Unless You Change...

Life changes--like picking up a new job and having my husband away from home for many days--made my time rather harried for a week or two.  I didn't post here, knowing I don't want to ever make a rush job of this blog.  But now, things are setting down enough that I will try to resume.  Ten Years in One may actually prove to be Ten Years in Two, but ah, well...

In the book, Heaven Is for Real, Todd Burpo scribes the story of his son's 3-minute visit to heaven while in surgery for a life-threatening burst appendix.  As he, the father, wonders in awe of the things his son is telling him about that heaven trip, he thinks of Christ's words:  "I tell you the truth.  Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

"What is childlike humility?  It's not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile.  The lack of an agenda.  It's that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think.  The same unselfconscious honesty that enables a three-year-old to splash joyfully in a rain puddle, or tumble laughing in the grass with a puppy, or point out loudly that you have a booger hanging out of your nose, is what is required to enter heaven.  It's the opposite of ignorance--it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard." (p. 74-75.)

June 29, 2005
True worship does not require a man-made church.  In fact, sometimes it is at odds with church-as-property.  Such talk receives a lot of shushing these days, but read the word of the Lord in Isaiah 66:

  This is what the LORD says:

“Heaven is my throne,

and the earth is my footstool.

Could you build me a temple as good as that?

Could you build me such a resting place?

 My hands have made both heaven and earth;

they and everything in them are mine. 

I, the LORD, have spoken!

“I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts,

who tremble at my word.

 But those who choose their own ways—

delighting in their detestable sins—

will not have their offerings accepted.

When such people sacrifice a bull,

it is no more acceptable than a human sacrifice.

When they sacrifice a lamb,

it’s as though they had sacrificed a dog!

When they bring an offering of grain,

they might as well offer the blood of a pig.

When they burn frankincense,

it’s as if they had blessed an idol.

I will send them great trouble—

all the things they feared.

For when I called, they did not answer.

When I spoke, they did not listen.

They deliberately sinned before my very eyes

and chose to do what they know I despise.”

Hear this message from the LORD,

all you who tremble at his words:

“Your own people hate you

and throw you out for being loyal to my name.

‘Let the LORD be honored!’ they scoff.

‘Be joyful in him!’

But they will be put to shame.

What is all the commotion in the city?

What is that terrible noise from the Temple?

It is the voice of the LORD

taking vengeance against his enemies.

“Before the birth pains even begin,

Jerusalem gives birth to a son.

Who has ever seen anything as strange as this?

Who ever heard of such a thing?"

No; true worship does not need the man-made church, especially not one with puffed up leaders who will examine you fully but never themselves--as they should do first.  And the rituals and sacrifices and traditions and heritage--these are not holy in and of themselves, in fact they can become as things most impure to the one they profess to honor if they are seen as stand-alone activity outside relationship with their Designer.  True worship will be the shield between--between the loyal and the scoffers. 
The commotion, the terrible noise says it begins. 
Thy purifying hand.

[and on a note stuck loose in the journal] Nothing tells us of a turn in the action like the clatter of a dropped shield. [I do not know if it was an original thought or one I found somewhere.]

Not long after these words, I began to hear Him whisper of holy birth inside myself.  Isaiah saw it in the personification of Jerusalem, but I saw it in my very womb.  Deeply did I drink the words:  Before the pains even begin...birth."  And, "Who has ever seen anything as strange as this?  Who ever heard such a thing?"  Ahd so I did not tell.  I had plenty or reasons not to tell.  But if there is no telling, what identifies the scoffers?  And if it is their time to be made plain, who will be bold enough to go?  Only the one who bows to His timing.  It is a difficult knowing.
And, I knew none of this back then, so, I kept the words and the visions treasured in my heart, and rarely spoke them even as the words of Isaiah fertilized a soul-garden patch secret even from me.  Only to a few, only to those whose condemnation seemed least likely, would I speak.  The child that was me hid in Lady Wisdom's skirts.  But I sense a calling forth, a time to walk in a new level of maturity.  I started this blog because of it.

Ironically, as I accept the challenge to greater maturity, I see the Child.
I wonder sometimes, what if I were that child pulled to stand before Christ to serve as example for those seeking wisdom?  Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven...Could I stand there as example without saying, "O, no, Lord!  Not me.  There are others more worthy (meaning I expect one day to be worthy in and of myself.)  There are others more pious (Although I expect my day will come here, too, if you're patient with me, Lord.)  There are others better tempered for this (meaning I know myself better than You do.)  There are others more humble (well, at least I hit that one purely on the mark.) 

May I learn to stand graciously as example wherever my Lord should chose to draw me. 
If my Lord finds me fitting, He'll get no arguments from me.