Showing posts with label Blessed Assurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blessed Assurance. Show all posts

How Brief the Flight to Eternity

Scribbled by Sparrow

It was only a few moments ago...

 I was huddled over my psychology book, precariously situated up-top the stool beside our kitchen island. My window reflected the same near-autumn view it has framed since this morning; all of dove-gray and charcoal. A few feet from me, the dishwasher gargled menacingly from its own little corner, loudly proclaiming the fulfillment of its duties as the backdrop for my studies.

Until suddenly, it stopped. Stopped, utterly and completely. I was left with nothing but the sound of... nothing. From a gurgling, muted sort of roar to absolutely nothing at all.

Nothing.

Nothingness.

Nothing.

I lifted my eyes and looked out the window at the gray sky swarming over the trees, heart beating amain as my ears waited breathlessly for the trumpet sound to pierce the utter silence. For surely, that was to come next...? The awful blast, the terrible rending of the sky and the furling of it as a curtain, and then our longing fulfilled; our stealing away into the deep, beautiful mystery that is all of God's splendor, to be secret to us no longer. No more the jeweled veil of the heavens to stand as a shield between us and the terrible beauty of the Almighty, as the glory of our rapture ushers us into His infinity... no more the aching of this world, no more the shadows; everything, everything swept away in the mighty gust of the Eternal's beckoning. All the echoes of eternity to erupt in splendor in the mere breath of one beautiful, awful moment.


A single moment of silence.


*       *       *

Had I held my breath until the trumpet blast, my heart would by now have stopped beating. It never came.

 The house soon returned to sound, my heart to its sighing rhythm, and as soon as this is posted I shall return to studying for my Psychology exam. Yet, I find that I cannot do so quite the same. For in me is a heart within which beats something of eternity, that ever-aching thrum of longing, of tiredness, of yearning... of hope. Oh, the fluttering rhythm is always there: it never leaves, but it is so often lost beneath the mutterings of the Temporary Reality. Only when these mutterings are stilled may it again be noticed, standing out suddenly as a smattering of paint on a blank canvas or the plucking of a single harpstring. The moment of remembrance is pierced with an aching like nothing I have ever known, yet which is more familiar to me than anything, because I have always known it.

 Yet nothing, not even the aching, can quell the bursting joy that slashes through the numb shadows of our temporal existence when we seize the knowledge of Reality. For the reason we long, the reason we ache, is because we are straining for something Real—a beauty beyond our tactile mirrors and smoke. It is the ardent longing for the truth of Eternity that is not only our sorrow, but our solace. What we long for will not be held away forever: it will come, in a bounding, leaping dawn of Jubilee.

A single moment of silence—may every moment be so full of eternity.
Category: , , , , , 5 missives

Paths Beyond Tracing

Scribbled by Sparrow
Blindness. There seems to be nothing more fearful in all the world. It is why we fear the dark when we are children — it is why, no longer as children, some of us still do.

Yet it can seem, at times, as though we walk in a constant blindness. For who can claim to see the steps that lie ahead of them? The ones behind are easy to see; yet for lack of the future, even the present ones are full of fear. It seems that we who walk by faith are doomed evermore to the urgings of sight: the taunt of a world which cannot see that it lies even more deeply in plight than we. It is a world lost in the comfortless pursuit of comfort, blind to everything but its perception of our seemingly visionless faith — we, who have only been called to set our eyes on Joy, yet find ourselves so often begged to look only upon the fading things of the Ending.

Soooo... Life is tough. That seems to be the general idea I'm getting at.

But this is not the matter's end. I have never seen an odder thing, nor a truer thing, in all my life than this: Without fail, the limited must impose its own limitation upon that which is Limitless; then, with all the wretchedness contained within its tiny and finite self, bemoan that which still escapes its understanding. Shall we never realize that any attempt to control the path which lies before us is nothing other than an attempt to harness its Maker; to place a bridle on the One who placed Pegasus at untamable heights, the One who breathed a soul and a heartbeat into the dust itself? Should it not be a comfort rather than a curse, that the Author of my life has a vision that extends beyond these present pages? It must be so; for to demand that that which by very definition must be beyond comprehension become as small as myself is nothing less than to demand that God cease to be deserving of His Name.

But you cannot make me. No, you cannot; and none shall convict me otherwise — no matter how long the world weeps bitter tears of betrayal over the audacity of its Creator being bigger, wiser, truer, more good and more faithful than itself; though it claw and weep and rage at me, though it claim that the dimness of this mirror-world is unfair, though it do all it can to argue the unjustness of these small understandings — though it do all of this and more, I shall not compromise the greatness of my God.

You see, there comes a time for every soul, when the eyes of those who seek their Maker are brought gaze-to-gaze with that question, that truthful blight that can lift the lowest heart in laughter and bend the highest head in shame. That question — Wouldn't you think we would know better by now? Is it not time that the little side-paths that ever evade our vision might become to us no longer a thing of fear, but of joy? For the One who holds our hand is ever faithful; oh, He is faithful! And not a Promise has been reached by a pilgrimage that did not, by some walk or wayside, leave a wilderness in its wake.

Yet the school of day-by-day is teaching me its lesson; though it is a lesson slowly and arduously learned. The name of that lesson? None other than Trust. Oh, Trust is a wild thing; and the taming of it is equally so — but aren't the best and truest adventures always touched by fear? There is no one I would rather cherish, no one that I would rather follow, than He who holds the fragile universe perfectly on tilt, beautifully balanced, yet still cares for me with a love so deep that He would die for me. And did.

For such a One must be great, indeed.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?"
“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
– Romans 11:33-36

 
Category: , , , 4 missives

Inkstains

Scribbled by Sparrow
Sometimes...

Not once upon a time,
not once in a lifetime;
just... sometimes,

I feel like an inkstain.

And even if you are a Writer, and you Like Ink... that is not a compliment.

Sometimes, I feel like an inkstain on the written work of my life, penned by the hand of God. Like a very unsplendid blot that landed in the middle of the page somehow; the sort that makes you wince, trying to rub it away with your fingers, even though you know it won’t do any good.

I hear people say that “God don’t make no dirt.” (The grammar? Horrid. The phrase? Existent. More's the pity.) When I hear it, two things come to mind (apart from the miseries we shall soon endure if we do not learn to better wield the English language). The first: I know it is true. The second: I’m perfectly capable of making my own dirt, thank you very much, and ruining my life to the fullest of my abilities without any help whatsoever.

There are times when I believe I am more capable of doing wrong than I am of doing right. And it frightens me.

In the midst of this petty life, where the wakeful darkness of my Saturday nights is spent wondering how to be as impossibly perfect as possible at church the next day, living through a sermon about the splendid potential within the 'Good Christian' who has somehow invaded our expectations, and then returning home to face every unholy thought, word, and deed that has plagued my steps and not knowing which is better—avoiding the truth, or facing the reality of what I have been—I cannot help but wonder, sometimes, what this trembling heart could be missing. 

Perhaps, it is 2 Timothy 2:11-14— the promise that no matter how faithless I am, His faithfulness never fails. That He is constant where my own failings can never be—into eternity itself. That He has overcome the self within me, and now: torn, slain, and conquered back into life, I am His.

What is His is His forever. Even an inkstain.

And by a queer thing called Grace, He turns those inkstains into love stories. Because the truly beautiful love stories are about those who were loved, without having anything loveable to offer—and through that love, becoming worth loving.

If you don’t believe it, just ask the inkstains.

Category: , , , , 1 missives

A Spirit Not Of Fear

Scribbled by Sparrow
Not that I'm trying to be predictable, but....

(Okay. Perhaps I am. Just a little bit.)

It is very possible that you, skilled observer as I know you are, are curiously noting a theme. The blog title, the verse that now graces the sidebar, and the title of this post seem to have wrestled themselves out of the same general pool of thought and plopped themselves down here for your appraisal. A very odd thing, that -- I dare say, it's very nearly as though the same person wrote them.

In any event, it seemed appropriate, what with proper introductory sentiments being in order, to allow 2 Timothy 1:7 wheedle its way into the first post somehow. For you see, the same person did fashion the words which have emblazoned themselves throughout my blog-space, and it was not my hand that held the pen. It was that of Someone Greater, whose heart I seek ever to emulate, whose love by which I am ever overwhelmed, and whose penworthy fingers not only formed my spirit, but etched upon my heart the very words that have lain themselves before you now: the words that are not Mine, and yet to me have been given -- words that stay the trembling of my star-crossed and shipwrecked soul.

For God has given us a spirit not of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
- 2 TIMOTHY 1:7

Of what eternal fabric are the woven the thoughts of man? They shall fade and crumble in their time, as shall every word that I leave here. Yet the truth of them, I hope, shall have its heart in eternity; and though I do not pretend to be any more than a living, breathing being whose beating heart shall someday be stilled, I wish to give you something that shall last unto the stillness of your own heart, and beyond--a thing more precious than life itself; for it is what makes life's brokenness worth more than even its beauty.

It is a little thing called Hope.

Category: , , , 0 missives