Hearing Him
I remember in Oxford, I wanted two things. First a resolution to the questions in my mind pertaining to music, second, to let the heart expand in worship with sheer delight and joy with Him amongst the hills. I didn't want to sleep at all if I could help it. God was everywhere, living and breathing in me, through me, and I met Him in the things I saw around me. I wanted to worship Him ceaselessly if I could, through both the day and night.
I remember one night I could not sleep. It was a warm summer evening--We'd just returned the day before from a romp in the Cotswolds. I imagined that out there in the hills I'd just walked, must be a soft dewy night, full of genial magic and growth, deliciously cool and damp, but with no shiver. The stars must be bright, and though it was moonless, it must be so far from dark that it seemed conscious throughout of some distant light that illumined it without shine. My heart felt like the night, as if it held a deeper life than I could ever know. How it yearned to go out, and meet the living God!
I prayed, and in my mind's eye I wandered about till I came to the field where I'd been with my Father the day before. I wasn't thinking actively--any effort would break the spell in which I moved! For the moment I would be but a human plant, gathering comfort from the soft coolness and the dew when the sun had ceased his demands. The coolness and the dew sank into me, and made my soul long for the thing that waits the asking.
I came to the spot where my Father and I had talked together on the walk, and there I knelt and lifted my face up to the stars. Oh, mighty, true church of all churches--where the Son of Man prayed! In the temple made by man's hands he taught, but here, under the starry roof, was his house of prayer, church where not a mark is to be seen of human hand! This was the church of God's building, the only fitting type of a yet greater, a yet holier church, whose stars are the burning eyes of self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless ministration of self-forgetting deeds--the one real ideal church, the body of the living Christ, built of the hearts and souls of men and women out of every nation and every creed, through all time and all over the world, redeemed alike from judaism, paganism and all the false Christianities that darken and dishonour the true.
There in the fields, something awoke within me, and i lifted up my heart, sending my soul aloft through the invisible.
Softly through the gentle night came a call... I heard my name.
The sky was shining with stars, but I saw nothing else. I looked all round my narrow horizon, the edge of the hollow between me and the sky, but nothing was there. its edge was unbroken by any other shape than the grass, the daisies, and stars. A soft dreamy wind came over the edge of the bank and breathed on my cheek. Then I heard my name called again. It seemed to come from far away, so soft and gentle was it, and yet it seemed near.
It was Him. I waited for Him. Prayed on. The longing to meet Him grew deeper still.
I thought of daryl back home... who would tell me that never in his life has he had one whisper from that world.
And He spoke to me the answers of His heart. The air around me may be full of angels and spirits, how could we ever be certain? I like to think they may somehow be with us no matter how unseen they are. But so long as I am able to believe and hope in the one great Spirit, the Holy Spirit that fills all, it really does not matter, for He is in all and fills all things, and all is well.
And daryl would ask "but why might not something show itself once, just for once, if only to give one a start in the right direction?"
To that He asks "Do I not know best?". It is perhaps best for us that it is so. If you saw a strange sign or wonder, one of two things would likely follow. You would either come to doubt it after it had vanished, or it would grow common to you as you remembered it. If visions could make us sure about God, he does not care about the kind of sureness they can give. Or at least he does not care about our being made sure in that way.
A thing might be of little value gained in one way; while gained in another might be a vital invaluable part of the process of life. God wants us to be sure of a thing by knowing the heart from which it comes. That is the only worthy assurance. To truly know, he will have us go in a the great door of obedient faith; and faith, as you know, has to do with things not seen. If anybody thinks he has found a back stair into the house of the knowledge of God, he will find it lands him at a doorless wall. It is the assurance that comes inside one's heart of beholding himself, of seeing what he is, that God wants to produce in us. And He would not have us think we know Him before we do, for in that error many thousands walk in a vain show.
And yet, if I do so humbly as His child, I am free to imagine, for God has given us our imaginations as well as our wills for His glory. And I imagine a space full of life invisible. As I came through the fields in prayer, I lost myself for a time in the feeling that I was walking in the midst of lovely people of God that I have known, some in person, some by their books. Perhaps they were with me, are with me, even now. For who can distinguish the many ways in which God speaks to us by His Spirit? The moment a thought is given me, whether directly from God, or through something I may have just read, or by a conversation with another, that same instant my own thought rushes to mingle with it, and I can no more tell them apart. Some stray hints from the world beyond may mingle even with the folly and stupidity of my dreams. The Bible speaks many times of God guiding His people through them.
And my brother, you ask "if you don't know how to discern folly from wisdom, what is the good?"
But it is the quality of a thing, not how it arrived, that is the point. And for anything I know, true things may often be mingled with things not originating with God at all. God's spirit may be taking advantage of the door set ajar by sleep to whisper a message of love or repentance, and the troubled brain or heart or stomach may be sending forth fumes that cloud that vision, causing evil echoes to mingle with the hearing. When you look at any bright thing for a time and then close your eyes, you still see the shape of it, but in different colours. This figure has come to you from the outside world, but the brain has altered it. Even the shape itself is reproduced with but partial accuracy. It is by faith in His word that things shall not lose their true form, for only in knowing the heart behind the truth shall you be able to discern that which is counterfeit.
But I should remind you again that the things around us are just as full of marvel as those into which you are so anxious to look from the world beyond. The only thing worth a man's care is the will of God, and that will is the same whether in this world or the next. That will has made this world ours, not the next. For nothing can be ours until God has given it to us. Curiosity is but the contemptible human shadow of the holy thing wonder. Let us make the best we can of this life for Him, that we may be able to make the best of the next also. We do so simply by falling in with God's design in the making of ourselves, and allowing Him to work out His plan in us. The design must be worked out--cannot be worked out without you. You must walk in the front of things with the will of God, not be dragged in the sweep of His garment that makes the storm behind Him! To walk with God is to go hand in hand with him, like a boy with his father. Then, as to the other world, or any world, as to the past sorrow, the vanished joy, the coming fear--all is well! For the design of the making, the loving, the pitiful, the beautiful God is marching on toward divine completion.
So my brother, learn to pray "Dear Maker of me, go on making me, and let me help You. Father, here I am. Let us go on. I know that my words are those of a child, but it Your own child who prays to You. It is Your dark I walk in. It is Your hand I hold."
Let these words sink into your heart, for it must stay in the lofty condition of being capable of receiving wisdom directly from another. Those who scorn such a condition only show they have not reached it, nor are they likely to reach it soon. Those who will not be taught through eye or ear must be taught through the skin, and that is generally a long as well as painful process. Let your maturity come from having faith, for the trials of a pure, honest, teachable youth, however severe, must be very different from those of one who is unteachable. The former are for growth, the latter for change.
| e.s.t.h.e.r in the arms of Jesus @
8/19/2005 12:21:00 pm |
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