Yet to Be Revealed

Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.
-1 Peter 1:13

I've been thinking some this morning on what is to lie ahead for us. The one common thought that pervaded the lives of all of the saints you read of is the present and immediate hope of life to come. This hope drew them deeper into the life of and with God like an arrow taught on a bow's string. And it wasn't just hope - my gosh, that's found in a million different places... hope for health promised by medicines and physicians and diets, hope for prosperity found in careers and investments, hope for a stable family life promised by church programs and institutions - but rather an abandoned trust that life is about to explode for them, and they were about to be released fully into it.

We must rouse our senses and ask God for the courage to throw ourselves, too, into that same hope. Can you imagine what it will be like? Think on the greatest moment you've experienced over this last month - a great conversation with friends, perhaps, or a really special or intimate time with someone you love and someone who loves you, or a time when you were just lost in doing something you really love to do and forgot the time. Remember the joy you felt, the abandon, the sense that all was right in your world, that pleasure. Or, think on those times over the last month when you haven't had these, but wanted them. How do you know that you should have them, except that you were made for them? These are echoes, these times, given us to draw us further into that life. They are only shadows for what is to come, hints of that life that is coming to us.

It is coming, and quicker than most of us dare to hope.

When it's all said and done, I'll stand before the Living God and He'll ask me, "Did we know each other?" When that's asked of me, I want there to be a glean in His eye, and a widening grin come across his face before we both burst out laughing, He runs to me and knocks me down with a tackle-hug, looks me square into my eyes with that soul-piercing, all-knowing, all-loving intensity of His, and says (barely, before He starts laughing again so hard He can hardly get it out), "Welcome Home, my dear friend. Welcome Home! Come, enter into the joy of the Kingdom with us."

And then life, real and full, will begin...

Disappointment

You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you've come out of this with purity of heart.
-2 Corinthians 7:9-11, The Message

I have spent some time journaling and have discovered something surprising as a theme to my days recently. Sadness, or, maybe a better word, disappointment. I realized that there are a lot of things going on that make me sad. It's surprising, because there are a great deal more things that are really good, events and relationships and desires that are holy and God-breathed. But my ultimate relationship, my tie with Christ and my life in Him, is suffering. And maybe that's not quite the right word, because I don't mean that it's falling behind. Rather, I mean that I want to take it deeper, and I know there is so much more depth to have and explore and enjoy.

And joy - in joy - where has this gone for me? No wonder I'm worn out. No wonder I'm exhausted these past few days. No wonder all feels heavy and thick and wearisome. Because if His joy is my strength, then the lack of it would mean a lack of strength for me. And so I'm asking for it. Come, Jesus, let me in joy You again. Come, Father, and breathe on me your breath. Come, Holy Spirit, and enter in like a fierce and wild wind.

And, in the end, I think all of the events, weighty with both glory and pain (and sometimes both at the same time), are leading me closer to and further into God. It's as Paul told the Corinthians, that distress led them to become more holy - that is, more God's, and that, in turn, led them to be more alive in all the ways one can be.

William Law, in his work Second Call, says one of the most piercing statements I've ever read. He says this: "If you will look into your own heart in utter honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not, even now, a saint: you do not wholly want to be." It is both an indictment and an invitation. The promise is there: I can be wholly God's, but it will take all of the furious desire and violent passion of my heart. As Peter Kreeft says, "sainthood is simply love: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength."

So, even as I ride the high seas and long for the deeper depths, the tides turn and shift, the storm settles by sound of the One speaking into the night, and my eyes adjust to the grey and misty shadows to see a figure out there walking, arm outstretched, a laugh almost bursting the seams of his smiling lips. This Wild One has invited me further out with Him. And to Him I must go, come hell or high water, waves or high tides.

…But know that another [moment] shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy. When the figure of God's purpose is made complete.
-T.S. Elliot