means “to urge, advise, or caution urgently; admonish urgently”, according to the dictionary.  When most Protestants, like me, think of preaching, we are thinking of exhorting.  That gives us some insight into what Paul was thinking when he talked about prophecy.

Someone who has the gift of prophecy – and, unlike Dispensationalists, I think that gift is still operational – gets understanding or information or insight in some way other than reading it from a book or from experience or some other natural means.  

 I am not a prophet, and I don’t have a prophetic gift, but I did have this happen one time as I have related in the past.  The one instance that I can point to and say with certainty was a very minor thing, simply telling someone that he was going to receive some books he wanted from an unexpected source.  It was almost astrological in its vagueness and non-specificity, but I was as convinced of the reality of it as if the giver himself had called me and told me what he was going to do.   

I can see where exercising a gift of prophecy would require faith, first in recognizing that the insight was a reflection of reality and not imagination, and, second, in acting or telling someone else to act in accordance with it.   

I think a lot of what has advanced the human race in the last couple of millennia has been as a result of the gift of prophecy.  Insights and inspiration come from somewhere.  Those who believe in naturalistic explanations for everything will argue that inspiration is simply a happy coincidence resulting from re-combinations of existing information.  Thus Shakespeare really is no different than a million monkeys typing; he’s just a lot easier to housebreak.   

There are times when what I would call natural inspiration happens, when we extrapolate from the known or pull in something from another realm of experience to apply to the situation before us in a new way.  We might call that wisdom, but sometimes wisdom surprises me, and the same Apostle who spoke of the gift of prophecy here, speaks of the gift of wisdom in another passage (1 Corinthians 12:8).  If we have the gift of wisdom, we know that not all have it, and it is not as easy as some might think to tell from where it comes. 

What is fairly clear is the purpose of our various gifts:  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7).  When we look back over the course of history, we can see where humanity’s direction has changed, sometimes overtly and dramatically, sometimes subtly but no less substantially, by inspiration and by faith.  We live and enjoy the conveniences of modern life and our relative peace, prosperity, and security, I believe, by those manifestations of the Spirit given for the benefit of all. 

I suppose, then, we should not find it all that strange that the antichrist spirit of the world often seeks to gain control of what is beneficial, seeks to take credit for all the good that is done, or, failing in those endeavors, seeks to discredit and even eradicate a conduit of that inspiration.   

I wonder if all of this might be related to why so many of the world’s Nobel Laureates have been Jewish.  I also wonder if it would help explain why Anti-Semitism seems to be so popular from time to time.