Peering through the Veil

God has intrigued me.

This weekend God asked me what kind of man I wanted to become. The answer was immediate, as if it were waiting right inside my voice box and couldn’t wait to jump out. I gave it to Him, a response that was passionate and bursting with desire the way a fully-ripened grape does between your teeth.

And He smiled. And He held it for several breathless seconds. Understand, I had just let me heart out, I mean, I had just exposed a very personal and very passionate longing, an aching longing that I have. I laid it out there for Him. Now what would He do with it?

He spoke. “Will you trust me to take you there?”

My mouth dropped. Literally, I mean. I was in the car and it just dropped and I laughed out loud. “Really? You want to take me there, Father?” His silence was a serious silence. I started thinking about how this changes everything. All that I’m going through and will suddenly, in that light, has an incredible weight to it. It is both designed to form me more into that man, and assaulted to keep me from becoming that man.

I am coming into that age as a son that I am better able to see as God points out things heading this way on the far horizon. My 3-year-old nephew and I were up on the 5th floor of a building yesterday, and I was trying to get him to see a little car driving by. I kept pointing and describing the car and he kept looking at a spot on the window. I am now better able to follow God’s finger and focus on those things He delights in pointing out to me.

Suddenly, the rest of the weekend I am full of hope. And hope, as Napoleon Bonaparte reminds us, gives nourishment to courage. I am entering with courage and even excitement into places that would otherwise strike fear into the heart of the most valiant warrior: a loved one’s hospitalization and extreme illness, building a relationship with another one I love that I had always missed out on, entering more deeply into the heart of my wife and dreaming together for our marriage. Whatever else may or may not happen, I am walking with Christ through these events, and through these events He is speaking to me and He is training me to become that man that I long to become – one that walks well in the Kingdom of God alongside Christ, who loves well, and who has the character of heart that I poured out to Him that day in the car.

What are those desires that burst forth from my heart? Oh, you don’t get to know those. At least, not yet. They are far too personal for me to say right now. I believe it was George MacDonald that said that often for the saints experiences with Christ are too personal to put words to. “Compared to His love,” said Thomas Aquinas, “all my words are straw.” So they are, for now, between the Lover of my Soul and me. But I imagine those who know me well can guess them. Oswald Chambers had, "Character in a saint means the disposition of Jesus Christ persistently manifested."