Sunday afternoons are for writing...

It's easy to wonder how we got to where we are; and to wonder whether here is the right place. Am I where I'm supposed to be? It is an off-shoot of the eternal socratic questions of why am I here, and where am I going. Am I doing it right? And for us, the beloved of God, it is an aching desire to please our God, to find Him, and enjoy Him as we ought.

When the glass is smoky and dim, when we can't see what His plan is for us.. as is often true.. most often.. it is then we wonder whether we have strayed from the path. Did we miss something? My step is so unsure, my past is a mess. What is to say I made the right decisions?

As Jonathan Parnell said this morning: our choices come from who we are, but we are also shaping who we are with every choice. This is terrifying. And yet, as he reminded us: wherever this has landed you, the mercy of Jesus is there too. Take it!

This is faith: to trust Himself and the good he has already given. To take the step before you, to seek good, to ask for Him to make a way where there is no way (His specialty). And in this moment now, to seize upon the mercy he is always offering.

Our Jesus is ridiculously kind.
When these thoughts scratch at the corners of my mind, even as I take the step forward, he faithfully prepares my way before me. I read many beautiful passages from my bible this morning, but the gift waiting for me at church today was Psalm 139. Words I know by heart, and yet needed desperately, like water. There is no place you can go. Nowhere. That God is not there too. Nowhere I can get to by rejection or running, nowhere I can get to by misunderstanding, inattention, or weakness; nowhere that either rebellion or sheer accident can take me, that would take me from the ever-present presence of God. God is Here. Now. Pursuing you. With unlimited attention.

This could sound like terrible news, or the best thing you've ever heard in your life.
We are terrified of being known. And made for it.

Lewis says, the more we "let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become".
Gift number two 437(ish): when C.S. Lewis shows up (even more prominently than usual) in Joe Rigney's sermon. (And you hear there's a book too).

Gift number (I don't know, I'm skipping many): Dandelions. Growing all along the sheltered side of the church wall. Life and light, sunshine and glory, unafraid and undaunted.
"--Living fire, laughing like dandelions standing tall in a fresh-mown lawn, like dandelions that have cracked concrete with nothing but roots, like dandelions unafraid to be turned into ash, or cut or poisoned, ready to be born again."
"Your blood is all green and gold with the strength of dandelions. And their strength is in their laughter, for they fear nothing." DANDELION FIRE. N.D. WILSON.

"Mountains groan
And seas roar
Because all they know
Is you for who you are
Bright and Morning Star" SHANE&SHANE

I was reminded this week as I reread Scent of Water, "For a few moments the sun was hers and then with grateful joy she gave it back to Him again." It is when we give it up, give it back: our lives, our gifts, joy and beauty, that they become more ours than before, that we begin to see more and see better, the glory spread around us, handed to us, and laid before our feet.

I think this is strikingly prominent in nature and creation. How could you possibly enjoy it properly if you didn't see it as an uncontainable cry of joy in who God is? The unending song of all that God has made, that is only silent to us because it never stops.* Not only a manifestation of God's nature in his art and the work of his hands, but also the returning exultation of the created.
Of course, I forget too. I become deaf to it. But oh what glory when we are able to hear again that unquenchable shout of proclamation.

*SEE LEWIS' SPACE TRILOGY