From
Galatians 1:1-12
“Freedom!”
H,
Sorry for the late turn in
replies. I have been up and about in that fake place we call real life, and my
routines have suffered because of it. Shall we continue now?
I know after a while in the
sun it becomes hard to simple say the truth or even, before that, just what you
really think. We all want to be liked and appreciated. We all long to be
understood in some way. We have that blessing, sometimes, when the truth we
have to share is easy to swallow. There is no turning in it and so the ear can
hear it and the heart respond and we have a certain glow because we have said
what we ought to say and it has been received and all is well with the
universe.
It will not always be this
way. There will be times when we will not get that applause we seek. There will
be words that will ruffle feathery frames and cost us our popularity. This is
not because we have gone wrong or missed a plaque or two. It will be because we
have gone a little deeper and cut too close to the bone. A parent, in some
small way, must feel this when talking to a child who thinks all is known and
is very, very wrong about a new direction. The child thinks his/her path is
different and, as the buk would say, sex is a brand new discovery and all wisdom
is up in the air hereafter.
Jesus had crowds that did
not hear or listen and did not believe. One particular haughty assemblage tried
to push him off a cliff. We speak for Him and if we do it rightly there will
come a time when this will prove unpopular and even dangerous. It has cost so
many, over the centuries, everything on earth. It may cost us the same. We do
not mind. We serve a higher calling. We are witnesses to the light at the
highest point of the dark. We are not here for fortune or fame but for the
unfolding glory of a new earth framed under the great rule of a heaven to come.
We are free to do all this
because our lives are hidden in God. The outcome of following is to be found by
Him, constantly. The consequence of speaking up in the deadly silence, and all
that rejection, is to draw closer to the great Holy Spirit and all the intimacy
that will bring. There is a great world buzzing in our reformed hearts that I think
all the fury of the world will only serve to expand and explore. We are free to
feel like failures but not to wallow there. The very next step from that is the
realization that we are not failures and we did not fail. We merely look up to
a different standard, the highest there is, and that drum beat of eternal
victory sounds like nothing else but music of the eternal story unfolding.
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