Falling down a rabbit hole...

I feel as if I’d just fallen down the rabbit hole.  You know, the Alice one.  Only, instead of reality seeming stranger than I ever dreamed, it’s all like I’ve dreamed for so long.  I feel as if I’ve lived my whole life in a sort of glorious ghetto--isolated.  I’ve pursued deeply, felt deeply, drunk deeply, learned brilliant truths, and sought to love richly (though I’ve not succeeded half as much as I ought).  But there was always something about going into the world, not necessarily the world, but the believing world that struck me as odd.  As unnerving.  As deeply wrong.  It never made sense to me, as I caught glimpses of the deep glory of the gospel, why a deeper joy didn’t exist among Christians, why a freer love was not evident.  A fire kindled deep inside me as I read of men and women gone by, and I wondered why I only rarely glimpsed the flame in others. 

So yes, I have been guilty of criticism, of pride, of all that set of sins—besetting, persistent, you might call them.  I’ve been deeply humbled about a million times in my life by my own need and fallenness, and brought to a point of acknowledging my wretchedness.  I know I’ve not seen the last of these times.  I pray I haven’t, for by His grace that controlling, checking, restraining power at work in me is my only hope of recreation. 

As I drove down here, I prayed that God would use this new experience to teach me how to love truly.  I’ve prayed that hundreds of times before, but He emboldened me to pray that in a particular way.

I’m beginning to see fruit.  But not in the way I expected.  This whole love thing—it makes more sense now.  I’m beginning to see a pattern, a light. 

Among these people who share a passion for God, I can see now how differences in personalities and gifts work.  Because people are putting them to use for the cause of the kingdom.  Any given day includes multiple conversations about our King, about His service to which we’re all called, as well as countless opportunities to laugh till we cry.  But amid it all, the fire shines through.  These people—this community—they live as if the gospel’s true.  They bathe themselves in it, stretch to comprehend it, revel in it.  It is all so real.  As real for them as it’s been for me all these years as I’ve wondered at the lack of passion in my peers.  We’re all incredibly different, yes, but I’m coming to see it in less of a superior way, and more of an awestruck way.  For this, this is how the Body is supposed to operate.  I’m not the same as anyone here—that’s not the point.  We’re all headed to the same goal, destined for different callings and given different strengths and gifts.

I’ve always been one to bottle up a little, to keep the deepest feelings hidden out of sight.  Almost like I felt them something semi-sacred which wouldn’t be understood in a world which had so lost all sense and desire for glory.  Here, it’s lifeblood—this realization of glory.  It makes sense here, it’s part of every conversation, and the integral tie in every relationship. 

I pray this entire experience will transform into a vision I will carry with me for the rest of my life.  I know things won’t always be this way.  I know this is training ground, a place for refreshment and honing.  The battlefield of the daily calling awaits.  I’ll always treasure these times, but I pray I will carry a sense of what the Body of Christ looks like; how it grows, develops, encourages, strengthens, and mutually challenges all its members.  It will take courage, I know, but now it all seems right, where before, to all accounts, it seemed as if it didn’t matter.  I desperately hoped it did, and strove to live as if it did.  Coming into this environment, it’s all confirmed.  I feel as if I’ve walked right into a magnified, enriched expression of home.  It’s the outworking of the discussions and convictions and realizations cultivated so constantly in the smaller environment at home.  It’s the multiplication of these things in the lives of a hundred, not just a handful. 

I feel as if I’m living with people out of the biographies I’ve treasured so long.  As Burke Parson preaches I can’t help but sense the same drive and earnest necessity which drove Hudson Taylor and C.T. Studd and Cameron Townsend.  He’s drunk of the same rich well and risen, intoxicated, to press on toward the goal of proclaiming the Kingdom. 

So Burke Parsons is preaching on Ruth—just like Pastor Nease.  Today was the second half of the first chapter, outlining God’s inexplicable workings amid deep, unimaginable sorrow, and Ruth’s claiming the Author of all these trials as her God still.  No matter what happens, Pastor Parsons challenged us, we ought to plead for a childlike faith that takes anything given from His hand and rejoices in it, living as more than conquerors and enlisting pain in the pursuit of God’s greater glory.  It’s a high calling.  It kindled my spirit as I heard him, and I praise God He worked this in me.  

I’ve read too many biographies to be entirely naive.  I know what our faith has cost to generations of faithful followers.  I know this thing isn’t safe in the least.  I know I’m in the process of dying, of losing my life one day at a time.  I know we’re the exception, that all over the world, most Christians suffer for this faith I claim openly, thoughtlessly sometimes.  I pray against that thoughtlessness.  Every day, I remember my brothers and sisters.  I pray trust for them, victory against doubt in the most dire of circumstances.  I pray God’s mercy on them; His overshadowing presence and peace.  They face things I don’t have any context to imagine.  When I don’t know what to pray for them, I ask God to have power over them, to sustain them, that His glory would be manifest through them, and that He would keep them faithful.  I pray what I would want them to pray for me if I was in their place.  I know they would be more equipped to pray for me under the circumstances than I am for them.  But I expect it to come—the cost of discipleship.  Sure, it’s here in the daily dyings to self, but really, these are nothing.  We know nothing, it’s true.  We have no idea.  And we’re the poorer for it. 

So I pray He would prepare me for the possible coming of persecution and hardship.  I pray He would create in me a steadfastness that will withstand under trial, even to death.  I pray that when trials come He would be faithful to me, even as He has been to generations of His suffering children before me. 

Father, point me always to Christ.  Teach my eyes to look always to Him; my soul to find its delight, its pride, its strength, its refreshment, its ravishment in the light of His presence.  You are faithful, the only true God, and I love you.  Thank you for opening my eyes to see all this glory which so surrounds me; this current of Your love carried through all of history to the present moment, and blindingly revealed in Your Son.  Thank you for the stunning visions of this love in so many practical ways as I walk before you in this new calling.  Thank you for your beauty—that I will never tire, never come to the end of my discovery of You and the resultant awe which undoes me to my own renewal.  You are King of this world, and everything in it.  May I seek you with a full-pursuing heart to the degree that all else loses its flavor and color, that Your holiness is my one and only goal.  May my only comfort in life and in death be that I, with body and soul, in life and in death belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.