Gather my broken fragments
by George MacDonald
Gather my broken fragments to a whole,
As these four quarters make a shining day.
Into thy basket, for my golden bowl,
Take up the things that I have cast away
In vice or indolence or unwise play.
Let mine be a merry, all-receiving heart,
But make it a whole, with light in every part.
Selah.
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11, NIV
Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. Psalm 86:11, ESV
And I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me always, for their own good and for the good of their children after them.
Selah.
Showing posts with label George MacDonald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George MacDonald. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Lived truth: Walking up the stairway of life
A divine comfort through human obedience
The only comfort the heart can take cannot come from itself, but the comfort must come through itself.
A higher region: What is mine to do
To her surprise she found also that since her father’s death, many of her doubts had vanished. She had been lifted into a region higher than those questions which had so disturbed her peace. From a point of vision she saw things so differently that the questions she had were no longer relevant. The truth was being lived out in her that the business of life is to live, not to answer every objection the mind can raise to things spiritual. She had done that which was given her to do; therefore she progressed up the stairway of life. It is no matter that a man or woman be unable to explain or understand this or that. It does not matter as long as when they see a truth they do it; to see and not do would at once place them in eternal danger. There is in the man or woman who does the truth, the radiance of life essential – a glory infinitely beyond any that can belong to the intellect.
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Empty Houses,” The Lady’s Confession.
The only comfort the heart can take cannot come from itself, but the comfort must come through itself.
A higher region: What is mine to do
To her surprise she found also that since her father’s death, many of her doubts had vanished. She had been lifted into a region higher than those questions which had so disturbed her peace. From a point of vision she saw things so differently that the questions she had were no longer relevant. The truth was being lived out in her that the business of life is to live, not to answer every objection the mind can raise to things spiritual. She had done that which was given her to do; therefore she progressed up the stairway of life. It is no matter that a man or woman be unable to explain or understand this or that. It does not matter as long as when they see a truth they do it; to see and not do would at once place them in eternal danger. There is in the man or woman who does the truth, the radiance of life essential – a glory infinitely beyond any that can belong to the intellect.
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Empty Houses,” The Lady’s Confession.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
The inner work
Little is much if God is in it
All great things have a small beginning, and the man who would do great things must be willing to do a small thing as a great thing. The surest path to the future lies straightway in your next duty.
George MacDonald
The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth. The inward work always includes in itself all size, all breadth and all length.
Meister Eckhart
All great things have a small beginning, and the man who would do great things must be willing to do a small thing as a great thing. The surest path to the future lies straightway in your next duty.
George MacDonald
The outward work can never be small if the inward one is great, and the outward work can never be great or good if the inward is small or of little worth. The inward work always includes in itself all size, all breadth and all length.
Meister Eckhart
Sunday, June 14, 2009
On belonging to God
The surprise of belonging
"He who does what the Lord tells him is in the kingdom, even if every feeling of heart and brain told him otherwise."
George MacDonald, "The Understanding," The Marquis' Secret (Bethany House: Minneapolis, MN 1982), p. 197. Note: Originally published as The Marquis of Lossie, by J.P. Lippencott and Co., 1877.
"He who does what the Lord tells him is in the kingdom, even if every feeling of heart and brain told him otherwise."
George MacDonald, "The Understanding," The Marquis' Secret (Bethany House: Minneapolis, MN 1982), p. 197. Note: Originally published as The Marquis of Lossie, by J.P. Lippencott and Co., 1877.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The loving slowness of awful omnipotence
How God conquers evil
Subtitle: Why this long valley of suffering, waiting and pain?
There are many who think to reverence the Most High by assuming that He can and should do anything or everything that pleases Him in a mere moment. In their eyes power is a grander thing than love. But His Love is higher than His omnipotence. See what it cost Him to redeem the world! He did not find that easy, or to be done in a moment without pain or toil. Yes, God is omnipotent -- awfully omnipotent. For He wills, effects, and perfects the thing which, because of the bad in us, He has to carry out in suffering and sorrow. Evil is a hard thing, even for God to overcome. Yet thoroughly and altogether and triumphantly will He overcome it. But not by crushing it underfoot -- any god of man's idea could do that! -- but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all. Nothing shall be too hard for God that fears not pain, but will deliver and make true and blessed at His own severest cost.
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Down the Hill," The Gentlewoman's Choice, edited by Michael R. Phillips.
Subtitle: Why this long valley of suffering, waiting and pain?
There are many who think to reverence the Most High by assuming that He can and should do anything or everything that pleases Him in a mere moment. In their eyes power is a grander thing than love. But His Love is higher than His omnipotence. See what it cost Him to redeem the world! He did not find that easy, or to be done in a moment without pain or toil. Yes, God is omnipotent -- awfully omnipotent. For He wills, effects, and perfects the thing which, because of the bad in us, He has to carry out in suffering and sorrow. Evil is a hard thing, even for God to overcome. Yet thoroughly and altogether and triumphantly will He overcome it. But not by crushing it underfoot -- any god of man's idea could do that! -- but by conquest of heart over heart, of life over life, of life over death, of love over all. Nothing shall be too hard for God that fears not pain, but will deliver and make true and blessed at His own severest cost.
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Down the Hill," The Gentlewoman's Choice, edited by Michael R. Phillips.
A counterintuitive climb: stairway to heaven
Kingdom vs. the world: down vs. up
"How often, on the steps of this world, when you think you are going down, you are really ascending!"
George MacDonald, "Down the Hill," The Gentlewoman's Choice, edited by Michael R. Phillips.
"How often, on the steps of this world, when you think you are going down, you are really ascending!"
George MacDonald, "Down the Hill," The Gentlewoman's Choice, edited by Michael R. Phillips.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
If hell is God's then hell is not evil
Serving heaven by learning to hate evil more than hell
The mission of Jesus was from the same source and with the same object as the punishment of our sins. He came to work along with our punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins; but a man to whom his sins, that is the evil things in him, are a burden, while he may indeed sometimes feel as if he were in hell, will soon have forgotten that ever he had any other hell to think of than that of his sinful condition. For to him his sins are hell; he would go to the other hell to be free of them; free of them, hell itself would be endurable to him. For hell is God's and not the devil's. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death. Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell but by being saved from his sins, from the evil in him. If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze, and the worm will writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father. 'Salvation from hell, is salvation as conceived by such to whom hell and not evil is the terror.' But if even for dread of hell a poor soul seek the Father, he will be heard of him in his terror, and, taught of him to seek the immeasurably greater gift, will in the greater receive the less.
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Salvation from Sin," The Hope of the Gospel.
The mission of Jesus was from the same source and with the same object as the punishment of our sins. He came to work along with our punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins; but a man to whom his sins, that is the evil things in him, are a burden, while he may indeed sometimes feel as if he were in hell, will soon have forgotten that ever he had any other hell to think of than that of his sinful condition. For to him his sins are hell; he would go to the other hell to be free of them; free of them, hell itself would be endurable to him. For hell is God's and not the devil's. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death. Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell but by being saved from his sins, from the evil in him. If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze, and the worm will writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father. 'Salvation from hell, is salvation as conceived by such to whom hell and not evil is the terror.' But if even for dread of hell a poor soul seek the Father, he will be heard of him in his terror, and, taught of him to seek the immeasurably greater gift, will in the greater receive the less.
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Salvation from Sin," The Hope of the Gospel.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Consider the ravens
Consider the ravens
by George MacDonald
Lord, according to Thy words,
I have considered Thy birds;
And I find their life good,
And better the better understood;
Sowing neither corn nor wheat,
They have all that they can eat;
Reaping no more than they sow.
They have all they can stow;
Having neither barn nor store,
Hungry again, they eat more.
Considering, I see too that they
Have a busy life, and plenty of play;
In the earth they dig their bills deep,
And work well though they do not heap;
Then to play in the air they are not loth,
And their nests between are better than both.
But this is when there blow no storms;
When berries are plenty in winter, and worms;
When their feathers are thick, and oil is enough
To keep the cold out and the rain off:
If there should come a long hard frost,
Then it looks as Thy birds were lost.
But I consider further, and find
A hungry bird has a free mind;
He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow;
Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow;
This moment is his, Thy will hath said it,
The next is nothing till Thou hast made it.
The bird has pain, but has no fear,
Which is the worst of any gear;
When cold and hunger and harm betide him,
He gathers them not to stuff inside him;
Content with the day's ill he has got,
He waits just, nor haggles with his lot;
Neither jumbles God's will
With driblets from his own still.
But next I see, in my endeavor,
Thy birds here do not live forever;
That cold or hunger, sickness or age,
Finishes their earthly stage;
The rook drops without a stroke,
And never gives another croak;
Birds lie here, and birds lie there,
With little feathers all astare;
And in Thy own sermon, Thou
That the sparrow falls dost allow.
It shall not cause me any alarm,
For neither so comes the bird to harm,
Seeing our Father, Thou hast said,
Is by the sparrow's dying bed;
Therefore it is a blessed place,
And the sparrow in high grace.
It cometh therefore to this. Lord;
I have considered Thy word,
And henceforth will be Thy bird.
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Consider the Ravens," The Lady's Confession.
by George MacDonald
Lord, according to Thy words,
I have considered Thy birds;
And I find their life good,
And better the better understood;
Sowing neither corn nor wheat,
They have all that they can eat;
Reaping no more than they sow.
They have all they can stow;
Having neither barn nor store,
Hungry again, they eat more.
Considering, I see too that they
Have a busy life, and plenty of play;
In the earth they dig their bills deep,
And work well though they do not heap;
Then to play in the air they are not loth,
And their nests between are better than both.
But this is when there blow no storms;
When berries are plenty in winter, and worms;
When their feathers are thick, and oil is enough
To keep the cold out and the rain off:
If there should come a long hard frost,
Then it looks as Thy birds were lost.
But I consider further, and find
A hungry bird has a free mind;
He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow;
Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow;
This moment is his, Thy will hath said it,
The next is nothing till Thou hast made it.
The bird has pain, but has no fear,
Which is the worst of any gear;
When cold and hunger and harm betide him,
He gathers them not to stuff inside him;
Content with the day's ill he has got,
He waits just, nor haggles with his lot;
Neither jumbles God's will
With driblets from his own still.
But next I see, in my endeavor,
Thy birds here do not live forever;
That cold or hunger, sickness or age,
Finishes their earthly stage;
The rook drops without a stroke,
And never gives another croak;
Birds lie here, and birds lie there,
With little feathers all astare;
And in Thy own sermon, Thou
That the sparrow falls dost allow.
It shall not cause me any alarm,
For neither so comes the bird to harm,
Seeing our Father, Thou hast said,
Is by the sparrow's dying bed;
Therefore it is a blessed place,
And the sparrow in high grace.
It cometh therefore to this. Lord;
I have considered Thy word,
And henceforth will be Thy bird.
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Consider the Ravens," The Lady's Confession.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
If you are not willing
The destiny of misery
If you are not willing that God should have His way with you, then, in the name of God, be miserable -- until your misery drive you to the arms of the Father.
Selah.
George MacDonald
If you are not willing that God should have His way with you, then, in the name of God, be miserable -- until your misery drive you to the arms of the Father.
Selah.
George MacDonald
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Presumption? I can only widen my assertion
The potent outshining of sons
“For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing [the outshining] of the sons of God.”
When the sons of God show as they are, taking, with the character, the appearance and place that belong to their sonship, when the sons of God sit with the Son of God on the throne of their Father, then shall they be in potency of fact the lords of the lower creation, the bestowers of liberty and peace upon it. Then shall the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help.
Let the heartless scoff, the unjust despise! The heart that cries Abba, Father, cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen. Nor can hope go too far in hoping what that God will do for the creation that now groans and travails in pain because our higher birth is delayed. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Shall my heart be more compassionate than His?
If to any reader my interpretation be unsatisfactory, I pray him not to spend his strength in disputing my faith but in making sure of his own progress on the way to freedom and sonship.
Only to the child of God is true judgment possible. Were it otherwise, what would it avail to prove this one or that right or wrong? Right opinion on questions the most momentous will deliver no man. Cure for any ill in me or about me there is none but to become the son of God I was born to be. Until such I am, until Christ is born in me, until I am revealed a son of God, pain and trouble will endure – and God grant they may!
Call this presumption, and I can only widen my assertion – until you yourself are the son of God you were born to be, you will never find the good life intended. If I presume for myself, I presume for you also.
But I do not presume. Thus has Jesus Christ represented God – as a Father perfect in love, grand in self-forgetfulness, supreme in righteousness, devoted to the lives He has uttered. I will not believe less of the Father that I can see in the face of the Son. He is the express image of the Father, by which we, His imperfect images, are to read and understand Him…
Selah.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, "Abba, Father!"
“For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing [the outshining] of the sons of God.”
When the sons of God show as they are, taking, with the character, the appearance and place that belong to their sonship, when the sons of God sit with the Son of God on the throne of their Father, then shall they be in potency of fact the lords of the lower creation, the bestowers of liberty and peace upon it. Then shall the creation, subjected to vanity for their sakes, find its freedom in their freedom, its gladness in their sonship. The animals will glory to serve them, will joy to come to them for help.
Let the heartless scoff, the unjust despise! The heart that cries Abba, Father, cries to the God of the sparrow and the oxen. Nor can hope go too far in hoping what that God will do for the creation that now groans and travails in pain because our higher birth is delayed. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Shall my heart be more compassionate than His?
If to any reader my interpretation be unsatisfactory, I pray him not to spend his strength in disputing my faith but in making sure of his own progress on the way to freedom and sonship.
Only to the child of God is true judgment possible. Were it otherwise, what would it avail to prove this one or that right or wrong? Right opinion on questions the most momentous will deliver no man. Cure for any ill in me or about me there is none but to become the son of God I was born to be. Until such I am, until Christ is born in me, until I am revealed a son of God, pain and trouble will endure – and God grant they may!
Call this presumption, and I can only widen my assertion – until you yourself are the son of God you were born to be, you will never find the good life intended. If I presume for myself, I presume for you also.
But I do not presume. Thus has Jesus Christ represented God – as a Father perfect in love, grand in self-forgetfulness, supreme in righteousness, devoted to the lives He has uttered. I will not believe less of the Father that I can see in the face of the Son. He is the express image of the Father, by which we, His imperfect images, are to read and understand Him…
Selah.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, "Abba, Father!"
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Abba: my refuge and my home
Loving the Father as a child
by George MacDonald
How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measure of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent Him as a great king on a grand throne, thinking how grand He is, and making it the business of His being and the end of His universe to keep up His glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take His name in vain.
They would not admit such a statement, but follow out what they say and it amounts to this.
Brothers, have you found our king? There He is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There He is at the table with the head of a fisherman lying on His bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot understand Him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep is – no, not a “truer,” for the other is false, but – a true type of our God beside the monstrosity of a monarch that the theologians present.
Who is our God? It is He who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature. It is He who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand Him and be blessed. It is He who never needs to be, and never is, in haste. It is He who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for the seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity. It is He who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of His wisdom in the streets.
He is the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans. It is He whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss. He is the God of history working in time unto Christianity.
And this is God is the God of little children! He alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted.
The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in Him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead than our imagination can touch their measure. Of Him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of His creatures can pass unseen. And while one of them remains unsatisfied, He is not Lord over all.
Therefore, with angels and archangels, and with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know Him not, we praise and magnify and laud His name in itself, saying, Our Father.
We do not draw back because we are unworthy, nor even because we are hardhearted and care not for the good. For it is His childlikeness that makes Him our God and Father. The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils. For our childhood is born of His fatherhood.
The person is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter emptiness of feeling and desire, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, “Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.”
Selah.
George MacDonald, "The Child in the Midst," The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, edited by Michael Phillips (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2006), 161-62
by George MacDonald
How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measure of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent Him as a great king on a grand throne, thinking how grand He is, and making it the business of His being and the end of His universe to keep up His glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take His name in vain.
They would not admit such a statement, but follow out what they say and it amounts to this.
Brothers, have you found our king? There He is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There He is at the table with the head of a fisherman lying on His bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot understand Him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep is – no, not a “truer,” for the other is false, but – a true type of our God beside the monstrosity of a monarch that the theologians present.
Who is our God? It is He who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature. It is He who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand Him and be blessed. It is He who never needs to be, and never is, in haste. It is He who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for the seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity. It is He who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of His wisdom in the streets.
He is the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans. It is He whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss. He is the God of history working in time unto Christianity.
And this is God is the God of little children! He alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted.
The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in Him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead than our imagination can touch their measure. Of Him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of His creatures can pass unseen. And while one of them remains unsatisfied, He is not Lord over all.
Therefore, with angels and archangels, and with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know Him not, we praise and magnify and laud His name in itself, saying, Our Father.
We do not draw back because we are unworthy, nor even because we are hardhearted and care not for the good. For it is His childlikeness that makes Him our God and Father. The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils. For our childhood is born of His fatherhood.
The person is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter emptiness of feeling and desire, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, “Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.”
Selah.
George MacDonald, "The Child in the Midst," The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, edited by Michael Phillips (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2006), 161-62
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Thoughts on rejection of light
That which cannot be forgiven
by George MacDonald
“All manner of sin and blasphemy,” the Lord said, “shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”
God speaks, as it were, in this manner: “I forgive you everything,” he says. “Not a word more shall be said about your sins – only come out of them. Come out of the darkness of your exile. Come into the light of your home, of your birthright, and do evil no more. Lie no more, cheat no more, oppress no more, slander no more, envy no more, be neither greedy nor vain. Love your neighbor as I love you. Be my good child. Trust in your father. I am light – come to me and you shall see things as I see them, and hate the evil thing. I will make you love the thing which you now call good and love not. I forgive all the past.
“I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me,” some say, “but I prefer staying in the darkness. Forgive me that too.”
“No,” replies God, “that I cannot do. That is the one thing that cannot be forgiven – the sin of choosing to be evil and refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that sin. It would be to take part in it. To side with wrong against right, with murder against life, cannot be forgiven. The thing that is past I pass. But he who goes on doing the same, annihilates my forgiveness. He makes it of no effect. Let a man have committed any sin whatever, I forgive him. But to choose to go on sinning – how can I forgive that? it would be to nourish and cherish evil. It would be to let my creation go to ruin.
“Shall I keep you alive to do things hateful in the sight of all true men?” If a man refuse to come out of his sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a love that would be no love if it left him there. Shall I allow my creature to be the thing my soul hates?”
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Light,” The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, edited by Michael Phillips (Bethany House: Minneapolis, MN), 127-28.
by George MacDonald
“All manner of sin and blasphemy,” the Lord said, “shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”
God speaks, as it were, in this manner: “I forgive you everything,” he says. “Not a word more shall be said about your sins – only come out of them. Come out of the darkness of your exile. Come into the light of your home, of your birthright, and do evil no more. Lie no more, cheat no more, oppress no more, slander no more, envy no more, be neither greedy nor vain. Love your neighbor as I love you. Be my good child. Trust in your father. I am light – come to me and you shall see things as I see them, and hate the evil thing. I will make you love the thing which you now call good and love not. I forgive all the past.
“I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me,” some say, “but I prefer staying in the darkness. Forgive me that too.”
“No,” replies God, “that I cannot do. That is the one thing that cannot be forgiven – the sin of choosing to be evil and refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive that sin. It would be to take part in it. To side with wrong against right, with murder against life, cannot be forgiven. The thing that is past I pass. But he who goes on doing the same, annihilates my forgiveness. He makes it of no effect. Let a man have committed any sin whatever, I forgive him. But to choose to go on sinning – how can I forgive that? it would be to nourish and cherish evil. It would be to let my creation go to ruin.
“Shall I keep you alive to do things hateful in the sight of all true men?” If a man refuse to come out of his sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a love that would be no love if it left him there. Shall I allow my creature to be the thing my soul hates?”
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Light,” The Truth in Jesus: The Nature of Truth and How We Come to Know It, edited by Michael Phillips (Bethany House: Minneapolis, MN), 127-28.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
A kingdom of kings and priests
Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king! To this end I was born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth: every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. — John 18:37
Kingship
George MacDonald
Yet the Lord says he came into the world to be king!
What then is the kingdom over which the Lord cares to reign? I answer: A kingdom of kings, and no other. A kingdom where every man is a king, there and there only does the Lord care to reign, in the name of his Father.
As no king in Europe would care to reign over a cannibal, a savage, or an animal race, so the Lord cares for no kingdom over anything this world calls a nation. A king must rule over his own kind. Jesus is a king in virtue of no conquest, inheritance, or election, but in right of essential being. And he cares for no subjects but such as are his subjects in the same right. His subjects must be of his own kind, in their very nature and essence kings.
To understand his answer to Pilate, we must see what his kingship consists of – we must see what it is that makes him a king, what manifestation of his essential being gives him a claim to be king.
It is this: The Lord’s is a kingdom in which no man seeks to be above another. Ambition is of the dirt of this world’s kingdoms. He says, “I am a king, for I was born for the purpose, I came into the world with the object of bearing witness to the truth. Everyone that is of my kind, that is of the truth, hears my voice. He is a king like me, and is one of my subjects.”
Thereupon — as would most Christians nowadays, instead of setting about being true — Pilate requests a definition of truth, a presentation to his intellect in set terms of what the word truth means.
Yet instantly, whether knowing his inquiry was useless, or intending to resume it after he had se the Lord free, he goes out to the people to tell them he finds no fault in him. Whatever interpretation we put on his action here, he must be far less to blame than those ‘Christians’ who, instead of setting themselves to be pure ‘even as he is pure,’ to be their brother and sister’s keeper, and to serve God by being honorable in shop and bank and office and market, proceed to ‘serve’ him by going to church, by condemning the opinions of their neighbors, and by teaching others what they do not themselves heed.
Neither Pilate nor they ask the one true question, ‘How am I to be a true man? How am I to become a man worth being a man?’
The Lord is a king because his life — the life of his thoughts, of his imagination, of his will, of every smallest action — is true. He is true first to God the Father in that he is altogether His. Then he is true to himself in that he forgets himself altogether. Finally, he is true to his fellows in that he will endure anything they do to him, and not cease declaring himself the son and messenger and likeness of God. They will kill him, but it matters not — the truth is as He says!
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Kingship," Unspoken Sermons: Series Three.
Kingship
George MacDonald
Yet the Lord says he came into the world to be king!
What then is the kingdom over which the Lord cares to reign? I answer: A kingdom of kings, and no other. A kingdom where every man is a king, there and there only does the Lord care to reign, in the name of his Father.
As no king in Europe would care to reign over a cannibal, a savage, or an animal race, so the Lord cares for no kingdom over anything this world calls a nation. A king must rule over his own kind. Jesus is a king in virtue of no conquest, inheritance, or election, but in right of essential being. And he cares for no subjects but such as are his subjects in the same right. His subjects must be of his own kind, in their very nature and essence kings.
To understand his answer to Pilate, we must see what his kingship consists of – we must see what it is that makes him a king, what manifestation of his essential being gives him a claim to be king.
It is this: The Lord’s is a kingdom in which no man seeks to be above another. Ambition is of the dirt of this world’s kingdoms. He says, “I am a king, for I was born for the purpose, I came into the world with the object of bearing witness to the truth. Everyone that is of my kind, that is of the truth, hears my voice. He is a king like me, and is one of my subjects.”
Thereupon — as would most Christians nowadays, instead of setting about being true — Pilate requests a definition of truth, a presentation to his intellect in set terms of what the word truth means.
Yet instantly, whether knowing his inquiry was useless, or intending to resume it after he had se the Lord free, he goes out to the people to tell them he finds no fault in him. Whatever interpretation we put on his action here, he must be far less to blame than those ‘Christians’ who, instead of setting themselves to be pure ‘even as he is pure,’ to be their brother and sister’s keeper, and to serve God by being honorable in shop and bank and office and market, proceed to ‘serve’ him by going to church, by condemning the opinions of their neighbors, and by teaching others what they do not themselves heed.
Neither Pilate nor they ask the one true question, ‘How am I to be a true man? How am I to become a man worth being a man?’
The Lord is a king because his life — the life of his thoughts, of his imagination, of his will, of every smallest action — is true. He is true first to God the Father in that he is altogether His. Then he is true to himself in that he forgets himself altogether. Finally, he is true to his fellows in that he will endure anything they do to him, and not cease declaring himself the son and messenger and likeness of God. They will kill him, but it matters not — the truth is as He says!
Selah.
George MacDonald, "Kingship," Unspoken Sermons: Series Three.
Friday, January 11, 2008
A righteousness of God in humans
Neither doing nor knowing but Being
What is the righteousness which is of God by faith?
It is simply the thing that God wants every man to be, wrought out in him by constant obedient contact with God himself. It is not an attribute either of God or man, but a fact of character in God and in man. It is God’s righteousness wrought out in us, so that as He is righteous, we too are righteous.
It does not consist in obeying this or that law, not even the keeping of every law, so that no hairsbreadth did we run counter to one of them. To be righteous is to be such a heart, soul, mind, and will, as would recoil with horror from the lightest possible breach of any law of God. It is to be so in love with what is fair and right as to make it impossible for a person to do anything that is less than absolutely righteous. It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous, but such a love of fair play toward everyone with whom we come in contact, that anything less than fulfilling, with a clear joy, our divine relation to him or her, is impossible.
More powerful than all powers is being. To be is more powerful than even to do. Action may be hypocrisy, but being is the thing in itself and is the parent of action.
If by neglect of its wings an eagle should sink to become a sparrow, it would then recognize only the laws of sparrow life. For the sparrows of humanity do not generally believe in a consuming fire and an outer darkness, where all that will be left is an ever renewed “alas!” The “alas” is that they neglected their wings, neglected to try to see beyond their own horizons, neglected to do the words of Him who alone is life.
It is truth and not serenity that a man’s nature requires of him. It is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as the test. It is love, and no amount of flattery, that will prosper. Differences as wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to a hairsbreadth in that day. The customs of the trade and the picking of pockets will go together, with the greater excuse for the greater need and less knowledge. Liars the most gentlemanly and the most rowdy will go as liars just the same.
The first shall be last and the last first.
Selah.
George MacDonald, Discovering the Character of God, edited by Michael R. Phillips, 175-176.
What is the righteousness which is of God by faith?
It is simply the thing that God wants every man to be, wrought out in him by constant obedient contact with God himself. It is not an attribute either of God or man, but a fact of character in God and in man. It is God’s righteousness wrought out in us, so that as He is righteous, we too are righteous.
It does not consist in obeying this or that law, not even the keeping of every law, so that no hairsbreadth did we run counter to one of them. To be righteous is to be such a heart, soul, mind, and will, as would recoil with horror from the lightest possible breach of any law of God. It is to be so in love with what is fair and right as to make it impossible for a person to do anything that is less than absolutely righteous. It is not the love of righteousness in the abstract that makes anyone righteous, but such a love of fair play toward everyone with whom we come in contact, that anything less than fulfilling, with a clear joy, our divine relation to him or her, is impossible.
More powerful than all powers is being. To be is more powerful than even to do. Action may be hypocrisy, but being is the thing in itself and is the parent of action.
If by neglect of its wings an eagle should sink to become a sparrow, it would then recognize only the laws of sparrow life. For the sparrows of humanity do not generally believe in a consuming fire and an outer darkness, where all that will be left is an ever renewed “alas!” The “alas” is that they neglected their wings, neglected to try to see beyond their own horizons, neglected to do the words of Him who alone is life.
It is truth and not serenity that a man’s nature requires of him. It is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as the test. It is love, and no amount of flattery, that will prosper. Differences as wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to a hairsbreadth in that day. The customs of the trade and the picking of pockets will go together, with the greater excuse for the greater need and less knowledge. Liars the most gentlemanly and the most rowdy will go as liars just the same.
The first shall be last and the last first.
Selah.
George MacDonald, Discovering the Character of God, edited by Michael R. Phillips, 175-176.
Friday, November 23, 2007
A light that lightens sage and savage
The grace and responsibility of the Light
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. John 3:19
I therefore go on to say that it does not follow, because light has come into the world, that it has fallen upon this or that man. He has his portion of light that lighteth every person, but the revelation of God in Christ may not have reached him.
…Everyone who has not yet come to the light is not necessarily keeping his face turned away from it.
We dare not say that this or that man would not have come to the light had he seen it. We do not know that he will not come to the light the moment he does see it.
God gives every man time. There is a light that lightens sage and savage, but the glory of God in the face of Christ may not have shined on this particular sage or that particular savage. The condemnation falls, rather, on those who having seen Jesus, refuse to come to Him, or pretend to come to Him but do not the things that He says. They have all sorts of excuses at hand. But as soon as a man begins to make excuse, the time has come when he might be doing that from which he excuses himself.
How many are there, who, believing that there is somewhat or something of this claim of light upon them, go on and on to get more out of the darkness! This consciousness, all neglected by them, gives ground to the Lord’s words: You will not come unto me that you might have life!
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Light,” Unspoken Sermons, Third series.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. John 3:19
I therefore go on to say that it does not follow, because light has come into the world, that it has fallen upon this or that man. He has his portion of light that lighteth every person, but the revelation of God in Christ may not have reached him.
…Everyone who has not yet come to the light is not necessarily keeping his face turned away from it.
We dare not say that this or that man would not have come to the light had he seen it. We do not know that he will not come to the light the moment he does see it.
God gives every man time. There is a light that lightens sage and savage, but the glory of God in the face of Christ may not have shined on this particular sage or that particular savage. The condemnation falls, rather, on those who having seen Jesus, refuse to come to Him, or pretend to come to Him but do not the things that He says. They have all sorts of excuses at hand. But as soon as a man begins to make excuse, the time has come when he might be doing that from which he excuses himself.
How many are there, who, believing that there is somewhat or something of this claim of light upon them, go on and on to get more out of the darkness! This consciousness, all neglected by them, gives ground to the Lord’s words: You will not come unto me that you might have life!
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Light,” Unspoken Sermons, Third series.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The hardest, gladdest thing in the world
The freedom cry of recognition: Father!
The hardest, gladdest thing in the world is, to cry Abba, Father! from a full heart. I would help whom I may to call thus upon the Father...
The refusal to look up to God as our Father is the one central wrong in the whole human affair. The inability to do so is our one central misery. Whatever serves to clear any difficulty from the way of the recognition of the Father will more or less undermine every difficulty in life.
George MacDonald
Thursday, August 09, 2007
A journey from children to sons and daughters
The telos of calling God Abba
George MacDonald
It comes to this then, after the grand theory of the apostle: The world exists for our education. It is the nursery of God’s children served by troubled slaves, troubled because the children are themselves slaves—children, but not good children. Beyond its own will or knowledge, the whole creation works for the development of the children of God into the sons of God.
When at last the children have arisen and gone to their Father, when they are clothed in the best robe with a ring on their hands and shoes on their feet, when they are shining out at length in their natural and predestined sonship, then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before them into singing. Then shall all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid and the calf, and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. Then shall the fables of a golden age, which faith invented, and unbelief threw into the past, unfold their essential reality, and the tale of paradise prove itself a truth by becoming a fact.
Then shall every ideal reveal itself a necessity, all aspiration although satisfied put forth yet longer wings, and the hunger after righteousness know itself blessed, because truth is at last revealed in its fullness, not as the opinion of any man, but as the Truth that is in God himself.
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Abba, Father!” Unspoken Sermons Series Two, in Your Life in Christ: The Nature of God and His Work in Human Hearts, edited by Michael Phillips.
George MacDonald
It comes to this then, after the grand theory of the apostle: The world exists for our education. It is the nursery of God’s children served by troubled slaves, troubled because the children are themselves slaves—children, but not good children. Beyond its own will or knowledge, the whole creation works for the development of the children of God into the sons of God.
When at last the children have arisen and gone to their Father, when they are clothed in the best robe with a ring on their hands and shoes on their feet, when they are shining out at length in their natural and predestined sonship, then shall the mountains and the hills break forth before them into singing. Then shall all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Then shall the wolf dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid and the calf, and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. Then shall the fables of a golden age, which faith invented, and unbelief threw into the past, unfold their essential reality, and the tale of paradise prove itself a truth by becoming a fact.
Then shall every ideal reveal itself a necessity, all aspiration although satisfied put forth yet longer wings, and the hunger after righteousness know itself blessed, because truth is at last revealed in its fullness, not as the opinion of any man, but as the Truth that is in God himself.
Selah.
George MacDonald, “Abba, Father!” Unspoken Sermons Series Two, in Your Life in Christ: The Nature of God and His Work in Human Hearts, edited by Michael Phillips.
Monday, July 02, 2007
A wine which our souls were heretofore too weak to hold!
Being conformed to the being of our origin
When a man wills that his being be conformed to that being of his origin… when the man thus accepts his own causing life, and sets himself to live the will of that causing life… he thus receives God’s life into himself. He becomes, in the act, a partaker of the divine nature, a true son of the living God, and an heir of all He possesses. By the obedience of a son, he receives into himself the very life of the Father.
Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God's will, obedience is man's will. The two make one.
If we do the will of God, eternal life is ours…
Our souls shall thus become vessels ever growing. And ever as they grow shall they be filled with the more and more life proceeding from the Father and the Son – from God the ordaining, and God the obedient.
We can never know the delight of the being, the abundance of the life He came to give us, until we have it. But even now to the holy imagination it may sometimes seem too glorious… to think of awakening to this higher life and being filled with a wine which our souls were heretofore too weak to hold!
Selah.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons II: “Life,” quoted in “Your Life in Christ: The Nature of God and His Work in Human Hearts,” edited by Michael Phillips.
When a man wills that his being be conformed to that being of his origin… when the man thus accepts his own causing life, and sets himself to live the will of that causing life… he thus receives God’s life into himself. He becomes, in the act, a partaker of the divine nature, a true son of the living God, and an heir of all He possesses. By the obedience of a son, he receives into himself the very life of the Father.
Obedience is the joining of the links of the eternal round. Obedience is but the other side of the creative will. Will is God's will, obedience is man's will. The two make one.
If we do the will of God, eternal life is ours…
Our souls shall thus become vessels ever growing. And ever as they grow shall they be filled with the more and more life proceeding from the Father and the Son – from God the ordaining, and God the obedient.
We can never know the delight of the being, the abundance of the life He came to give us, until we have it. But even now to the holy imagination it may sometimes seem too glorious… to think of awakening to this higher life and being filled with a wine which our souls were heretofore too weak to hold!
Selah.
George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons II: “Life,” quoted in “Your Life in Christ: The Nature of God and His Work in Human Hearts,” edited by Michael Phillips.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
She of whom God thinks, lives
He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him. Luke 20:38
In Luke chapter 20, some Sadducees confront Jesus on the doctrine of resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they tried to trap Jesus with a trick scenario. They presented Jesus with a far-out story about seven brothers: the first brother married a good wife, then died; so the second brother married her in turn, then he died. This happened until each of the brothers married the same woman after the preceding brother died [one supposes they were good guys, but not too smart! brother six or seven should have questioned the math, at least, lol!]. Anyway, humor aside, the Sadducees told this story and then asked Jesus a question [drum roll]: “Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
One can imagine Jesus easily shrugging, by the way He answered. He simply hinted that they didn’t understand the category of resurrection at all, then He preceded to crush their underlying issue of non-belief with these words:
Take a moment and get your mind around these words. They are the words of Christ Jesus. Let them echo in your consciousness. Here is the meaning of the universe in two sentences: unity, relation, destiny, eternity in a moment…
If you don’t love Jesus after listening to words like these, your heart is different from mine! :-) But the point is taken: Jesus taught the resurrection unequivocally, as a self-evident fact of divine relation.
Tonight I was deeply moved by a sermon from George MacDonald on this text. MacDonald presents the doctrine of resurrection inherent in the words of Christ, and ascends to the pinnacle of human thought – following into divine thought – on this subject. One senses the very mind of Christ in these words:
Are you thrilled yet? :-) Either way, here is an excerpt of MacDonald’s sermon. Oh for more preaching like this! Read and be blessed!
:-)
The God of the living
George MacDonald
It is a recurring cause of perplexity in our Lord's teaching, that He is too simple for us; that while we are questioning with ourselves about the design of Solomon's carving upon some gold-plated door of the temple, He is speaking about the foundations of Mount Zion, yea, of the earth itself, upon which it stands. If the reader of the Gospel supposes that our Lord was here using a verbal argument with the Sadducees, namely, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; therefore they are,” he will be astonished that no Sadducee was found with courage enough to reply: “All that God meant was to introduce himself to Moses as the same God who had aided and protected his fathers while they were alive, saying, I am he that was the God of thy fathers. They found me faithful. Thou, therefore, listen to me, and thou too shalt find me faithful unto the death.”
But no such reply suggested itself even to the Sadducees of that day, for their eastern nature could see argument beyond logic. Shall God call himself the God of the dead, of those who were alive once, but whom He either could not or would not keep alive? Is that the Godhood, and its relation to those who worship it? The changeless God of an ever-born and ever-perishing torrent of life; of which each atom cries with burning heart, My God! and straightway passes into the Godless cold! “Trust in me, for I took care of your fathers once upon a time, though they are gone now. Worship and obey me, for I will be good to you for threescore years and ten, or thereabouts; and after that, when you are not, and the world goes on all the same without you, I will call myself your God still.” God changes not. Once God He is always God! If He has once said to a man, “I am thy God, and that man has died the death of the Sadducee's creed,” then we have a right to say that God is the God of the dead.
“And wherefore should He not be so far the God of the dead, if during the time allotted to them here, He was the faithful God of the living?” What Godlike relation can the ever-living, life-giving, changeless God hold to creatures who partake not of His life, who have death at the very core of their being, are not worth their Maker's keeping alive? To let His creatures die would be to change, to abjure His Godhood, to cease to be that which He had made himself. If they are not worth keeping alive, then His creating is a poor thing, and He is not so great, nor so divine as even the poor thoughts of those His dying creatures have been able to imagine Him. But our Lord says, “All live unto Him.” With Him death is not.
Thy life sees our life, O Lord. All of whom all can be said, are present to thee. Thou thinkest about us, eternally more than we think about thee. The little life that burns within the body of this death, glows unquenchable in thy true-seeing eyes. If thou didst forget us for a moment then indeed death would be. But unto thee we live. The beloved pass from our sight, but they pass not from thine. This that we call death is but a form in the eyes of men. It looks something final, an awful cessation, an utter change. It seems not probable that there is anything beyond. But if God could see us before we were, and make us after His ideal, that we shall have passed from the eyes of our friends can be no argument that He beholds us no longer. “All live unto Him.”
Let the change be ever so great, ever so imposing; let the unseen life be ever so vague to our conception, it is not against reason to hope that God could see Abraham, after his Isaac had ceased to see him; saw Isaac after Jacob ceased to see him; saw Jacob after some of the Sadducees had begun to doubt whether there ever had been a Jacob at all. He remembers them; that is, He carries them in His mind: s/he of whom God thinks, lives. S/he takes to him or herself the name of Their God. The Living One cannot name himself after the dead; when the very Godhead lies in the giving of life.
Therefore they must be alive.
Selah.
In Luke chapter 20, some Sadducees confront Jesus on the doctrine of resurrection. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they tried to trap Jesus with a trick scenario. They presented Jesus with a far-out story about seven brothers: the first brother married a good wife, then died; so the second brother married her in turn, then he died. This happened until each of the brothers married the same woman after the preceding brother died [one supposes they were good guys, but not too smart! brother six or seven should have questioned the math, at least, lol!]. Anyway, humor aside, the Sadducees told this story and then asked Jesus a question [drum roll]: “Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
One can imagine Jesus easily shrugging, by the way He answered. He simply hinted that they didn’t understand the category of resurrection at all, then He preceded to crush their underlying issue of non-belief with these words:
In the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive."
Take a moment and get your mind around these words. They are the words of Christ Jesus. Let them echo in your consciousness. Here is the meaning of the universe in two sentences: unity, relation, destiny, eternity in a moment…
If you don’t love Jesus after listening to words like these, your heart is different from mine! :-) But the point is taken: Jesus taught the resurrection unequivocally, as a self-evident fact of divine relation.
Tonight I was deeply moved by a sermon from George MacDonald on this text. MacDonald presents the doctrine of resurrection inherent in the words of Christ, and ascends to the pinnacle of human thought – following into divine thought – on this subject. One senses the very mind of Christ in these words:
What Godlike relation can the ever-living, life-giving, changeless God hold to creatures who partake not of His life, who have death at the very core of their being, are not worth their Maker's keeping alive? To let His creatures die would be to change, to abjure His Godhood, to cease to be that which He had made himself… But our Lord says, “All live unto Him.” With Him death is not…
Thy life sees our life, O Lord. All of whom all can be said, are present to thee. Thou thinkest about us, eternally more than we think about thee. The little life that burns within the body of this death, glows unquenchable in thy true-seeing eyes. If thou didst forget us for a moment then indeed death would be. But unto thee we live…
S/he of whom God thinks, lives. S/he takes to him or herself the name of Their God. The Living One cannot name himself after the dead; when the very Godhead lies in the giving of life. Therefore they must be alive.
Are you thrilled yet? :-) Either way, here is an excerpt of MacDonald’s sermon. Oh for more preaching like this! Read and be blessed!
:-)
The God of the living
George MacDonald
It is a recurring cause of perplexity in our Lord's teaching, that He is too simple for us; that while we are questioning with ourselves about the design of Solomon's carving upon some gold-plated door of the temple, He is speaking about the foundations of Mount Zion, yea, of the earth itself, upon which it stands. If the reader of the Gospel supposes that our Lord was here using a verbal argument with the Sadducees, namely, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; therefore they are,” he will be astonished that no Sadducee was found with courage enough to reply: “All that God meant was to introduce himself to Moses as the same God who had aided and protected his fathers while they were alive, saying, I am he that was the God of thy fathers. They found me faithful. Thou, therefore, listen to me, and thou too shalt find me faithful unto the death.”
But no such reply suggested itself even to the Sadducees of that day, for their eastern nature could see argument beyond logic. Shall God call himself the God of the dead, of those who were alive once, but whom He either could not or would not keep alive? Is that the Godhood, and its relation to those who worship it? The changeless God of an ever-born and ever-perishing torrent of life; of which each atom cries with burning heart, My God! and straightway passes into the Godless cold! “Trust in me, for I took care of your fathers once upon a time, though they are gone now. Worship and obey me, for I will be good to you for threescore years and ten, or thereabouts; and after that, when you are not, and the world goes on all the same without you, I will call myself your God still.” God changes not. Once God He is always God! If He has once said to a man, “I am thy God, and that man has died the death of the Sadducee's creed,” then we have a right to say that God is the God of the dead.
“And wherefore should He not be so far the God of the dead, if during the time allotted to them here, He was the faithful God of the living?” What Godlike relation can the ever-living, life-giving, changeless God hold to creatures who partake not of His life, who have death at the very core of their being, are not worth their Maker's keeping alive? To let His creatures die would be to change, to abjure His Godhood, to cease to be that which He had made himself. If they are not worth keeping alive, then His creating is a poor thing, and He is not so great, nor so divine as even the poor thoughts of those His dying creatures have been able to imagine Him. But our Lord says, “All live unto Him.” With Him death is not.
Thy life sees our life, O Lord. All of whom all can be said, are present to thee. Thou thinkest about us, eternally more than we think about thee. The little life that burns within the body of this death, glows unquenchable in thy true-seeing eyes. If thou didst forget us for a moment then indeed death would be. But unto thee we live. The beloved pass from our sight, but they pass not from thine. This that we call death is but a form in the eyes of men. It looks something final, an awful cessation, an utter change. It seems not probable that there is anything beyond. But if God could see us before we were, and make us after His ideal, that we shall have passed from the eyes of our friends can be no argument that He beholds us no longer. “All live unto Him.”
Let the change be ever so great, ever so imposing; let the unseen life be ever so vague to our conception, it is not against reason to hope that God could see Abraham, after his Isaac had ceased to see him; saw Isaac after Jacob ceased to see him; saw Jacob after some of the Sadducees had begun to doubt whether there ever had been a Jacob at all. He remembers them; that is, He carries them in His mind: s/he of whom God thinks, lives. S/he takes to him or herself the name of Their God. The Living One cannot name himself after the dead; when the very Godhead lies in the giving of life.
Therefore they must be alive.
Selah.
Friday, March 09, 2007
The signpost of God’s laughter
In a sure sign of spring, the trees are sprouting purple knit gloves, kid size! I spotted this scene on a woodland walk, and laughed… just had to capture the moment. The gloves sign out spring, pointing the way down the trail…
Much like the laughter of God!
In considering the words of George MacDonald on the childlike nature of God, the simple tenderness and providence of God for us, a friend shared a question with me: “When is the last time you had fun with God?”
“When is the last time you just enjoyed being around God, like a child, two friends, frolicking in life?”
It is a serious question. It goes to the heart of our view of self, and our view of God…
Can you laugh with God? Can you laugh with yourself? Laughter from the heart, to the heart… laughter of the essence of life, childlike, distilled love in a moment of joy?
Or, in your mind, is God someone who doesn’t laugh, who doesn’t have time for those time-wasting things like laughter and joy… In your view of God, would He ever throw back His head and laugh from the heart, would He ever dance, eyes full of light, brimming with humor, pure joy?
Have you ever felt God take your hand and run through the fields, laughing like a son or daughter, dancing down woodland paths, skipping stones in the lake and chasing fish down the stream? Have you recently sensed God sitting beside you as you basked in wonder at His good creation, bathed in the light of amber sun, watching deer frolic and eagles soar, personally owned by the One who gives all life, who is life?
It is a serious question.
And I ask it of you, daughter, son… for it relates to your healing, your life, your destiny! A sign, a guiding light...
Are you living now, in this present moment, with the voice of God in your ears: "You are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved son…?"
This is your birthright, you know! To know this love, to share this laughter, is to receive a signpost of destiny: it will light the way for you, signing out the path that you should take, entered by your true self, your true child, in the childlike God -- surety of family and calling.
Selah.