My Father's Gifts

My dad is gone now, but when I was a girl, he taught me to delight in beauty and adventure. He could turn a perfectly ordinary day into an event simply by offering to take us for a ride. We always knew what that meant--he had a plan to transport us to one of the world's treasures. He had found a garden in extravagant bloom, or a grassy hillside perfect for juvenile tumbling, or a hidden cabin, or a valley falling away from a blue mountain. Part of his charm lay in that he never revealed our destination ahead of time but, when we arrived, he simply flung his arms as though he conducted this private symphony for us alone saying, "Here it is. I made this just for you. Isn't it wonderful?"

Of course, Dad never made any of those destinations. You did. He did show me something important about You in the process, however. You continually give. You lay something in my lap every day, something I never imagine even existed. And then I do the same thing to Your gift as I did to Dad's; I take if for granted. I underestimate it. I shrug it off. I sometimes even ruin it. I never value it as highly as it deserves. You continually do what Dad did on a grand, universal scale. You give perfect gifts to broken men. You, however, have additional instructions.

Each one should use whatever gifts he received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.--1Peter 4:10

So I get these wonderful gifts from you--life, the ability to love, skills, knowledge, health, strength--and I have to give them away to other broken men. Have You seen the mess we make of them? You love me perfectly, but I cannot love anyone else perfectly. I give my pitted and tarnished love to someone else, they add their own measure of imperfection, then pass on the increasingly marred product, and so on. Entropy in its saddest form.

I don't want to give anything away. I can't see any possible result but hurt and disappointment. I am stuck in my own skin, able to experience nothing except from my own perspective. My own experience is the only one I can ever completely know, but You want me to crawl out of myself and walk in someone else's shoes. You want me to share myself completely with someone I know will disappoint. You give me gifts and tell me to count each one for the sole purpose of sharing it.

Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the faith given you. In Christ, we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others.--Romans 12:3,6

This, I think, is one of the truths in this: believers share a basic identity in one another. You have ordained this. I cannot divorce myself from other believers when they disappoint me because we are joined in You and by You. My husband, Dave, says that we all tend to think ourselves better than we are. This is true. We also expect other believers to be better than they are. You know this, too, of course, and have provided for it.

So, like my dad, you pour gifts into imperfect, ungrateful vessels. Then, you tell me to pour them into other imperfect vessels with the promise that, if I do so faithfully, You will not only continue to give, but You will renew and replace what we have lost or ruined in our imperfection. Your gifts came perfectly from You and are transferred among us in ever perfect condition, not because we made them so, but because You do.

Creation's Prerequisite

Some days feel like Eden, thick and pulsing richly with life, dripping with dew, heady with flowers. Creation feels new on these days, and I feel like I could still walk side by side with You, experiencing what it means to be created in Your image. You even gave me my own dominion, a hierarchy of creation that mirrors Yours. My flesh bears evidence of Your Spirit. You made me a fleshly replica of what exists in the heavens, gave me rule over a hierarchy of beings existing side by side with another hierarchy, one of pure spirit, but both ruled absolutely by You.

I look like You, but I am not You. I am like You as my own reflection is like me. Image without essence, my flesh a powerless reflection of Your Spirit. All the parts are present, but they don't function independently. Even my own dominion exists only to reflect Your vast one. Did Adam and Eve, when they walked with you in Eden, recognize their resemblance to You? Is that when it all began to go wrong?

This may be why You created wisdom before anything else, the same wisdom of which fear of You is the beginning. Without fear of you, I will take my own kingship too seriously, raise myself too high. I look like You, and intellectually know that I am not You, but practically, when I survey the vast kingdom You have given me, and the strength and intellect, I forget who You are. That is when I sin.

Still, You gave me life and want me to live it and, on days like this, physical life seems a richer creation than spirit. I do not imagine that spirits smell or feel or taste. You made a day like this for tasting, but I need wisdom to put this life in its intended context. You did not make me human, the crown of creation, to deny life. The life You made in me is good; You said so. You did, however, make me to deny sin.

When I consider the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars that you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet.--Psalm 8:3-6

Does not wisdom call out? "The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began."--Proverbs 8:1,22

Time Enough

We are so completely in Your hands. I am old enough to look at my life from a distance, to see it as a tableau I played out like Shakespeare's player who "struts and frets upon a stage." I can see each place where the road forked, and each time I chose, well or poorly, and I see the results of those choices only now, from a distance. Too often, they hurt the track of my own life, but the deepest regrets come from new sight into the instances where my choices have hurt the lives of others.

Yesterday, while tucking a young boy into the mothering place under my arm who still wears the sweetness that wells up during ages in single digits, I learned that I missed something precious. As quiet dawn brought us words about Your creation and his own purpose before you, I saw small flashes of first understanding. I saw in that new day the rising of your truth in the boy's face.

I taught my own sons a little about numbers and letters, and I told stories, but I never told them about You. Never. Not in the fragile early morning or tender bedtime. Never when petting a puppy or planting a flower. Never when throwing a ball or giving a bath. How much more the wonder of your immense plan than Dr. Seuss or Tom Sawyer! And, as a result, my sons' eyes focus earthward rather than heavenward. Kind eyes, but so limited.

Still, You knew all of this from before time began. You knew I would fail my sons. You knew they would flounder in their blindness regarding You. You could have called me so much earlier, led me to take them into that sweet place where even hens gather their chicks, and showed me how to sing them Your sweet song. But You didn't.

You did call me, however. Much later. And now I see what we all missed, the transfer of holy knowledge from generation to generation, the ignition of faith before the taint of vast regret. Still, I know You and I know there is still time enough. In You, there is always time enough. And in You, I know what I must do, even now.

Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word. It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.--Psalm 119:67,71
In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.--Ephesians 1:12.

What You Made

I am not intended to live as a purely spiritual being. Although You remind me constantly to look toward You, to serve You, to obey You, to bend myself constantly toward You, I am human. And more than that, You made me that way. You made this life for me and made me to live it. If I feel like a misfit, a spiritual being in a human skin struggling to get out, a bursting chrysalis, the fault is mine, not Yours. So what am I missing?

You already know what I will and will not do. Both my longing for a life more deeply Spirit-led and my apparently conflicting needs for food and water and rest come from You. You understand how they live and intermingle perfectly, but I do not. In the face of what Your Spirit offers, my humanity seems so irrelevant. Its trials cause unavoidable pain and its pleasures rush too soon away. I don't see the point of humanity.

But, maybe that is part of the point. I don't see with your eyes, after all. You gave my life to me, so it must be good for both of us. Whether it is a vehicle to emphasize your godhead or a gift for me to enjoy or both, I am human for a reason, Your reason. You never made me an angel or any other pure spirit. Instead, You gave me this life and told me to dedicate it to Your service. I am frail and full of faults, but I do not have to apologize for the fact of my humanity. I must simply live it.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.--Psalm 139:13-16

Proper Places

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.--1Peter 1:2

I want to live the life You have planned for me. I want to be godly before You. How can I access divine power to do this?

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.--1Peter 1:5-7

Oh, sure. I can't do this. No way. I can do some of these some of the time, but not all of them all of the time. Never.

If anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten he has been cleansed from his past sins.--1Peter 1:9

Just a minute. So having the character You desire, a character that progresses from faith to goodness to knowledge to self-control to perseverance to godliness to brotherly kindness to love starts with remembering my own sin. Accessing diving power depends on knowing first that I can't do it. These characteristics do not come from my own depths, but from Yours.

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.--1Peter 1:20-21

In fact, You gave us Your Word, and through the Holy Spirit continue to give us Your Word, but that Word is never our word. Even during the wonderful times you transfer holy understanding to me (like now), I remain my ego-driven, sinful self. You may speak, and even use my own mouth to speak out loud, but I can never forget that the same mouth that You enable to speak Your truth is still connected to my sinful body. In fact, anyone who forgets this, You tell me is blind.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.--Proverbs 3:5-6

You, not me. Knowing who You are and who I am keeps us both in the places You prescribed and all is as right as this world allows.

Proximity

It seems to me that my understanding of people and times and places when they stand alone differs substantially from when they stand next to someone or sometime or someplace else. For instance, reading or watching television or even praying takes me more deeply inside, whereas talking or playing or working with other people brings motion and accomplishment not otherwise possible. Another example occurs as I work to develop character. I cannot summon up humility either alone, or even in community. Humility can only come from standing close to God and seeing the vast difference between us. Proximity does this.

Close association also gives depth of understanding. "I love you" from a distance means something very different from "I love you" whispered in my ear. Proximity in the written word enhances it, too. Today, my reading began with this familiar verse:

"My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."--Isaiah 55: 8

In this verse, God apparently declares that we do not think alike, that He will forever remain, at least to some degree, incomprehensible to me. But those words are followed immediately by these, also familiar:

"As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so the word that goes out of my mouth will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."--Isaiah 55:9-10

These last verses tell me that God gives me His word and His word has purpose, a purpose that God enacts perfectly. Taken together, though, these verses bring new hope and understanding.

You made me different from you, God. So different that I can never understand you. But, in doing that, you also opened a line of communication between us, one that leads inevitably back to You. Because my ways are different from your ways, you gave me your Word, and You do it to fulfill Your purpose, the one that is so different from mine. Your word does not return empty because it returns always to You.

Your word leads me to your thoughts, which lead me down your ways, the only path leading back to You.

What Didn't Change

During the earliest years of his reign, King Solomon built a temple to the Lord. It was a big place of stone and wood and gold, artistically decorated by the best craftsmen with the most precious of materials. It spoke everywhere, by its shape and size and construction, of God's glory, but it did not just look beautiful. It also served as a place where man transacted business with the Almighty, very practical, down-to-earth business.

It spoke everywhere of God's desire for man to approach Him, from the presence of the altar upon which sacrifices burned, to the incense of prayer, from the enourmous basins in which men cleaned both themselves and their animals to make themselves presentable, to the light and bread that they always kept trimmed and fresh so as to make themselves constantly aware of their need for readiness. That approach, however, had a price.

The outer temple was a bloody place. Constant slaughter, burning, then purifying brought everyone before the Lord aware of the gap separating them from God. The inner parts , accessible only to the High Priest, threatened potential death. No one approached without the pause that comes from expending sweat and blood. One could not help but be aware that a terrible God beckoned there. Our modern worship has preserved little of this practical awe.

We no longer need animal sacrifice, of course. Jesus, the last and only perfect sacrifice, changed that. The very nature of God and the very nature of man did not change, however. God is still perfectly holy and we are still despicably sinful, something too easily forgotten amid our distant, sanitized, easy worship. No one notices the irony of what we have made of Christ's sacrifice. He tore down the veil separating God and man for all eternity, and we do not approach God's astounding reality. We have made Him comfortably human rather than what He remains: at once loving and fearsome.

Singing songs, praying in comfortable seats, dropping an offering envelope, and listening to a minister teach or admonish are all good things, but God, God, where is Your power, where are your thundering choruses, where are Your many rushing waters? Jesus sweat and bled as He transacted His eternal business. I do not believe that, when He said "Follow Me," He would have excluded this.

Therefore, since we receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably, with reverence and awe.--Hebrews 12:28