We Shall be Changed

Have you ever noticed that, in the Bible, when God shows up, He never comes during benevolent sunshine or sweet gentle rain? He appears to Moses as a burning bush, He precedes the Israelites as towers of smoke and flame, and He promises to return as storm and thunder. God, in His natural state, if He can be said to have such a thing, booms and rattles this world with terrible power.

I have become accustomed, as have many, to thinking about God as a loving gentle Jesus, a forgiving shepherd, a humble servant. And He was all of these, of course. But I need to remember that, when His work here was complete, He returned home and resumed His godhead, where He picked up again His power. He promises to return in His full splendor as triumphant warrior, commander in heaven and on earth, no longer meek and mild.

God became man once, but only for a short while. He remained God both before, during, and after that experience. He remains God today and forever: terrible God, marvelous God, earthshaking God. He created men originally destined to share His glory, then redeemed them to assure it. He became like us for a little while so that we could know His real self forever.

We know no reference point for this in our experience. That's why we sometimes get stuck on Jesus' sweetness and go no further. We can understand that part of Him, but that part does not characterize God alone. He says that He is coming back to the sounds of celestial trumpets and thunderous earthquakes in rising blazes and that, in that instant we will be changed. He will not change, we will. He will remain mighty, and we will join Him in His might.

The day that Jesus returns, if my imagination can do any of this justice, will resemble more than anything else a fairy tale or a disaster movie: big and marvelous and terrible. But the end comes out much more than happy. I will not only be saved; I will be changed to glory, a glory I will share with God.

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will all be changed. 1Corinthians 15:51-52

The Cheese should not Stand Alone

Most people know a little about King Solomon. They probably know that he solved a dispute between two quarreling women by offering to divide a baby between them. They may know that he was King David's son and successor and that he built the first temple in Jerusalem. Some may remember that he married hundreds of women, most of whom did not follow his God, and that his good-intentioned love for them eventually corrupted his life and reign. Solomon, the man who reigned over a magnificent kingdom and possessed more wisdom than any other living human, ended his life having fallen into despair and cynicism. And all because he took his eye off the ball.

Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt; he took Pharaoh's daughter in marriage and brought her to the city of David until he finished building his house and the House of God and the wall of Jerusalem all around. However, the people brought offerings upon high places, for a house for the Name of God had not yet been built in those days.--1Kings 3:1-2

Pharaoh's daughter was the first pagan Solomon brought home, but far from the last. Throughout his life, they came in a steady, unending stream. When he'd accumulated a few hundred, he must have been rather distracted. By the time they'd reached 700, he would have needed all his wisdom just to get out of bed in the morning. But sheer numbers did not defeat him. His defeat lay in that he had no place to bring them, no place for them to come unerringly to pray, no place that stood as a physical connection the God that governed his life and to whom they, as his wives were responsible. Lacking a mortar and stone temple, they worshiped at the only places they knew, the high places where they had once worshiped pagan gods of wood and stone. Their intentions were probably good, but they lacked firm guidance.

Solomon's wives are worth considering as we structure our own lives of worship. Whatever a personal prayer place looks like--chair, or corner or window by the sun, we have a need to be grounded in a larger place, too, a place where God visits congregations. I learned a long time ago that God shows me different things alone than He does in company with others, and I need both.

Also important, though, is for that group to be similarly grounded in a larger context. It does us no good to affiliate with a group of believers that shares no sense of responsibility to other groups, other churches. Only God stands alone. He made us to stand side-by-side in His sight, and provides the structures within which we can do it. Like the children's rhyme, Farmer in the Dell, that ends in disarray when the cheese stands alone, we need to hold each others' hands.

Two Faced

The bonds we have to God were forged before creation. Everything we know about Him or experience of Him stems from the ties He forged with us before time began. He even specifies the nature of that relationship; it is exclusive, subservient, and reverent. No one is exempt, even pagans.

Oh, Belshazzar, you have not humbled yourself, though you know all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from His temple brought to you and you and your nobles, your wives, and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which cannot see or hear, or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your life and all your ways.--Daniel 5:22-23

So one of our faces must be turned to God at all times, and that face must worship, recognize our lowliness before Him, and rejoice in it. But, like Janus, we have a second face, one with which we look at one another. That relationship differs substantially from the first. With that face, we love and empathize. We recognize our common human lot, our frailty, and our equality before God. We are as like one another as we are different from God. He knows this, of course, and explained it in simple terms.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.--Matthew 22:37-38

Jesus explains these as two commands because they are. The first command governs our first face, the one turned toward God. The second tells us to love each other through our frailties, remembering that we all the same before Him. God instituted this double standard from the beginning. Love and worship God because He is not like us. Love and forgive men because we are all alike.

So Big

No one is like You, Oh Lord, and Your name is mighty in power. Who should not revere You, Oh King of nations? This is your due.--Jeremiah 10:6

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word. After He provided purification from sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.--Hebrews 1:3

Power, glory, majesty, authority. These are your due and my purpose to acknowledge. Worship is what happens daily in the heavenlies and what is supposed to happen daily here on earth. Our purpose, more than anything else, is to know, and to say, and to sing your praises. Instead, I hardly see them. You put me in this world to see You and I see the world. You gave me life to see You and I see life.

When my children were small, I would take their hands and raise their arms high above their heads, exclaiming, "So big!" You do that, but I am the child and You hold my arms up, hoping I will eventually get it. You, God, are so big.

So how do I acknowledge that You are big today? I have to concentrate not on living, but on You. When I clean or cook or write, it is by Your grace and permission. I have no power You did not give me. Your power. Your honor. Your strength. Your wisdom. You are big, Oh God. So Big.

I am the Lord, the God of all Mankind. Is anything too hard for me?--Jeremiah 32:27.

Mirror, Mirror

I have a bad habit of measuring someone's degree of self-centeredness by the number of times they use the word 'I' in normal conversation. As an observational tool, it works pretty well, but improper when used as a method of judgment. It probably stems from teaching junior high school long enough to note that almost any early teen's favorite subject is themselves, and from encouraging them to note the importance of other people in it. It probably also indicates my own weakness in this area and, like former smokers, I react strongly to the smell of second hand sin.

That is one of the reasons David of Israel impresses me so much. 2Samuel 22 and 23 captures his last inspired words, the ones in which he enumerates his achievements as king and, characteristic of a man after God's own heart, he speaks nothing of his own accomplishments. He mentions little about Goliath, or of his own mercy and respect for his predecessor Saul, of his rescue of the ark of the Covenant, or any of his battle victories. He does spend a great deal of time singing the praises of his 37 mighty men. Of himself, he discusses his own sin, specifically that of pridefully counting his people. David remembered this vividly. God punished him harshly for that pride, striking down seventy thousand men with a plague, a punishment that demonstrated his sin by reducing exactly what he had elevated in committing it.

More importantly, though, in these final words, David glorified his God. He finished the story about the census by explaining how God redeemed his sin in that the whole ordeal ended when David purchased the threshing floor that eventually became the site of the new temple. The story David wanted ultimately to tell was not his own. He wanted to tell his God's. David saw little of himself in his mirror. He saw the reflection of God's glory.

The Lord lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be God, the Rock, my Savior!--2Samuel 22:47

Weighing In

We all live with a confounding disconnect between human actions and the results those actions produce. Predators often prosper while saints suffer. We chalk the injustice up to a fallen world and believe that You will eventually make things right, and in the abstract that works for us. When it comes to our own little world, however, uneven scales, even those You promise to level, do not always consent to wait. When our son is sent home from school for a fight he entered to protect his small friend, or our spouse fired when he stood against an unethical business practice, or our neighbor stolen from by the wastrel she took in, Your promise sometimes pales.

And the inequity tangles even more while we try to understand how we are to act in the face of the world's perversion, other people's failures, and our own sin. In short, when I act according to what You have shown me is right, I want to see results that reinforce my actions. When I work, I want reward, when I love, I want to be loved back. But it just doesn't work that way.

You warn me about this when You emphasize the importance of godly character. You gave a promise without specifying times or places, then offered to stand between me and my disappointments, saying, "Do it for me." You tell me to follow You not because anyone to whom I display love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control will respond with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, or self-control in return, but because You will respond that way. In fact, You already have.

We are not trying to please men, but God, who tests our hearts. --1 Thessalonians 2:4

Little Death, Big Life

I will not be the first to observe that life is a series of little deaths. I remember once hearing a young woman on a radio program reflecting on her potential choices for a husband. She, like most young women, held a picture of her wedding day in a special place...the white dress, flowers, music, and above all, the smile of her Prince Charming promising happiness evermore. Then she looked around, even between the stars she still held in her eyes, and saw that if she wanted a husband, she would by necessity marry just another sinner. He would hurt her carelessly, he would ignore her unintentionally, he would just mess up. A bit of her dream died that day, and when she finally did marry, every time one of those little hurts came, another bit would die.

In a way, I am glad that this is mankind's common lot. It means that my own disappointments, my own little deaths are not unique to my stumbling life. It also means that life makes more sense in the context of the cross. You died, too. You died in little halting bits like we do, then in one incomprehensibly grand bit, right at the end. And they hurt You, too. You, however, did several things I cannot. First, and most importantly, Your death threw open a door to life, a life you demonstrated almost immediately by walking out of your grave. You also explained it all on the cross. Yes, you did, and I almost missed it. You told me and everyone listening exactly what You were doing.

In fact, you shouted it--"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" This was not a cry of desperation or abandonment like so many Christian commentators have posed. They all got it wrong. Of course they were never young Jews who hung their hopes on the Old Testament. If they had been Jews, like the crowd that surrounded You that day, they would have immediately recognized your words as the plea they had already learned by heart, the plea we know from the first line of Psalm 22, the sweet song of desperation, of little deaths, that became salvation.

In saying "My God, my God," you cemented forever in their minds the connection between what You were doing and its ultimate purpose. You did not have to say it the rest. They already knew it:

He has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one... before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows... All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of the nations will bow down before him--those who cannot keep themselves alive...They will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn--for He has done it. --Psalm 22: 24, 27, 29, 31

Oh, we will have the little deaths and they will still hurt. But You went from Calvary to sit in heaven, and we will, too. This is hard to remember during the dying, but You did, and said so. Then You punctuated it with Your final assurance: "It is finished."