December 24, 2010

• The Eve of Something New

  Sometimes I look back and try to consider who I would be were it not for God's intervention in my life, or had it been that I rejected his call.  Sometimes I consider my future if I were to deny Him.  

  That vision is not definable as a gone-in-the-blink-of-a-thunderclap kind of thing.  It's not God's wrath that I see, although for some, that's what it is.  For me, it's the pain of nothingness.  The horror of a ship without an anchor...  knowing that while it might be ok for now, someday, that anchor would come in handy, had I still possessed it.  The reality is, that I'm learning that no one has the answers.  Science, for all its claims to certainty, has no great evidence to substantiate the claim that empiricism is the right road, or even the ability to fully understand the mechanics of quanta, which is what all visible (and invisible) things are supposed to be made of.  

  Quantum particles aside, empiricism aside, and faith aside, who would I be?  The words of Jesus ring in my ears: "...without Me, you can do nothing." 

  I'm redefining some words in my life.  Realigning it with what I am learning about...  things.  

  Nothing: everything, in a sense, that is apart from God.  Without Him, I could do a lot of things.  I've lived and breathed without Him (not technically, of course, but at least it was as the perception that He was not there.)  But in the end, all that "everything" amounted to nothing.  A gasp of warm breath in the cold air.  Vapor.  Shadows and dust.  Shadows, because they are mere projections of what really is, and dust, because the compared value to the pearl of great price renders it so.  Not just because everything returns to dust...

  Fool: I used to think that word meant what the word means now: knowledge-aphobe.  A brute.  An idiot.  Someone who you can stand on a pedestal and get a consensus of laughter at the expense of.  Biblically, that word has a bigger clout.  It's the term for someone bound for hell.  In the Beatitudes, depending on the version you read, Jesus says something along the lines of calling your fellow man a fool.  It's tough stuff.  Riling enough to get oneself killed.  What would you do if someone told you that telling your brother to "go to hell," or saying "damning" someone would put you in danger of hellfire yourself?  

  The world outside of Christ is foolishness.  It's not only nonsensical...  it's lethal. 

  That is not my life.  That is not my life.  That is not my life.  

  I hope that is not my life. 

  Because in truth, Jesus' elevation of the law put its principles so far above attainment, that it's ridiculous to go at it alone.  I can maybe do the not killing thing, and the not saying the "f" word or the "s" word, or telling someone they should go someplace much, much warmer (not Florida), but angry with my fellow man without a cause?  Can I nitpick on what this "cause" is?  And what is anger?  Does it always accompany a rise in blood pressure?  Or does it include prejudice and favoritism and resentment?  Can I stop doing that?  All the time?

  It's the Eve of something new.  And I'm not talking Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.  I'm talking the Eve of the day the Morning Star dawns in our lives.  When will it be?  When Christ was born (we remember this day tonight and tomorrow), not a soul noticed, but the angels were bursting with praise.  When God dawned in my life, I wasn't looking around to see who was paying attention.  

  What I long for most is that I will love God with all my heart, soul, and mind.  That the Eve of "Something New" will result in a new self day after day, and that that self will keep pressing forward, forgetting what was before, and pressing on to what is ahead, until with all the earthly choir, we'll see a bona fide new day, new earth, and a new world.  

  Tonight, and for all those tomorrows, may all your eves be like this.  

   

  • 10:01 pm
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