I am recently experiencing the Haunting of God through the edgy, sharply raw sounds of Alanis Morisette's voice and the music in her song "Wunderkind" from the Narnia soundtrack. I'm being awakened, again, into some epic story going on to which I know almost so deeply you can say instinctively that I play a part. A large part. Not by default, and not one I will enter into passively. But I am destined to a place, to a role, in a story where, as Alantis sings, "great will be done."
And this calling is beckoning me to take it, to press beyond all the earthly stuff that has kept me bound and forever attempts to coil my legs with his tentacle hands: those things of work and worries and dreams and will they survive to see the life of day? This Calling says intrinsically not to kill those dreams or desire but to let them go a bit so that they can be found again in a greater context - the context of my life lived in the Kingdom and in this calling. "Seek first this Kingdom," it seems to be stating through the fog of sleepiness and fear. "Abandon yourself to the mystery of who you truly are. Embrace that. Embrace Me," is spoken through the music and words by the Great One who is both present here and hauntingly beyond drawing me toward that life.
And this Beckoning - it is deeper, so much deeper than words, so that I find it difficult to even feign an attempt of accurately capturing it with words. Indeed, I'm finding that impossible, to capture it. So maybe a hunt to the thing, like a roadsign to a beautiful city, is all I could hope to do. And the response itself, like the calling, demands something deeper than words as well, a response that is authentic and to be so must come from the core, the heart, and must come from all of it.
This morning while listening to this haunting I find myself praying without trying and even without wordding any thought. It is deeper speech, and I'm almost basking in the listening, the hearing, of my Savior's utterances that are, once more, deeper than words, like the unspoken years and wooings of a groom's winking eye toward his bride and for him the golden rays reflected from her hair as she swivels her head in his direction to catch a glimpse of him, and their eyes momentarily lock and they know what no one else knows, that something and everything that binds them at the level of soul. It is the unspoken acknowledgement of a father sitting somewhere in a sea of onlookers as he nods his proud and approving head in the direction of his staged son who, after stretching all performance long, finally catches his dad's face, suddenly knowing that all along his eyes were never averted or diverted or distracted from his son, and the dad's delight stretches into the years when the boy will grow to be a man himself. O stem, O stock. And like a comrade's smile held by something known and about to be revealed to his friend as he quickly tilts his head in the direction of this something with the invitation to follow to this shared secret. Something between them, like shared battle strategies between army generals. No words are spoken. No words are necessary. In fact, the moment may be dimished by them. There is sahred excitement, shared knowing, shared joy, shared pleasure.
Jesus is saying this to me today. "Saying" is a limited word, as it is not speech, but then all these words are limited. He's inviting me to let myself be haunted and all things lost in me to be hunted and captured and rescued and freed. I feel Him saying to me to be still and let His voice come undiluted and even unchallenged by my own voice. This is my daily prayer today. It seems I have all today and that He has made all provision necessary without my asking anything, though I'm asking for Everything. Today I am to let my heart be taken in and filled with all He wants to bring me, and I am to stay with Him in it. Come, Lord Jesus. Bring all to my heart today of the Life, present and full, that You have come to bring.
To understand the words of our Lord is the business of life. For it is the main road to the understanding of The Word himself. And to receive him is to receive the Father, and so to have Life in ourselves. And Life, the higher, the deeper, the simpler, the original, is the business of life.
-from George Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons
