Out of the Shadows

The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;
Faith swells it full to breast the breasting seas.
Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;
Hell's freezing north no tempest can send out,
But it shall toss thee homeward to thy leas;
Boisterous wave-crest never shall o'erwhelm
Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.

-George MacDonald

A few days ago I was driving home from work and the Scripture came to mind about how the world will know us. I think in one of John's epistles he says that "they will know you by your love." I've always taken that to mean our love of God, our love of each other, our love of others, that kind of thing. And while I think that's still the gist of it, I realized something I've been missing.

John says that we will be defined by our love, that in a world full of despair and cynicism, hatred and fear, we will be known by those around us as those that still love, that still in some deep way have a capacity to love. And love what? Certainly God, certainly people, but I think we'll also be known for loving the things that are worthy and noble and true that Paul points out. I love chocolate molten cake hot out of the oven with vanilla bean ice cream melting quickly on top, spreading like some gigantic glacier sitting atop a volcano, and drizzled high with magma-like chocolate syrup. Mmmm. I love the way that the sunset each night invents new colors to threw into our sky. I love my wife's eyes, because in them I see the deepest and most beautiful heart I've know here. And I love God's Kingdom. I love to live in it. I love to learn of it. I love to express it.

For some time, I've had a real urgent and potent desire to walk in a specific calling God’s given me, to follow in that “tap on the shoulder,” as Calvin Miller calls it. I think God has given me some moments of clarity and I've been faithful to take note of them when they come, but for the most part I've hidden them away because, over and louder than the voice of God I have heard the voice of a thousand enemies shouting and taunting a thousand lies in my ears. I've been disqualified on every ground.

But after a very long and weary night of battling these same lies, I awoke to hear God speaking again. Compared to the noise and shriek of the others, His voice is the music of a snow-covered winter landscape, where all noise is muffled into a crystal silence and everything, no matter how scarred, is blanketed with beauty. He reminded me of some of the things He's already spoken to me and, maybe more importantly, reminded me how much I really want to walk with Him in the unique calling of my life, to set out with Him. Or better, to really continue on with Him, having already stepped out on this adventure.

It's more than a job or a career or a “calling” in the modernistic meaning of the word. It's journeying with God and His friends. It’s battling side-by-side with the hosts of heaven. It’s entering into the life of God. It's coming alive. I've been driving down the road with the radio off. Oh, I'll get there, but the journey is a rather long and boring and tedious one. Or, I'm at a movie theater watching some incredibly fascinating flick... with my eyes closed. Opening I find it's my very own life I'm half-watching scream by me on the movie screen.

So, it's time I jump in, let go the ropes of control, and set sail. I'm reminded of Thomas Aquinas's experience with God toward the end of his life when he stopped writing. Puzzled, others came to him and asked what happened. "Compared to the reality," he said, "my words are but straw." Earlier, God had spoken to him saying, "You have written well of me, Thomas. What would you have as your reward?" In the soulful response of a lover of God, he replied, "Only You, Lord."

Onward, then, and upward.