The Sylvr Pen

A clatter rattles him from sleep, jolts him upright, heart thumping.

Breathless, unrested, he’s gained such meager nap!

The explosion of noise, he realizes right off, was icicles, great stalactites loosed from their grasp on gutter and tumbled hard on roof just past the window.

Nothing worth heart-thumping fright.

But…

well worth a wake-up to warning: those ice tusks grown heavy, sooner or later falling, when full-blown light bears down… Well, if it’s later and they’ve grown enough greater… they. do. damage. they could even kill a person.

…

God draws. Christ draws. He said,  “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jhn 12:32 ESV). 

His drawing: We were talking about that, in the last post’s comments. One called it irresistible, referencing R. C. Sproul. Others of us realized its pull at our hearts from childhood—yet noted how, in young adulthood, our interest grew cold, and we resisted it! 

How can one resist the irresistible? How can one wee mite of a mortal, on a tiny earth, push away Love advances greater than the universe? 

Yet it is so.

He draws, summons, pulls us all toward His warm embrace. He’s sovereign, all-powerful. Yet He gives us the option to spurn Him.

And we do. We draw away. Even we who know His love and favor, even His miracles! Our souls chill with indifference, if not disdain.

How? Why? What draws us… away? 

Last post quoted Augustine, writing of scholars too enamored of their own intelligence:

In their impious pride they draw away from You and Your light, because these scholars who foresee a future eclipse of the sun long beforehand fail to see their own in the present…

It’s ridiculous, so-limited a man puffing up himself in pride above His Maker, Whose circle of knowledge circumscribes his own so far he can’t see its boundaries! Yet many big-brained (big-ego-ed, really) do it, even after unearthing more evidence of God’s greatness than “lowly” people learn. 

I witnessed this, painfully close. My brother learned to worship his brain, and it eclipsed his spirit, possibly right up to death. His widow believes He surrendered, the rest of us hope she’s right…

Pride fed by people’s commendation—for letter grades, check-mark-free papers, and scholarships to prestigious universities (full of people who know much and yet resist)…

I could weep.

I have wept…

But pride can take a different form. One commenter said she resisted the gospel because “I didn’t need saved.” We think we can be good enough our fallen selves. (Just as ridiculous a pride as the above.)

What of me, even now? I know God in relationship. He’s shown me so much about His power, love, and goodness… Yet, just this morning I woke in spiritual lethargy…

A hymn spoke my heart. I sang it: “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love…”

Honestly, I do know how this happens. Through pride (as mentioned)—and desires, of a fallen, self-centered heart.

James said it:

“Everyone is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed…”

The heart gets iced.

Just a little glazing, you’d hardly notice.

But “then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin…”

The ice builds…

“and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death…” (Jas 1:14-15).

Oh, wretched woman that I am, “who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Not myself! (Romans 7:21-25)

“Thanks be to God who gives us the victory!”

But I need to ask for it. Because He gives me this choice.

And so I do.

I must kill all the dead stuff, all the hard icing of the heart, building up weight, growing damage potential like those spears above the roof.

So, I often sing the song…

~

Q4U: What draws you… away?

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WIP Wednesday @ New Life Steward

We sang the song…

And I sat there, wondering…

What drew them?

It wasn’t just the knowing, that evidenced the pull. It was the going.

Men in Jerusalem knew, too, yet nothing in the record says they went. Facts were enough for them perhaps? (Mt 2:4-5) Even too much (Mt 2:3)?

But those astronomers…

Three hundred years later Augustine wrote about other “philosophers” of their kind who…

“have discovered much, and predicted eclipses of the sun’s light, or the moon’s, many years in advance, indicating precisely the day, the hour, and the extent of the eclipse and their calculations have been accurate. It has therefore been possible for them to make forecasts and draw up rules from their research. On the basis of these rules, …still studied today, it can be predicted in which year… month… day of the month… at what hour an eclipse will occur, and what proportion of its light the sun or moon will lose.

“And, as forecast, it happens. People think this is wonderful…, while the philosophers strut and make merry. In their impious pride they draw away from You and Your light, because these scholars who foresee a future eclipse of the sun long beforehand fail to see their own in the present, for want of inquiring in a religious spirit from Whom they have received the very intelligence which enables them…

If they discover that You have made them, they do not give themselves to you so that you may preserve what you have made, nor do they slay in your honor those selves of their own making, nor immolate their high-flown pride…”**

Such was not so of those scholars of the star’s rising who followed it to Bethlehem.

What drew them? Why did they go?

What made them choose sand stinging cheeks and blinding eyes, day heat sweltering and night cold biting, weary wasteland and tedious travel, difficult and dangerous? What inspired them to carry gifts that spoke what they “couldn’t know” of the tiny King before whom they’d fall down, bowed low, prideless?

…What drew me?

I reminisced and pondered:

Star-whisper of double promise, vague light beaming into a darkened life: “Come here for the Truth those philosophies lacked.” “Come for the filling of that strange inner chasm of vague craving.”

Augustine’s words speak well of what that whisper caught hold of in me:

“Great are You, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise. Your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, …who carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin, and with it the proof that You thwart the proud, yet… a part of Your creation, [we] long to praise You… You have made us and drawn us to Yourself, and our hearts are rest-less until they find their rest in You.”**

That same Daystar (2 Pet 1:19) that gave the ancient travelers light, that same breath of heaven (John 3:8), that blew sandy wastes and magi hearts, that stirred Augustine’s, also stirred mine, and drew me strong. Could I not have followed?

I only rejoice that I did!

Q4U: What drew you? (Or, is drawing you?)

~

* William C. Dix, “As with Gladness Men of Old.” **Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 5.4 **Confessions, 1.1

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Silent solitude comes like a sigh. I welcome it…

and I read of his love for it,

read how it was the well from which he drew the Father’s resources,

and drank deeply:

Richard Baxter, Puritan preacher extraordinaire…

“In him the virtues of the contemplative and active life were eminently united. His time was spent in communion with God, and in charity to men. He lived above the world, and in solitude and silence conversed with God. The frequent and serious meditation of eternal things was the powerful means to make his heart holy and heavenly, and from thence his [outward conduct]. His life was a practical sermon, a drawing example. There was an air of humility and sanctity in his… countenance; and his deportment was [indicative of] a stranger upon earth and a citizen of heaven.”

-his familiar colleague Dr. William Bates

Ah, another witness, speaking from the past, telling me, yes, yes, here is where you find it best, your Christ life: wrapped in this transparent sanctuary, settled in this breath of rest.

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I see the prompt word “opportunity” and immediately rushing into my mind comes a phrase from a beautiful prayer I found among my jumbled files last year (2012): It thanks God for “the mysterious opportunity of my life.”

What a phrase to dwell on, in gratitude! Just the heart-beating, breathing-in and breathing-out, throbbing, moving life, what a mystery, and what opportunity!

Problem is I have too many opportunities! I can’t choose them all! I can’t choose half the things I’d like to do and could individually if I chose just that one thing—I’d have to live a thousand years!

I am remembering a party, decades ago, before I knew Christ personally, where a palm reader was telling fortunes, describing lives. I was brushing off that opportunity, uncomfortable, when one earnest woman’s face, leaned toward me, asking, “But do you know who you are?”

I laughed. And said, “I am an infinite number of possibilities.”

What I didn’t know then was that I was only scratching the surface of the possibilities list. Since then, through Him, I have been able to do… well, sometimes, the impossible! At least what would have been impossible for little human me.

So what opportunity do I choose? That prayer focused for me the best one: that most mysterious opportunity of knowing Him more and more, as I live each day. Each day then becomes fuller with richer opportunities than Christ-less earthlings could even guess. I know. I was one. And oh, the difference!

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Return, I told myself—to in-depth Bible study like I used to do, that stays steady on one passage or theme. Too much hopping about the scriptures lately like a March hare.

But where to settle? Isaiah, where December focused my mind? 1 Thessalonians, where four little opening phrases alone burst into multi-floral bloom before my soul’s eyes? Or Colossians, where God seems to be drawing me back, repeatedly?

Colossians.

After all, if it’s really Him drawing… respond!

And that needed in-depth study seems to be proceeding without my even plotting a route or revving an engine.

Like this morning.

Something I read brought me over to chapter 3 (again!), to right where I left off yesterday in my post.

I’d been visiting blogs—reading post after post of plans and plots and proposals for procedures by which I could purpose myself to perfection in 2013. They swarmed like bees in my head.

Then, landing back in Colossians’ colossal thoughts, I watched all those personal purpose possibilities fall into place: in the wastebasket!

Yesterday, I’d started getting my bearings. Today all that other stuff dis-tracked-ed me. Yet now, as I surveyed all the yellow highlighting and little brown dots I’d plunked in clusters alongside various pieces of text (both marking things the Bible tells me personally to obey), I felt, ironically… not overwhelmed, but relieved!

Yes, there’s a whole list of items Colossians 3:5-9 commands me to put off (eleven of them!), Col 3:12-16 gives ten or more further orders about things to put on, and then Col 3:16-17 goes on with more individual instructions…

But they don’t swarm. They settle, orderly, into three or four colossals:

Colossal Command #1: Seek those things which are above, where Christ is.

Colossal Command #2: Put to death the dead stuff. (There’s a dead man lying there in front of you. Count his arms, legs, tongue and toes dead! Put them in their correct category, instead of trying to make his legs walk and his tongue talk and his toes twinkle and his arms raise praise! He’s dead! — See verse three! [Col 3:3])

Colossal Command #3: Put on what you’ve already got within: Christ. Doing that takes care of the whole list that follows, for they’re all part and expression of His essential self: mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering patience, forebearance, love, peace, gratitude, grace…

Colossal Command #4: Do everything in the name (character/essence) “of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

Related Colossal Command #4a: Let the peace of God rule in you. (You can’t do this without the others.)

Okay. So what about the Inventory?

That’s all those micro-dotted items counted above. They’re the signs and symptoms: of the dead life or the Christ life.

E.g.: Am I coveting? harboring anger? being dishonest? The old man’s rot is spreading! Kill it quick! Go back to Start (Chapter 3, verse 1 [Col 3:1-2])!

Am I forgiving like I never dreamed I could? accepting God’s will as good? loving that person who’s acting unlovely? making melody in my heart to God? That’s all Christ manifesting Himself in me. In this case, what to do: “Give thanks to God the Father through Him” for doing this blessed, amazing work in new/old me!

Get the Colossal Commandments right, and all the rest falls peacefully into place. Then I can choose a habit to develop and have a powerful dynamic within which to build it, and  perfect purpose to boot!