THE WARMTH OF THE SON: Sitting in the woods this wintery
afternoon, feeling the warmth of the sun’s filtered rays, there is a
stillness... a quiet reflectiveness as if time itself has stopped. We are such
predictable creatures, adrift in a hostile world that hated our Savior and
surely hates us, though we run from the thought. Many of us, saints so called,
have built our house on shifting sand, dreading the storm but dreading death to
our misplaced desires even more. It
would have been simpler if God had wiped our mental slate clean... tabula rasa,
but He chose to give us free will... free choice, the right to choose wrongly.
And, therein is our dilemma. So we wiggle and squirm, trying ever so hard to
pay the piper – under the table so to speak – to have our cake and eat it too.
Not all of us will make it home to heaven. There is a “great falling away”: It
has already begun. Some... “few” is the term used in scripture, will give in to
the “jealous yearnings” of the Holy Spirit and submit to lordship... to
death... to a life quite different than we expected... to life on the narrow
difficult Way. Most will join the many on the broad crowded easy way to
nowhere... nowhere we really want to go. There is little solace in the warmth
of the Son’s rays, till commitment seals one’s heart...
MY HANDS: My hands look old. All wrinkled up, spotted,
gnarled, and veiny, they look old. They remind me of the quick passage of time.
As I sit here, the sun streaming in through the window on this cold wintery
day, I can feel the creeping passage of time as I look at my hands. I suffer
from no delusions of grandeur; I have not done enough for the God whose love
rends my heart. Mine is not a quest for payback; how could anyone suppose to
earn or pay for what Christ did? No, my thought is a simple one: Time is the
great deceiver, an enemy sold far too short that sprints while I saunter along
through evil days, never quite redeeming the time – never quite doing my all
for The One who gave His all for me. My hands remind me of my humanness, a life
on the downhill slide toward home, loved beyond measure but still struggling
with the unmitigated scope, breadth, and depth of that love, wanting somehow to
balance the scales while knowing full well the impossibility. My hands remind
me they will not always look old...
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