Come

Sometimes one simple word will capture my heart and lead it along a quiet, contemplative path for days.

The other morning I read Revelation 22:17. This verse comes at the very end of the Bible, where God sums up the message of his written revelation to the people he has created and dearly loves.

To us.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”
And let those who hear say, “Come!”
Let those who are thirsty come;
and let all who wish take the free gift of the water of life.

The word “come” is used three times in this verse. Twice it is followed by an exclamation point—a rare occurrence in the Bible. And each time it comes from a slightly different direction.

The first “come” is an excited plea/command spoken by God’s Spirit and the Bride of Jesus—those who have accepted his offer of redemption and restoration into the family of God. They’re asking Jesus to return to earth a second time. They want him to fulfill the promise of the angels at his first coming—the promise that his coming would bring peace to the earth, in God’s time and in his way. This “come” is an invitation to Jesus.

The second “come” expresses a desire that people who have not yet become part of God’s family—people who hear this message—would join the rest of God’s people in the invitation to Jesus to return.

But the third “come” reverses the direction of the invitation. This time, Jesus is saying “Come.” He’s saying, “Before I come back to establish my Kingdom on earth, I want you to come to me. I want you to take the free gift of life I offer.”

We are invited to come to Him, so that He can come to us, in all the fullness of joy He wants to share with us in His glory at the end of the age.

On Sunday, in worship, we sang three songs with the word “come” in them. I couldn’t help but notice. Here are my favorite electronic versions of those songs.

Come Thou Fount

Come, Now is the Time to Worship

Come and Listen

A Sad Thing

A sad thing happened after all my blog-talk about listening for God’s voice. Things went well for a while. God and I were chatting every day.

Then I got busy and forgot to listen.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t had much to write about lately.

A few days ago I began to notice something was wrong, and I got lonesome. I decided to ask Him to speak to me, and made a decision, again, to listen for his response.

I don’t think He’s quit speaking. All the little serendipitous blessings—the coincidences of thought and circumstance that just “happen”—the inspiration and gentle nudges to do this or that activity—all these things point to His continued intimate involvement in my life. But it’s all happened so quietly I’ve failed to notice the source of the little miracles.

I’ve continued to walk the path of life, choosing directions at crossroads, negotiating the curves, and enjoying the beauty, as if I were alone. I’ve missed the joy of companionship. I’ve missed out on the best part.

His companionship means more to me than anything. So why is it so easy to forget Him?

I think there are at least three reasons. First, I’ve noticed that when I’m enjoying my visible world it’s much easier to get distracted, so that the reality of the invisible world fades into the background. When things are difficult in this visible world, it’s easier to turn to the invisible one for help.

Also, the visible world is so much more in-my-face. It's more demanding. Awareness of the spiritual realm, where God lives and moves and speaks, gets lost in the noisy business of living in the material world. I need to work at living in the light of His love, in the reality that is eternal.

Which brings me to the final reason I forget: I am lazy. I avoid working at anything that forces me to swim against the stream of the cultural whirlpool/cesspool I find myself dogpaddling around in. Asking Him to speak and listening for His voice needs to become a habit, so it happens without conscious decision on my part, and developing good habits always takes work.

The spiritual discipline of “practicing the Presence of God” is basic to the Christian walk. It should be the first one we develop when we start deliberately walking with God.

So here I go again, starting from the beginning.

And it’s not as hard as it might seem. The day after my new beginning, I went out early to a local river canyon looking for one more photoshoot spot, being careful to keep my ears open for more than the sound of the early morning birds.

For the novel I'm publishing, we need a scene by a river where Zinovy can kneel down and give his life to God. I found a spot that might work, but it wasn’t ideal. I turned to go back to the car, but the still, small Voice told me to continue farther down the path instead. So I turned again, and went farther down the trail, where I came out onto a wide, pebble beach along a stretch of the river that will work much better for our pictures.

When I turned back in response to His prompt, the picture at the top of this post is what I saw. And I’m sure I heard Him say, “I’m walking along this writing path, with you, remember?”

I do need to remember. That’s all I have to do, in fact. As long as I remember, consciously, every day, everything else will fall into place. I know that, by personal experience.

Prayer is a dialogue between two persons who love each other.

I just need to develop the habit of listening to His side of the conversation.

The Rapture in the News

This past week The Rapture made headlines. All of North America was talking about it. And laughing about it. Christians joked about the idea that someone could actually predict when the Rapture would happen, or thought they could. People who don’t know Jesus scoffed at the idea that it would happen at all.

Many Christians were perturbed and embarrassed. Understandably so. They worried about the bad press the Rapture was getting, for Jesus’ sake. But I don’t think Jesus was perturbed.

God is never perturbed or embarrassed. He has no reason to be, even when we do silly things, or evil things, that reflect on Him. He’s used to getting bad press because of us, and He’s really good at taking our negative words and actions and turning them into something that brings good to us, and glory to Himself, where it belongs.

He did it when people scoffed at the prophets He sent in the Old Testament. He did it when people stood at the foot of the cross and mocked Him. He does it still, in these “last days,” when “scoffers will come.” (2 Peter 3:3)

He knew this silly man was going to make this silly mistake. He could have prevented it. But He chose not to.

So how can He bring good out of this fiasco?

Maybe He is using the publicity to wake people up.

Last week, the world learned a new vocabulary word. An important one. And in spite of all the silliness fluttering around the discussions, people were actually talking about Jesus’ return—and a day of reckoning.

Sure, they were scoffing, but underneath all the laughter ran a current of unease—almost awe. One radio announcer, in the midst of the banter back and forth between her and her partner, wondered if it were quite safe to joke about the Rapture. She had a point.

The talk about the rapture fuelled scoffing, but it also directed the world’s attention to the possibility of judgement. People laughed about being “left behind,” but behind the laughter was a hint of sobering fear.

What if?

The question will linger in the back of people’s minds, even after the joke has been lost in other news of the day.

Because of one man’s thoughtless blunder, everyone heard about the possibility that the world was coming to an end. He got the timing wrong, but the central idea is true. The world as we know it will end one day. Many of us think it will happen soon, though we don’t know exactly when. He will come quickly, when we least expect it.

The world needs to be ready. We Christians need to be ready.

What should we do about the end of the world as we know it? Peter tells us how to live:

Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: Be holy, because I am holy. (I Peter 1:13-16)

Holy living. Wise living. Incarnational living.

Living in quiet confidence that God is in control, no matter what happens, and being ready to give an answer to anyone who asks about the hope that is in us.

I want Jesus to find me living this way when He comes back, or when He takes me home, whichever comes first.

God's Working, In and Around

This morning I’m pondering the great mystery of how God’s sovereignty works in and around our personal choices to fulfil His gracious plan in our lives and in the world.

This thought comes to me as I open my Bible and flip past the page that lists all the books that tell of Israel’s history.

Joshua, Judges, Ruth.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.

Stories rich with evidence of God’s compassionate determination to work salvation for us “in and around” our circumstances, our mistakes, our evil inclinations.

My heart swells with praise.

It occurs to me, as I prepare to write today, that more of those kinds of stories need to be told, so that others can come to know this wonderful Creator. I turn to the Psalms, with a sense that God will lead me to a passage that relates to the thoughts I suspect He has just placed in my mind.

My eyes fall on Psalm 77. It begins with lament. “I cried out to God for help, I cried out to God to hear me.”

The Psalmist then asks himself some really hard questions. You can hear the moan behind them.

Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?

Through the moaning pain of Asaph, God leads us to the truth:

The Lord will never reject us.
He shows his favor, over and over and over again.
His love is unfailing. It cannot vanish. Ever.
His promises will be fulfilled—all of them, gloriously.
He will never forget to be merciful.
He will pour out his compassion on us forever.

I’m surprised this Psalm doesn’t talk about proclaiming His goodness to others. I’d half expected it to, considering the thoughts I’d had before reading it. I reach for the page, to turn back to the beginning, to read again, and Psalm 78 catches my eye.

I will open my mouth with a parable; I will teach you lessons from the past—things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.

So I begin my writing today, telling more of the Zinovy parable, trusting that Zinovy’s God will take my ideas and weave them into another story of His mercy and compassion. A story future generations will read. A story of the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power and the wonders he has done.

Yes, Zinovy's story is fiction, and it's set in the future, not the past, but it's full of truth about God's unfailing love. Zinovy's story demonstrates how God, in his sovereignty, works in and around our circumstances and our choices, to fulfil His loving purposes.

God's Splendid Obsession

This morning's reading in the Daily Light begins with Lamentations 3:40:

Let us examine and probe our ways, and let us return to the Lord.

I've been going through difficulties this past week that have forced me to probe my ways, and I’ve been feeling a heavy weight of guilt for what I'm discovering. I can't find any sins that are terribly uncivilized, but I am finding spiritual sins--the sins of pride--the worst kind. Pride is the great sin of the Devil. The sin that says, "I am God."

The world doesn’t find pride sinful. This past week, in a mythology class, I had to teach high school students that the story of Adam and Eve is a story of the coming of age of human beings. God created them, then put a serpent in the garden to “tempt” them to grow up, to become adults, to leave the nest. Then God was angry, like a bad parent, when they chose to go their own way—to become their own persons.

This interpretation is a doctrine of the ancient religion of paganism. We now call that religion secular humanism. According to our evolved social mores, we should not “probe our ways and return to the Lord.” That would be like crawling back into the womb. And if we’re tempted to do that, it’s only because God’s anger has put a heavy burden of false guilt and shame on us.

So I was supposed to teach these students, by implication, that their task is to throw off this weight of guilt, to become fully human, to live their own lives to the fullest as seems best to them. Oh, and also, the book implied we are all to try to do a better job of parenting our children than God did His.

I taught the lesson, but I also told the students the other, more traditional interpretation of the myth of Adam and Eve. I said the story is also considered an explanation of how evil came into the world. I had to add that interpretation. It wasn't in the text. It’s interesting that modern mythology textbooks would teach a pagan interpretation for a Jewish myth, without any mention of the interpretation Jewish scholars have given it down through the years.

But I digress. My own guilt. I feel the weight of it. The guilt is real and justified. And it’s a hard thing to make myself recognize what I’m doing wrong and correct it.

Then I made a glorious discovery: though the guilt is justified, the weight doesn’t have to be there. I don’t have to work at realizing my guilt and repenting and confessing.

John G. Elliott's devotional reading for today has given me a whole new perspective on my malady. John speaks of God's refining fire.

It is God who does the work of refining. We don't have to do anything but surrender. To put ourselves in his hands. He does the rest. It’s a task He does very carefully, because He loves us so much.

John G. Elliott says:

To Him we are of infinite value - - - even in our raw condition. We are the ore that is largely composed of “earth” - - - the “world”. These anti-Kingdom motives, values and desires loom larger in us than we are aware. But He sees the gold deposited in the mix and undertakes a life-long process of “un-earthing” the ore where it is lodged deep within. The filtering process for a small amount of gold is time consuming and costly - - - for Him and for the disciple. But He has never doubted His objective. His love is determined concerning us- - - to the point of splendid obsession. It would seem that the more a disciple yields to this process the more times the furnace is heated up for yet another round of purification.

Ouch. Another round? Not fun. But it is such a relief to know He is responsible for the purification, not me. I will never be “adult” enough to do that task for myself, and I’m happy to leave Him to it.

My New Year's Resolution--to Pedal

My New Year’s resolution for my walk (ride?) with the Lord in 2011 is to charge boldly into the new year, embracing the Gulp and Whee mentality I first discovered in the last part of 2010. (For a more detailed definition of "Gulp and Whee," see the post by that title in my writing blog.)

The G and W mentality is perfectly exemplified in this anonymously written poem that inspires me again every time I read it. I hope it challenges and encourages you in your own spiritual journey.

The Road of Life

At first I saw God as my observer, my judge,
Keeping track of the things I did wrong,
So as to know whether I merited heaven or hell when I die.
He was out there sort of like a president.
I recognised His picture when I saw it, but I really didn’t know Him.

But later on when I met Christ,
It seemed as though life were rather like a bike ride,
But it was a tandem bike, and I noticed that Christ was in the back,
Helping me pedal.

I don’t know when it was that He suggested we change places,
But life has not been the same since.

When I had control, I knew the way.
It was rather boring, but predictable. . .
It was the shortest distance between two points.

But when He took the lead,
He knew delightful long cuts, up mountains,
and through rocky places at breakneck speeds.
It was all I could do to hang on!
Even though it looked like madness,
He said, “Pedal!”

I worried and was anxious and asked, “Where are you taking me?”
He laughed and didn’t answer, and I started to learn to trust.

I forgot my boring life and entered into the adventure.
And when I’d say, “I’m scared,” He’d lean back and touch my hand.

He took me to people with gifts I needed,
Gifts of healing, acceptance, and joy.
They gave me gifts to take on my journey,
My Lord’s and mine.

And we were off again.
He said, “Give the gifts away; they’re extra baggage.
Too much weight.”
So I did, to people we met, and I found that in giving
I received, and still our burden was light.

I did not trust Him at first, in control of my life.
I thought He’d wreck it.
But He knows bike secrets, knows how to make it bend to take sharp corners,
Knows how to jump to clear high rocks,
Knows how to fly to shorten scary passages.

And I am learning to shut up and pedal in the strangest places,
And I’m beginning to enjoy the view and the cool breeze in my face
With my delightful, constant companion, Jesus Christ.

And when I’m sure I just can’t do any more
He just smiles and says. . . “Pedal!”

Author unknown

May the coming year be one of sweet, exciting surprises for you in your journey with the Lord.

My Gift at the Manger

We were on our way to the Christmas morning worship service and I was not in the mood to worship. I could trace the problem to its source. The grumpiness had started on December 22nd, when I first heard a Christmas song on the radio that had the Baby Jesus saying “Ho, ho, ho.”

Bah, humbug.

The racoon who ate the pumpkin pie off my back deck during the Christmas Eve service didn’t help any. Nor did the discovery, later in the evening, that my jar of poultry seasoning was empty. It could have been on my fruitless pilgrimage around town that night, looking for an open grocery store, that I lost the right front hubcap off my new volkswagon.

So, driving to church on Christmas morning, listening to my husband’s idle musings about which of the three curbs I had bumped in the last four days might have dealt the death knell to my hubcap, I was in full grinch form.

“Merry Christmas,” I said (pointedly) to him in the middle of his one-sided discussion of the missing hubcap. Being, as he is, consistently oblivious to subtle hints regarding proper topics of conversation when I am in a funk, he continued the conversation until I told him, without subtle nuances or vague metaphorical references, that I needed a few minutes of peace and quiet “because I am not in the mood to worship and it’s being very hard for me to get myself there.”

During the next few minutes of brooding silence, I dragged my reluctant heart to Jesus, laid my insignificant frustrations at His feet and pried my heartstrings away from the bitterness trying to take root in my spirit.

I came close to tears when I realized, once again, after all these years of basking in the light of His unconditional love, that I still have nothing worthwhile to leave at the manger on Christmas morning.

At church, the pastor told us the true story of the little church in a small town that decided to take a chance and bring real animals to its Christmas Eve service. A local farmer lent them a cow, a sheep and a goat, and the animal rescue facility down the road sent them a donkey.

It seemed to be working. The animals, and the people, were behaving well. Just as on that famous night, all was calm. Until the donkey got too close to the empty baptistry and fell in.

Finding himself trapped in the unfamiliar “stall”, the poor beast flailed and brayed until the pastor gave up on his message and called the care giver from the animal rescue facility. The man came, took off his shoes, got into the tub, covered the donkey’s head with his coat, whispered sweet comfort into his ear, and finally crouched down on all fours so the donkey could use him as a stepstool to climb out.

“It’s a perfect metaphor,” the pastor explained. “That’s why Jesus came.”

My mind wandered now and then. I was still trying to find a worthy gift for the baby in the manger. Maybe the prayer I prayed in church last Sunday. Several people said they were touched by it. Or the Tim Horton’s card I gave to my lonely friend. Or the time I spent talking about the Bible with the sweet young woman who had just become a Christian. Those things would be good gifts for Jesus.

“No.” I heard Him say, distinctly. “The first gift you gave me—that’s all I want.”

A broken and contrite heart.

The only gift a sinner has to offer a holy Saviour.

Yes, Christmas is about giving. But it’s not about our giving. It’s about God’s giving. I knelt at the manger that morning and received His gift—the true peace of Christmas—with a heart open and subdued.

Then I went home to subdue the five grandchildren who were running around our house, high on Christmas candy, and the thirty-pound turkey I’d wrestled into the oven that morning.