Just Missed

Walked into last week’s service late, to enter upon the wistful strains of the final hymn, and a congregation reverently brought into the throne room, with strong expectancy, and a sweetly surrendered spirit… The thought which haunted me as I left the service clung: ‘I missed You…’ I had so closely brushed past the intimacy that could have been…

There’s still sadness, and an added urgency now to not let such regret take root again. Yet there’s also a broader question to contemplate: how many times do I short-circuit myself in drawing near? How many ways do I prove the biggest hindrance to being in that raw, face-to-face communion with my Maker? How often must I, harried by temporal concerns, short-change what could be so rich a moment of fellowship?

Proverbs 15:8 has struck an interesting note:

“The Lord detests the sacrifice of the wicked,
but the prayer of the upright pleases Him.”

His pleasure is not in the outward, but in our ‘prayer;’ in our interior longing to know Him, and ‘learn’ Him richly; in our desire to pursue Him recklessly as we long to experience Him more ~

Think the deepest pang of sadness comes in the aftermath of those moments when – having had opportunity to be with Him, and absorb Him in greater depth – we opted for anything short of Him, and found that the loss is ours alone. Can’t yet discern any regret, any ‘backward longing,’ quite as lamentable as the realization that there existed the ideal opportunity to enter into that divine fellowship, and – for some inexplicable reason – we allowed that moment to pass by, irrevocably…

Yet, for as much as the twinge of any particular occasion may haunt us, God has granted - even from the negative - that we might acknowledge the reality which spans eternity: that ‘the nearness of God is our good’ (Psalm 73:28). Somehow, though we may discover the truth from the backside of sorrow, we are always returned to the assent which is engrained upon our souls, the recognition which pours forth also in David’s desperate and determined cry: ‘I have no good besides You’ (Psalm 16:2) ~

Quantifiable?

Statistics are so easy. So comfortably clean; objective and uninvolved.

Where we err is in carrying our simplistic definitions into a realm which transcends such boundaries. We’d prefer to catalog God’s favor in such a way: the greater the abundance of tangibles, the greater His degree of blessing; the more that's withheld, the more He would see us disgraced and wanting.

Except God isn’t that easy.

Human nature finds it appealing to look strictly at what lies in a person’s hands: health, a wedding ring, an abundance of children, a stable family, a prosperous job, a godly reputation, or an “effective” ministry even. We shade the lines with the rationale that all of those gifts are signs of God’s having directed our life, and our having been obedient enough to find the passageway to receiving from His hand.

Somehow we’d prefer to skim the surface, glancing at the definable elements stitched into the fabric of one’s life, rather than tackle the far stickier issue that sometimes God’s favor comes not in the visible realm, but more profoundly in the intangible one. And more, that sometimes it is His withholding that yields an even greater good…

For we have to come to that point of acknowledging that whatever He has chosen is for our best, and gladly acknowledge of the Master Artist that, ‘It is the Infinite wielding His brush; I know He does all things well’ (“Come Away, My Beloved,” Frances J. Roberts, p. 246).

When we cease trying to quantify what we or others have, we find that what we boil down to is not some receptacle which is filled with “things” from a heavenly hand, but an individual before our Creator, Savior, and Stay… a soul in whom the Infinite takes meticulous and tender interest, and would only bestow upon us – in the giving or withholding (Job 1:21) – exactly what His mercy has deemed suitable to the shaping of our souls.

The temptation remains. The tangible gifts hold their sway, and cause us to question whether His love for us must be demonstrated through visible means. And yet it is only the voice of the Enemy which causes us to question.

For if we truly saw what love looks like – if we could grasp that it is neither possession or position which tells of His love; that it is not pleasantry or privilege, but the prerogative of Him to become helpless and mangled on our behalf – we’d then understand that what is in our hands has nothing to do with whether we’re loved by the One into whose hands our nails were driven ~

Ending on Judgment

A Bible study discussion last week got me thinking again about the not-so-happy endings found in the Bible. Sparked by a discussion on how blaspheming the Holy Spirit will ‘not be forgiven’ (Luke 12:10), the examples of those who never saw redemption (i.e. Judas, Sodom and Gomorrah, Pharaoh, Jezebel) made surface a hopelessness which struck an uncomfortable chord. A hollow and unsettling sense of being unable to amend the loss; of having to grapple with the ultimate ‘irreversibility.’

To our modern Christian sensitivities, no one is “un-redeemable.” It seems nearly offensive to say that anybody is ‘past saving,’ as though God were somehow powerless to bridge each individual back to Himself. And yet God Himself is the One who’s chosen who will see salvation (see Ephesians 1:4).

What’s in question then isn’t His power to save. Instead it seems that His compassion becomes the target of scrutiny, bombarded with questions over how He could allow even one soul to perish; how mercy could run dry, and judgment could secure the final word over 'rescue.'

We were designed for unbroken communion with Him, and even the failure of one life to display that seems a hindrance to the fulfillment of His intent over us. It isn’t that His purpose is swayed, or that His credibility with the Foe somehow suffers loss, but that His not preventing such despair seems contradictory; in a way, a concession to darkness…

…unless our lives aren’t mere expressions of supernatural battle lines; aren’t simply tally marks on an ethereal scoreboard, where casualties and salvages are accounted for, and wars are won by numbers. Perhaps what I miss is that our lives are not as pawns to the forces of good and evil, but that our souls come before our Master with individual clarity… and that, for all that we’ve refused of Him, we’re held accountable (see 2 Chronicles 6: 23).

Until we come up against the One who initiated our rescue, the One who has always wanted us abiding in the life of salvation rather than dwelling in the death of condemnation (John 3:16-17), we choose to reside under the sentence from which He came to deliver us, and set ourselves against Life Himself.

I cannot grasp why He allows despair to stand where He has willed health and wholeness; can’t reason my way through His purposes, as though I could ‘know the mind of God, or be His counselor’ (Romans 11:34). Yet what resounds heavily is the sobering reality that He, Sovereign Judge, knows the heart, and has the final word. When mercy ends and judgment begins, what pointedly comes to light is not some divine refusal to grant life, but the human will which has all along resisted accepting it.

Yet praise be to Him who, even constrained by our free will, 'poured out Himself' (Isaiah 53:12) on our behalf; the only One who fought to the death for us to experience life...