Fading so soon...

I feel the loss of something great, something precious slipping away, fading like taillights of a girlfriend's car that's left you standing in a painful panic holding nothing but the ring she's just pulled off her own finger and placed into your palm. It's that moment right there of anguish and ache that's the most difficult to live through, not because life doesn't continue around you, but exactly because it does. Because it is, at that very instant, the most difficult to utter any word that would possibly portray the bleeding hurt of a heart ripped and laid bare. And the swirling movements of the world around you spin your head into a seasick dizziness. You are left, alone in the dark, to figure out how life could possibly come to this.

And this is what comes out, this is what is pumped with every beat of a heart desperate to send its life-giving liquid to all the members of the body that supports it. These words that I type here, these words of a man so hungry and so unsatisfied. It's not like the Psalmist who said that his heart burst its banks, “spilling beauty and goodness,” but more like the utter desolation in the face of a vagrant whose last and only bit of food has been swiped right from his hands as he was about to take a sweet bite, stolen away by some treacherous thief now completely out of sight.

Moses saw the backside of Jesus. He did! He got to see the Bright and Morning Star shining in His brilliance as He strolled away from him, and his face shone the color of glory… for a time. But that glory faded from Moses, faded… and finally disappeared completely. My heart breaks reading the account of Moses covering his face, not wanting his comrades to notice the dimming magnificence. So heart wrenching it was for him to lose that radiance, and so deep within his soul he felt it, that he chose to hide the remaining hours of that light from his friends. As close as he had been to his God (a God who knew him intimately as a friend), I wonder if he had felt some piercing sense of abandonment during that whole thing, as if left holding a ring as his dreams faded into the distance.

What am I to do with that? If Moses, who had by himself ascended the mountain to be with his Lord in all His wild fury and violent call, could do nothing to retain the imprint of the Glorious One with him, what hope do I have? What am I to do with my aching memory of a home “ordered,” as Eugene Peterson recalls with me, “by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” a memory, I need to add, that neither fits well into this world nor is welcomed by it. And all the busyness and drivenness and rationale excuse the loss of that haunting as success, all the while my own heart still loses blood with each virile beat.

Is this the end of the story, then? Is the final word on my heart’s life strictly what I can devise myself, as if I could maybe, working a little harder than Moses, retain the glory upon my face where he lost it? Maybe if I just sinned less, or devoted myself more… Maybe if I wailed louder or understood better…

But this never works. Never. If the rest were up to me, I must certainly lost all hope, and with it all life. I might as well pack up and go home. Huh. Home. As if there were anything else to go to.

In hope beyond hope, though, I sit gaping-mouthed listening to Paul, this man who has also met with the Living God and knows a secret deeper even than Moses’ fading glory, a mystery kept hidden in the heart of God until such a time as this. “Now if the ministry that brought death… came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?”

Jesus, that must be it. The glory that is mine to inherit in the ministry of your Spirit is greater even than Moses’ glory. “And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!”

That’s what I hear, then, like blood rushing in my ears. That this is not the end of the story, not by a long shot. That what feels fading is a glory less than what I am made for. That the sentence of death I feel in my heart isn’t the end word (that one has already been spoken: “It is finished.”) That if the law that brought death was glorious, how much greater that which brings life. And of all things my heart both needs and desires, it is life, that life promised and shown and brought to me in the face of Jesus of Nazareth. That, then, is my hope.

Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away… we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory...

Jesus, I am broken, knowing that You are all I have. I am hopeful, knowing that You are all I need. I am joyful, knowing that You are all I want. Unveil my face, that Your glory may be reflected from it with ever increasing glory – that you would be known by me, in me, and through me to the praise of Your renown. I faint into You.

The Offer

The Christian life does not begin with a list of do's-and-dont's. It does not begin with tabs on morality or even a social agenda for bringing positive change in our world. Christianity does not begin with sin. It never has.

What Jesus comes to offer is life. It is life welling up from the deepest places within us, from the core of who we are. And so the the Christian life begins, simply, with thirst. John Piper has said that "the awakening of an irresistible thirst for Christ, the pursuit of joy in God, is not only innocent, it is essential. The birth of that pursuit of joy is the birth of the Christian life."

What we are offered, then, through Jesus, is to come home. "A home," writes Eugene Peterson, "ordered by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

To our hearts' deepest desires Jesus speaks when he gives the offer, "Come to me if you are thirsty..."

And so, the question begs to be asked, a question that Jesus over the centuries has asked again and again to his would-be disciples, a question that takes a lifetime of deep-hearted journey and battle to answer, "What is it you want?"

We win... but not yet...

This came as a letter from a dear friend of mine...

This week one of our local television stations did a special report on the last surviving soldier from the group that raised the flag over Iwo Jima in World War II. The story told of the extreme bravery and risk it took to get to the top of the mountain that was full of tunnels occupied by the Japanese soldiers.

Most all of us view that photo as symbolic of the end of the battle, the victory is won and the flag goes up to declare it. This is only partly true. The soldiers were able to raise the flag but the battle for Iwo Jima raged on for another 30 days, and thousands of lives were lost in those thirty days. Even though the US soldiers outnumbered the Japanese soldiers by almost three to one, the fighting was fierce and almost 7,000 US Marines lost their lives, out of about 70,000 on the front. The Japanese soldiers knew they faced defeat, outnumbered and effectively cut off from reinforcements. They were instructed to kill ten Marines before they were killed themselves.

It struck me that there is a huge correlation with our spiritual battle today. Christ’s death on Calvary raised the flag of victory, declaring the end. To this day however the enemy is fighting. Knowing they face defeat, they are taking out as many as they can.

Victory is already ours...but not yet.

Longing Awakened

I awoke this morning with a deep longing for the things of God and to be with this Lover so true. I love Him. I love His kingdom, and I am taken in wholly by His pursuit. Jesus is doing in me what Antoine de Saint-Exupery once talked about: "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

Half-dead I awaken
from a restless slumber,
from a stiff, still, dead-sea sleep,
into a longing like a fierce wild wind
that carries me
off on some dangerous course.
The storm to fill these sails
and full-force propels
this heart also rages the ocean plain
of too-long-waiting waves
that have forgotten themselves
under the dry spell
of the hot sun,
now stretching into a weathered agony.
Come, north wind! And blow, south wind!
Bring the scent of some scandalous rain
and burst open the sky
stretched tight
to break forth in glorious might
upon this lean and weary one.
Let this hunger for the deep
and endless immensity of the sea
glut in me
the virile tides
until, dead from living,
I arrive.
©2005, Brian Fidler

Incidentally, I wrote this shortly before I found out that a dear friend was killed in a car crash that very morning. This is for you, Burton, a man who did, indeed, finally arrive. So close to home is the evidence that this life is to be lived as a holy longing "like some fierce wild wind," and that the storm kicked up by such deep-hearted desire by both ourselves and our Creator whose image we bare will both propel us Homeward and wash away everything else we could ever hope to hold. In the words of Dougie MacLean, "And the lightning strikes and the wind cuts cold through the sailor's bones through the sailor's soul, till there's nothing left that he can hold, except a rolling ocean..."

Heroic Intimacy

Overflowing with the generosity that comes from the abundance of real love, [God] creates us to share in the joy of this heroic intimacy. One early mystic says we were created out of the laughter of the Trinity.
-The Sacred Romance, p. 74

My Lord God – I am your apprentice, and my eyes are on your hands as my Master. I am your squire, learning of your ways as we go this road in the rescue of the princess of the kingdom taken captive long ago by an evil one, long locked in a stone fortress guarded by an evil dragon.

I am your soldier, and you my Commander. Teach me the ways of a warrior, strengthen me in the weight of the Sword.

I am your sheep, hearing your voice and finding safe pasture. You lay your life down for me.

I am your son, destined to inherit so much. I see the strength from your arms, the passion of your heart, your desire and authenticity, your tenderness and patience, and remember that I am a stem of that victorious stalk, a seed of you, a bearer of a great image. This is who I am to become like – this Jesus. The Lion and this Lamb.

And I am your friend, let in on all the secrets of your Kingdom, on the heart of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. What dignity and honor you give me by your invitation to ride with you. Yes!

Yes, Lover of my Soul. Here I find, too, that I am the object of your grand desire and affection. I am to be known as a bride becomes known to her groom on that night and in all the coming trysts between them, those secret meetings known by them and by them alone. And I am to know you – for this is life. This is why you came.

With all that I am, with all the breath in my lungs and blood in my veins, I cry “Yes!” Yes, Holy God – to your invitation, I say Yes. I am yours, O’ great I Am.