This In-Between Month, Day Twenty-Something: Time's a Revelator

Today River and I rode through the mountains. We turned Gillian Welch way up and drove real slow, winding in and out of endless curves cut from sheer rock faces. She sang "Time's a revelator" and as she did it seemed time slowed, our surroundings coming into such sharp focus. The trees, except for a few evergreens, were bare and covered the old round hills in great gray bristles. There were tall slender symmetrical ones that looked like flightless feathers (for what are trees if not the earth's feathers, and forests her many wings). And there were huge white writhing ones too that looked like the skeletons of great lumbering beasts. And the ground, the trees and it seemed every stone was covered in a thick green fur.

After a week of rain the sun gilded the surface of streams and glowed rocks until they burned like coals. The endless bare branches, the sun cutting through with no canopy of leaves to obscure its light meant shadows criss crossing at every odd angle and making a maze on the forest floor. No photo could capture the stillness and the magic of those few moments any more than you can be warmed by a sketch of the sun. We just kept saying "wow, wow, wooooow". Our words, our breath, our movements slowed too. We stopped and stood on a giant rock in a river bend and my son, my own wild River broke the spell by quoting Coleridge which only served to put us back under the spell deeper still:
                                                                                                                         

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

Now, in our hotel room, River strums his guitar and I am thinking about time, this short interval of eternity scaled for human reference. Time is a revelator and I suppose we agree, "only time will tell" goes our prediction. We comfort ourselves and promise one another that "time is a healer". The ancient greeks in all their wisdom defer to time as the "wisest counselor of all". But we only have so much of it, and like Dave Perkins sings, "we lean against time with heels dug in". How many on their deathbed beg and barter with time? All my possessions for just a few more days. 

Not much else to say I guess. I hope these scriptures about the time we have now and the time we have left will encourage you, and especially me to trust God more, drink down each day with great breathless gulps, and to get busy about kingdom business, mainly loving on widows and orphans and the lonely and the crushed in spirit. 

“But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand.” – Psalm 31:14-15, ESV

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1, KJV

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” -Psalm 90:12, ESV

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered – how fleeting my life is.” – Psalm 39:4, NLT

“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” – 2 Peter 3:8-9, ESV

“The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.” – Psalm 9:9, ESV

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” – James 4:13-15, ESV

And the one that seems to stay in my mind these last few weeks...

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11

This In-Between Month, Day 12: The Fear of God

Today River and I shot a little pool, talked a lot about music and I realized again, looking at this young man who I helped make, that every second with him is such a gift of grace, every minute a miracle of mercy. As I dropped him off to spend the evening with his friends I was already missing him before I drove away. He is so bright, our conversations cover so many topics where I am way out of my depth. His questions make me search the depth of my experiences and hold fast to the promise that God gives us the words to speak when we need them. We talk about the church's role (if any) in politics. We often talk about Christianity in the modern age, at the crossroads of culture, and how the language we choose to use in communicating the gospel is crucial. One phrase that came up was "the fear of God". 

A web search for "fear of God" images and these were the first two that came up after a plethora of ads for some clothing company out of LA that sells 1000 dollar oversized understated neo-skinhead fashion...

That phrase, "the fear of God", seems to perplex so many (and it has always made me a little uneasy too). It has been used at times to bludgeon people into belief, others have dismissed it as an archaic concept, the personality of an Old Testament God who was replaced by a kinder, gentler, New Testament one, and by others still to reject Christianity altogether. We are told to love God for he is a gentle father, and then to fear God because He is a mighty warrior. And from the outside, and even the inside I suppose, this can make Him seem a bit schizophrenic .

As a Christian well immersed in “church” (and having at one point learned Christianese fluently) and, subsequently, living in a post-modern age where words have been emasculated, (and being no theologian), my response to the “fear of God” has always been a bit convoluted. I was taught, as a child, that this “fear” meant awe and wonder. And I still believe that to be one, large, dynamic part of it. But I think our system of awe and wonder may not big big enough for God. If a “2” is a litter of puppies being born then a “9” is River being born. The headroom for God is very limited. I say God is love. And then I say I love chocolate. The sliding scale starts in the finite but goes into the infinite. Words fail us and yet words are most of we have to communicate these concepts.

When I read the scriptures, it seems to me that fear is expected to be a huge part of worship and the relationship we are supposed to have with God. We're told the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That fear is for our protection, for our blessing, for our understanding, for all things in the universe to remain in order. It is this fear that is supposed to compel us to cherish our neighbor, to feed the poor, to be kind to the stranger. Hmmmm.... At the end of his days, Solomon, whom scripture calls the wisest man, summed it up to this. “Fear God and keep His commandments.” So than what is this fear? Again with the clumsiness of human terms, let me try and explain what I think it means. 

To me it is the acceptance of the sovereignty and perfection of a loving omnipotent God. It is the understanding that:

He answers to no man, but yet stoops so low to hear the softest prayer of the weakest saint. 

He can take or give without permission, be that life or riches or power. He owes no one a single thing and yet His generosity knows no bounds. He gave His son up to the dogs of hell for them to devour Jesus's flesh just for us, so that we might have eternal life. And then He makes us joint heirs with Christ of all of heaven's riches. 

He is beyond reproach, beyond any misgiving. He cannot lie. He cannot err. He cannot cease because He always was. And yet He calls us friends, we who are a ragtag bunch of rebels, liars, mistake makers, whose lives are a breath, a vapor, a flower fading.

He is all powerful and could at any moment, without our permission, end all life by grinding the big blue-green ball of earth to sub-atomic grit in His hands. But yet in His unfathomable tenderness He holds us gently, safely in His hands and not only does he not crush us, he keeps us from the crushing weight of all else. 

I believe, if His majesty were revealed, in total, to any created being, they would explode, or implode, (or worse) but that what stays His hand from exacting justice on us all is His infinitely merciful heart, is His promise to love those He has called children. Oh how He loves us! Infinitely more than we love Him. 

So then the act of fearing God to me, in the simplest definition, is the total acceptance of His complete control and incomprehensible greatness and of our total depravity and infinite smallness all wonderfully wrapped in the revelation that we were created for Him to love and that His purpose, His eternal plan, is fulfilled when He exchanges His wrath for us as sinners with His love for us as children. Then the invisible realms see the very nature of God and I suspect, they tremble too. 

Argh, that felt long-winded and not perfectly clear. I hope that it helps, and there are also some really good thoughts here.

This In-Between Month, Day 3: The World-Wide Whisper

River and I walked around the French quarter today. He entertained me, effortlessly shifting between Monty Python and C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft and Dr. Who. Riffing about pop culture and the nature of evil. All in a cast of voices from the somber to the insane. He is older, looks older, changed in subtle ways. I want to lament what I have missed but instead try to only celebrate the man he is becoming. 

Later as the shadows of the afternoon gave contrast to the neon signs River sang "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" then "Norwegian Wood". And somehow "Hotel California became "American Pie" which then was Tennyson.

"For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging through the

thunder-storm."

My son's deepening voice and passion for song lyrics and all things guitar was a soundtrack to my thoughts. I tried to be right there with him, and most of me was, but the images of Kiev on fire...well it looks like hell's flames have come to earth.

Pictures from the Guardian UK.

It seems there is no "world-wide whisper" but instead a scream. All creation groans for all things to be made new but the daughters of Eve, the sons of Adam wail. The forgotten tragedies Central African Republic where religions devour each other. Boots on the throats of their brothers.

The caption above read "Christian's winning". Now how is that even possible? How can you reconcile laying down your life for your brother with a boot on his throat. What part of hacking him to death with a machete communicates the love of Jesus. None.

Syria with 9 million refugees. With a bloody conflict dismissed by the west as "someone else's civil war" as "baddie vs. baddie". But when civilians are targeted, when children are blown to bits because father's speak out...it is all of our problem. Below families flee across deserts and borders into the makeshift camps. Leaving behind death for living misery. 

 


I'ts all so much to feel. Too much to understand how one of us can or should respond. I am at a loss, feeling so far from the reality of it all. Today all I can do is pray. Pray for the children's lives destroyed by these tragedies. I just want to do something. But what?? 

I gotta go, River is ready to ramble on. I have a friend Nat in the Central African Republic, he and his wife work with Tearfund (who are also working in Syria). If you can, help them try and protect the innocent there. Mesi Anpil.