Psalm 114: Can You Imagine The After?

When Israel came out of Egypt, Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.

The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back; the mountains leaped like rams, the hills like lambs. Why was it, sea, that you fled? Why, Jordan, did you turn back? Why, mountains, did you leap like rams, you hills, like lambs?

Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.  - Psalm 114

Sometimes when we look at the before and after of a situation, it is hard to imagine how it ever happened. When you go to a beautiful city park, full of trees and families celebrating birthdays and baseball games and then someone tells you it was once the city dump. Or when you see the wasteland of scrub and rocks and sand and then you find out it was once an Eden-like paradise. Most of the time, we don't see the inflection point-that moment where the landscape took on new shape and new prospects. 

In this psalm, the author has the privilege of seeing both the before and after: Israel went from under the control of a foreign power to under God's control. The hillside in the desert changed from a "hard rock" into "springs of water". The point is that when looking at the before, no one could have imagined the after.

That's not to say that the transition was gentle: the sea and river, mountains and hills ran away. But God's plan was not limited by 'difficult'. If we look at the impossible in this world, the situations and people who seem never to change, our imagination can conceive of a different, better reality, if we let it not be squashed by  the thought 'it can't happen'. The only question is: is that what God will do? 

What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” —the things God has prepared for those who love him— 1 Cor. 2:9

Call to Worship: Resurrected Senses (1 Cor. 2:9-12)

Call to Worship: Listening in the Spirit

L: Lord, we come as your people this morning. You have created in us new life in your son, Jesus by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit.

C: Lord, we grew and matured, were taught and trained, to taste, smell, feel, see and hear to many wonderful things, but they were not you. It is our habit to notice these, so that when you speak now, in our new life, your words are easily overlooked and drowned out. Worse, we often desired it so. Forgive us.

L: We cannot express the connection we now have in you. "Taste and see that the Lord is good"? We lack the vocabulary.  “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”—the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. (1 Cor. 2: 9-10)

C: Lord, you have placed us in Christ--united with him and granted fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit. "For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us." (1 Cor 2:11-12)

A: Lord, you have brought us back into life and communion with you. You deserve credit for it all as we see in the character, works and reputation of the Messiah, Jesus. Amen.

Ephesians 2:4-5: Competing Responses to Disruptions

The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way. ~ Brother Lawrence 

How do we practice the presence of God? During a panel discussion "Less Disruptions, More Presence" this past Sunday at our church there seemed to be two competing strategies towards coming into God's presence. The first is the path of solitude. The second is the path of rhythm.

One of the underlying assumptions in all of these discussions is that the presence of God is not a normal part of human existence. We don't naturally experience him, the kingdom of heaven or, indeed, much of anything spiritual.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. - 1 Corinthians 2:13-14 (ESV)

When choosing sin, we lost our spiritual sense-the sense that allows us to experience directly God's kingdom. Elisha asked and God enabled a servant to see the horses and chariots that surrounded them. We often speak of the God (through his Spirit) speaking with us or stirring us or nudging us. What sense are we using? We lack the vocabulary to even describe it, so we borrow other sense words: "Hear the Lord." "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

There is a sense-a spiritual sense. We were not born with it, but we are all capable of it through regeneration in Christ. It was there in Eden, and part of God's design for all humans and it died with sin. 

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. -  Ephesians 2:4-5

But this sense-even among the regenerate-is atrophied. So while hearing the Spirit (what word should I use!?) through this reawakened sense is startling and sweet, we are not used to it. Think of it as a drinking nectar through a micro-pipette. While we have been conditioned from birth to experience the world through our five senses, we have relatively little experience sensing spiritually. As a result, we often don't notice, or if we notice, we misinterpret what we experience. So the presence of God and the voice of God get drowned out by a thousand other sensations that pour into our brain every minute.

The path of solitude addresses this deficiency by removing distractions. Solitude uses silence to allow the "still, small voice" to break through into our consciousness. We can, with practice, hear God and enter his presence and, over time, widen our sensitivity so that the information that we can handle widens from a micro-pipette-sized flow to a straw-sized flow to maybe even a fire hose. In the same way that physical therapy restores an underused muscle to full capacity, the practice of solitude can restore our underdeveloped spiritual sensitivity to a greater capacity to hear and sense God.

One of the spiritual directors (Dan Maust) on Sunday related this path to "prayer dreaming". It takes advantage of the silence, where our brain will naturally wander-sometimes in predictable and sometimes in unpredictable. Rather than fighting this, he suggests that we pray and ask God into each of the items that pass into our thoughts during silence. I have found that long periods of silence, such as those in long drives or airplane flights, often provide the quiet that creates the context for God to speak and me to listen.

I think this is important because we are often too busy, even in our "quiet" times. Why? Because we have filled it with books and Scripture chapters and prayer lists that never leave room for God to speak because we have pre-determined the agenda.

The path of rhythm addresses this deficiency differently, by inviting God into the craziness of everyday life. Rather than removing distractions, it strives to invite God into the distraction using a "familiar, humble and very affectionate conversation with the Lord Jesus." Brother Lawrence comments:

The time of business does not differ with me from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees. ~ Brother Lawrence

Both of these paths are important. We must widen the channel that flows between us and God. The path of solitude helps with that. But the path of solitude takes a rather negative view of disruptions. Should we reject disruptions as moving us away from God's presence-a posture of retreat in the face of what is happening in the environments where God has placed us?

No, rather the path of rhythm takes these "distractions" or "interruptions" as a beat in the musical score. We converse with God at these situations and attune ourselves to his voice.  The problem with an over-emphasis on this approach is the risk of allowing the external world to determine the agenda, rather than allowing God to insert his agenda.

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. - John 10:25

Spend time in quiet. Invite God to each situation.

11 Resolutions

I am currently making my way through "The Pleasures of God" by John Piper (2000, Multnomah Books, pps. 95-96) and he cites a lecture by Clyde Kilby where he delivered up 11 resolutions that caused me to pause and think. I list them here, as recorded by Piper:

1. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the 'child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.'
2. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.
3. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death, when he said, 'There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.'
4. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but, just as likely, ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.
5. I shall not turn my life into a thin straight line, which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course, I shall often have to do.
6. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I belong to. Mostly i shall simply forget about myself and do my work.
7. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are, but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their 'divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic' existence.
8. I shall follow Darwin's advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.
9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, 'fulfill the moment as the moment.' I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.
10. If for nothing more than the sake of a change of view, I shall assume my ancestry to be from the heavens rather than from the caves.
11. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega.

What would you resolve on today? Or do you (as I do) find that nothing is resolved upon and life is therefore somewhat random.

"For I resolved to know while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified." - 1 Corinthians 2:2