Still constant in a wondrous excellence"
(Borrowing these words out of context
from Shakespeare's Sonnet 105, to repurpose
them as a description of my Lord and God)
"Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence" (Borrowing these words out of context from Shakespeare's Sonnet 105, to repurpose them as a description of my Lord and God)
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A beautiful principle leapt out to me from this passage yesterday morning.
Have you been stuck in a long season of difficulty that makes you long for deliverance? According to this passage, when God allows us to be in a time of exile, He cares very much about what we do there while we wait. He asks us to live a quiet life of diligence where He has placed us, and to let Him use us for good. Furthermore, He asks us to pray for those who are there with us. Charles Price reads "With God, nothing is impossible" as also meaning "With God, 'nothing' is impossible." If God has you in exile, so to speak, it's for a huge purpose. This purpose is much vaster than just stretching you and preparing you for the return trip home. His purposes always include overflow to the world around us, and prayer is the nerve centre of this overflow. God pointed out this principle to me because I very much need to remember it. Whatever He is doing in, to, for, with, and through me in a particular season, He means it as a way of extending and enriching His kingdom, and of bringing great glory to His name. No season of exile lasts forever, but His kingdom is forever. Genesis 1. God created the heavens and the earth, spoke light and darkness into existence. He formed the waters, the skies, the plants, the evening and morning, the sun and moon and stars. Next He called into existence the birds and sea monsters and fish, the creatures of the earth, and then mankind. After each of these acts, Genesis tells us, God saw that it was good. Finally, He looked at the whole spectrum of what He had created. It was very good. ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ ⁞⁞⁞⁞⁞ I have had a very difficult year. The Lord called me aside six months ago from what I was doing, to resolve an ongoing issue that has kept me stuck for a very long time. At least, that's what I thought He was calling me aside to do. In fact, nearly everything I've done over the past six months has failed. A number of times, I have reached the end of my rope, only to find that someone had tied more rope on, allowing me to slide down even further.
Yesterday morning, or perhaps it was Monday evening, I found myself in such a place again. Then I began thinking about creation. It occurred to me that the Jesus I've come to know would never be satisfied just to state that something was good or very good. He would also come down and take a look first hand. He would go to the edge of the river and investigate the otters' and beavers' newly built homes. He would walk across the sands and scurry up the sea cliffs. He would hold the miniature crabs and the tiny coloured stones in His hand. He would attend early morning birdsong choruses, to express His delight in person. He would lie down on the mossy forest floor and look up at a periwinkle blue shard of pre-dawn sky, and would call out "It is GOOD!" from a bottomless well of joy. It was this last thing I was picturing Him doing, in fact, when He suddenly shattered my melancholy with a revelation and then a question. It was before He even planned all this, my heart heard Him say, that He chose my name. Not the name I'm known by now, but the name He will call me by in eternity. Before He set creation in motion, He pictured the whole of my life -- the good and the bad, the wretchedness and the redemption. He knows what comes at the end of everything, and it will be worth it all. It was worth it, He even says, to have given Himself to be killed on a Roman cross, so that I might be His forever, to know every day of the rest of my life what it is to be perfectly, unrelentingly loved by the divine and all-glorious King. Then He asked me a question: "Are you in?" (What do you imagine I replied.) Of course this story is not just His and mine. It's also His and yours. He sees the whole of your life -- pain and happiness and emptiness and all -- and asks the same question. Are you in? Is He worth it, whatever "it" turns out to be? Only you can answer. |
Every truth of
Scripture leads to Christ. Charles Price .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
About me "Hephzibah" (Isaiah 62) A yet unfinished story of the Lord's perfect restoration work I live in southwestern Ontario, Canada. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| |||
2 Chronicles 7:16 בָּחַר קָדַשׁ ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| [T]o our
wounds only God’s wounds can speak. from “Jesus of the Scars” by Edward Shillito (1872-1948) Blog archives
August 2022
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...The eyes of the
Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. 2 Chronicles 16:9a (KJ21) |