From
Hebrews 11:1
H,
I am
trying to remember what it felt like to have a feeling for God. You know what I
mean, to feel it not just know it. Those golden times when He was spring in
step and voice in laughter and the real joy in everything. Of course memory
plays a trick on the mind called reverie. We remember in struggles only the
good spots of a supposed easier past. It is quite possible that it has always
been this hard. It is also quite possible that a sort of inverse Eden is upon
us and so we are not learning the knowledge of that tree again but growing into
the knowledge of God so the world now seems naked and flimsy and cruel. Our
longing for Him is growing but our darn flesh will not keep up.
Do you
remember that old Pentecostal dating epigram? It went something like “do not
fall in love but stand in love”? I always thought it was a little much about a
turn of phrase but I am quite sure now that in terms of loving God we never
stand. It is a steep fall from the heights of trying to make our way to the
true floor of knowing that we cannot do it this way. A consciousness for Him
seems to contain this new dislike for the pale grey of this present world and
to miss the rainbow extravaganza that is to be the promised return of the King
of Kings; that government of no end where lions lay down with lambs and there
is no one hurting on the holy mountain. We try to fix problems now and spread a
light and well we should but we still long for the completion of all things and
the final manifestation of all the best attributes of the Sons of God. We want
a better world but only an unwise look at things can produce anything but
despair as a whole for the evil across the planet. We may be a little above the
fray of constant sorrows but we are just one slip away from being in the moss. If
we care for the state of the world then we know even if we never have great
evils happen to us it is still absurd that they happen at all. The long night
seems too long this time and we struggle to look up when down here there is all
this darkness.
Am I
too doom and gloom? Well, I am misleading you because I am not down at all. I get
down and all (being ‘poigny’ and all) but in all this a light is growing out of
the blind side of my despair. It may take a few days for me to explain this but
let me start by saying this: I am starting to see that I have to look through
other eyes to see the kingdom as an eternal epoch again. In other words, I am
not just hearing rumours of another world built on truth, justice and righteousness;
I am starting to believe them.