Finding

Busy days...just a couple of thoughts to share:

Repentance...takes me beyond the reach of sin,
    and brings me before God.

Maybe there at last, I see.
    Maybe there at last, I am humbled.

Maybe in the place of my emptiness
 I find that God is the Answer to all my need.

The Two

In the story of the Prodigal there are two sons,
    different and yet alike in that neither saw the real picture.
The prodigal saw himself as entitled to share his father's wealth,
    and yet did not know what wealth he was leaving behind.
The elder brother caused no problems,
    but was unaware of his true riches.

The Prodigal took the riches and lost the home.
    The elder brother had the home and couldn't see the riches.

Suffering and loss taught the prodigal what was important.
    Embitterment and inner conflict brought the other son to his moment of revelation.
 
"Thou art ever with me" (Lk. 15.)

They were the words of the father to his older son.
    Have I heard those words?
        Have I seen this truth?
            Does this sustain the whole of life, my every day?

What a world is there - all is included.
    There is the father,
        the love, the care, the riches.

This is the broad place of Job 36.11 "where there is no straitness.".
    It is a sphere beyond time and space - it fills eternity.
It is the place of the psalmist,
    "all Thy  waves and Thy billows are gone over me." (Ps. 42.7)

Maybe we need to take the time,
    and break up the phrase, and look at it word by word:
"Thou...art ever...with Me"
Maybe we need to capitalize it:
    THOU...ART EVER...WITH ME.
        Can we hear it?
        Can we know it?
        God is infinite and the giving of God has no end.

William Booth wrote a hymn:
    "Oh, boundless salvation,
    deep ocean of love."
This is our dwelling place -infinite measures,
which will overwhelm for all eternity.

        "All Thy waves...and Thy billows...are gone over me."
            ...roll on mighty ocean.

The Gold

 

"How is the gold become dim." (Lam. 4.1)
It sounds within me today, not as a statement but as a question..."what happened?"

Our world today is worse than yesterday.

All around the world what we thought we had firmly built crumbles before our eyes. 

When the pilgrim settlers arrived in North America they were seeking "freedom."
    Freedom to them meant unimpeded possibility to worship and obey God -
        even if, in the lapse of the first winter, it were paid for in the deaths of forty five of one hundred and two settlers who stepped on their land of promise.
           
Those who inhabit the same land almost four hundred years later
    give centrality to the word Freedom,
        but the meaning has changed.
Freedom now means an unimpeded road to the fulfillment of all my desires.

This is true throughout the world.
    The sense of there being One who demands obedience has been replaced
        with the notion that all things exist only for my satisfaction.
We seem to be repeating the history of Eden, when Adam chose freedom from obedience to God
    and sought for his own independent realm of determination.
        But God is the Creator of all things, there can be no freedom outside of Him.
        We are free only with the freedom God bestows.

The unfettered thrust for personal freedom finally finds itself
    confronted with men whose government promises Everything.
But this all-inclusive promise trails behind it Total Control,
    and so ultimately, paradoxically, in seeking freedom all freedom is lost.
Instead of freedom to obey God
    we have the inescapable obligation to obey man's strictures.

Can we as sons of God lift our eyes beyond all that surrounds us?
    Can we shut out the earthly voices?
When the verse  says, "Let God be true and every man a liar," (Rom. 3.4)
    can we rid ourselves of every other source of knowledge,
        and look to Him alone for our enlightenment?

Now, now, now is the time:
    to lift our eyes from earthly things to Heavenly things,
        to change the world of earthly existence for a spiritual realm,
            to walk in the Light of Life.

            What a world opens when we leave our love of earthly existence
                and see with clearer vision The World of God.