Don't Do Too Much Too Soon

‎"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."--Babe Ruth.

"Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Romans 8:24-25)

But here's the rub: how do we "hope" for those things we feel God has given us that make no sense?  How do we "never give up" on what we don't even understand?  How do we hope for a landscape that defies everything we know?
At this point in my journal I perceived myself as actively engaged in dream-ministry, as  it is called by my friend who received the benefits of my "unwitting" middle-of-the-night dream-prayer over her heart troubles.  But dreams are often unfamiliar landscapes.  How does one attach faith to such a thing?  I began to explore that question through scripture and reflection.


Sept 21, 2005
Scripture study on these images: escaping, bread, communion-Sabbath
I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand..." (electricity in the hand that slices bread...)
Behold the former things have come to pass,
And new things I declare,
Before they spring forth I tell you of them.  --Isaiah 42:6-9
Holy bread--only Aaron and his sons are to eat it (Exodus 29:33) but years after Aaron lived, David and his men ate the showbread.  (I Samuel 21-22) Then Saul killed those who helped David, except the one who "escaped" and ran to tell David.  He took the ephod, the tool of inquiry, the thing worn by a high priest when he represented the people before God, took it to David.  David received this one who escaped and protected him. Here is both the one who escapes and bread together in a story...

All this comes around to Christ, because he refers to this particular story.  David ate the showbread. David was not a priest.  Many would say end of story.  David was wrong.  But Christ used the story as an example to help his accusers understand why they should not accuse him.  "If you had understood what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." (Matt. 12:3-8) To this day, I've heard sermons that say, "the priest and David screwed up so all those people died," but I think that misses why the story is in the Bible, or at least why Christ thought it was there.

"In all I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth." (Ex. 23:13) This comes right after the section about the law of the sabbath which Jesus references.  Circumspect in my dictionary is defined as "to look around, be cautious, careful to consider all circumstances and possible consequences.  Prudent."  I do feel the need to be circumspect.  I feel like I am in the position of slicing the showbread for serving.  Maybe even of being one with the bread.  That the bread may be sliced twice--one for the priest who has the "right" to it, but also for the priest to share to sustain the life of one God chooses, for a mercy.  That the mercy and not just the sacrifice might be the thing to give glory to God. 
Now, how?  How does all this apply? 



I studied this way through scripture and reflection, and I struggled--and still do--wrestling under the Spirit's ongoing lead--indeed like a sheep that could easily wander astray, not out of willfulness, not out of spite or disbelief; more out of the ignorance of simply being human.  As Peter said, "Who was I that I could understand God?" (Acts 11:7)
So the Spirit began to lead my understanding in things that required that high level of circumspection..  He drew me out to new places, new landscapes. He challenged my assumptions about right and wrong. He drew me sip by sip to the well that would eventually quench my thirst.  With little sparks that flared in the random things of life, He linked my most personal thoughts and dreams and wants and mysteries to a larger plane. 
For instance, I'd be reading C.S. Lewis' work, The Great Divorce, tootling along through it,  until I read the story of Sarah Smith, one of the "great ones" of heaven, As the narrator said, "ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things." I read her story impersonally as it was given, until I came to this part:  "It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further.  Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength.  But already there is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe to life." (p.118-120) I stopped at those words and gasped, as I immediately thought of my dream of cutting bread, of power coursing through my little finger and up my arm.  A morsel of definition, but nothing more.

But now, I re-read the full text about this lady as I look for the quote to put here, and I gasp yet again for much more of what Lewis wrote of her has become my story.  But there is a beautiful hope for a different ending in my own telling of the story, a shift concerning those who would inhabitant heaven and those who would choose hell for the sake of nursing self-pity over a perceived lack of her regard.  If I am her, the dwaves of life might still choose heaven.  There is far more hope for now in my life's telling of the tale.  A beautiful bend in the river the Spirit travels as He tells the story through me.  But on first reading 7 years ago, it was nothing more than a beautiful clue to solving a mystery of hope and redemption that required all this time in order to find its pertinence again.

So the first thing He shows me is the hardest to look at for it is what I see merely as myself, and what I see reminds me of my ignorance, my selfishness, my canality.  Only  courageous looking will do this. It is like hacking away with humility, beating through the thicket of sin and haunts from the past. But if I come out on the other side of first-sight, I find He breaks down my perspective and reshapes it such that I see something refreshingly different. I see something "truer" in its fitness for defining the "heavenly vision" as it was first given, truer than what my ferverishly cold and worldly eyes thought they were seeing. 

Over time, I learned this: Never give up on the vision, on the covenant that it is brought by the hand of God.  Let it be battered into proper shape, as Oswald Chambers says.  Finally, what shall we do when God chooses to use us as such an instrument of vision? We follow the advice David Kundtz received from his seventh grade teacher:  "Sit down, be still, and pay attention!"
Certainly regarding the things God says are His plans, we need to do exactly that.