Jehoida, acting

[Joash] remained hidden with his nurse at the temple of the LORD for six years while Athaliah ruled the land.

Now is the time for action. I have waited, but now my waiting is complete. The fullness of time has come, and what is demanded is action. It is true that waiting is more active than men think, since it requires a intension of mind, a willful effort of inaction. It implies a chosen course, and my course has long been set. But eventually, waiting must move into activity. Now is that time, the opportunity comes, and I must act.

It is odd to think of action in this context, since for so long it has remained only in my prayers, a distant hope, seemingly impossible. It was bound up not in my observation, for the woman seemed so strong, so secure! And I, I was scared even to talk overmuch in her presence, afraid of her discovering the child, afraid of her penetrating my plans. The long years were years of prayer, of calling to God, of seeking his protection. So far, he has been faithful, proving himself to me even as in the waiting my heart was strengthened. But now it is time to act, time to seize the promises, time to take at the command of God that which he offers to his people. It is curious, this combination of promise and action. But the kingdom of our fathers has always been taken by force.

For look (I address first my heart), David's kingdom endures the reign of a daughter of idolatry, that offspring of Jezebel, a woman in her mother's image, a tyrant, a parody of created action, seizing, controlling, killing. The people falter under her, under her dominion, the kingdom of God remade in the form of the Canaanites once cleansed from her. This is what confronts me, the blasphemies I have witnessed, the idols in the very temple where I serve, a priest, a Levite, a man devoted to God in these dark times, a light alone in a long night.

Look at the darkness which surrounds me! Darkness is ignorance, covering the eyes of all men and veiling the glory of our worship, so that all men serve the gods of gold and silver and wood, pouring out the libations of blood, bowing before the works of their hands, joining together in the blindness of their hearts to exalt that which is dead--ignorant yes, but maliciously so. They partake a mixed worship, a syncretism, men imagining they honor God while also worshiping at the altars in the mountains, the altars in their homes, even the altars improperly erected in the courts of the temple. It is a time when men pretend to call on God while praying also to the gods of the earth, the gods of men. Pretend! No, in their hearts there is a certain sincerity, an ignorant wishing. O Israel, fools, God will not submit to your decree! No, we must worship our God according to the statue given to Israel. This is the form laid out in the psalm, the hymn of praise:

I rejoiced with those who said to me,
Let us go to the house of the Lord.

That is where the tribes go,
the tribes of the Lord,
to worship the name of the Lord,
according to the statute given to Israel.

There is one place where we may worship, the house of the Lord, thus David, constantly, 'I will bow down toward your holy temple.' O men of Israel, what do you worship when you prescribe for yourself a form? There is a statute given, an instruction, a worship to be submitted unto! Do you think God would trust the fallen hearts of men to invent a worship pleasing to him? God will be worshiped only as he decrees! Thus in the fallenness of our minds and hearts what springs from our reason descends into idolatry, self-worship, desecration.

O for the zeal of our fathers, renewed in our midst! Lord, give me a heart like David's, a heart that was after yours! He knew his heart because you showed it to him, his undivided heart, the heart that you searched and broke, around which you placed your hand, hemmed in it was, a heart controlled. His worship came to you according to the forms you prescribed, and you covenanted with him.

You promised him. You swore an oath to him! O Lord, this child, this child we have sheltered these many years, this is the promise. This line, according to your own word! cannot fail, cannot perish, it must bring forth a king, it must, a king who will inherit that everlasting throne, the throne that David spoke of, that Solomon pointed to. O Lord, he knew it was not him that possessed it. O Lord, you whose word cannot and will never fail, here in this moment, if this does not succeed, your word will fail, for he is the last of the line and his grandmother has set her heart to destroy him!

The promise, unfailing. The promise, made before Abraham acted, itself calling his acting forth. When men promise, it gives us the freedom to act upon their word, depending on both the trustworthiness of the one making the promise, and the power possessed to bring it to pass. I have known men who would die for the integrity of their word and others who would cast it aside to gain a few loaves of bread. Such are the vagaries of men, and we must analyze them before we act upon them, for we risk when we act. This is the nature of things, the pattern of all faith, whether in man's word and power, my own word and power, or eventually in God's revealed word and semi-revealed power.

I say semi-revealed not because it is insufficiently revealed, but because it is first of all selectively revealed, and second of all, only partially revealed. The world could not bear up under the full revelation of it, and thus he moves towards us in a sufficiency of revelation. I have not seen him, as my fathers did, as Aaron and Moses did, as Abraham did, nor have I heard his voice, like David and Samuel did. Yet he has sufficiently revealed his power, at least to cause in me the action that here needs doing.

In what such a revelation? my heart nags at me, for around around the corners of my decision there is a small voice, a small doubt, a small question. This is no friend, no ally, no voice of reason, for I have enough to know that God is powerful. There is the testament of the past, the stories of our fathers, even recent ones, for I remember as a boy the wonders of Elisha and Elijah, the great men of God who in the power of God spoke and acted. Then also, there is the glory of his worship, the splendor of it in what it represents, the revealed truth showing man as he is, his past and the things still yet to come. There is a convincing power in his Law, the hands of which I feel upon my soul every time it is read, even as I repeat it to my children every evening. All this is sufficient for any action, sufficient to know the reality of God and the reality of his promises, for if one exists than the other must too.

Doubt is the hindrance to my action, doubt and the fear it creates, for doubt speaks insecurity to my feeble heart, and a man insecure fears. Fear is the anticipation of a future pain, and it should have nothing to do with the people of God! God, who is power, who reigns over all things, who controls all things, who no one can thwart, for does not the Psalmist say,

The Lord does whatever pleases him,
in the heavens and on the earth

Where this fear then? Remember, O heart, my ancestors, those that fell in the desert, who daily had the power of God demonstrated for them, more clearly than any people who have ever lived, save perhaps Noah. Yet they doubted, feared, held back, and they were destroyed.

The promise of God is an enlivening promise, a promise that creates its fulfillment in the hearts of men! Thus in the fullness of time I must act. I have used here, O Lord be praised in this as in all things, every tool of wisdom and strength at my disposal, the preciseness of subterfuge, the secret power of carefully cultivated allies, the faithful men of this realm surreptitiously probed, examined, invited, slowly gaining men who would act with me, so that this woman, this neo-Jezebel, this idolatrous leprosy in the body of his people may be purged, destroyed, eliminated. And we will place on the throne of Israel the promised son of David, the one who must be placed there, so that the Word of God may not fail.

It will not fail. It cannot fail. God will bring it about, one way or another, and who knows but that I am brought to this position so that he can work through me? This is a glory to be treasured, to be numbered among the people of God in this great venture, to be with him in a fight for his glory, thus always victorious, for God will be glorified. And also to act, for this is the way I am made, an acting creature, have I not longed for it everyday of my life? I am made for this day, it is mine to be claimed, though God acts through and in me, bringing to pass what he has decreed through the vigor of my chosen actions. This is the great mystery of his grace and call, that which causes what it ordains, leaving man the pleasure of his natural gifts used, his place brought forth as he was created, his joy in being what he was meant to be, a man used. Yes, Lord, let it be so!

Therefore, my heart is strengthened, my feet once again stand firm, my mind is clear and my path unobstructed. In my action, act, O sovereign Lord. My hands are trained, because you have trained them, as the psalmist says,

You make my feet like the feet of a deer,
you train my hands for battle,
my arms can bend a bow of bronze.

These are David's words in the midst of his action, the strong efforts of his arms. In all of them, he returned glory to you, relying upon you even as he fought. So must I today, for the glory of your promise to this his ancestor, a glory covering also all over whom he reigns, and for the restoration of your promised people, a return to glory in your worship and the anticipation of the future promises. May all who see this be also strengthened to act in a similar faith, venturing upon your Word wherever your glory is promised but lost. Take us there, O Lord, in our action, for you reign over all things.

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Psalm 18, 135, 122 are quoted

The story is in 2 Kings 11. Joash followed God for as long as Jehoida was alive.

Frustration

Imperfection stalks all the works of men.

Isaiah, undone (Revised)

Isaiah 6:4

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.


O God, what is this?

There is immediacy, the heart understands before the sense can comprehend what is seen. My soul is thrown down, cowers back, seeks to hide and finding nothing to hide itself behind, is dismayed. This is the reaction of my whole self even before my eyes could make out the shape of the temple, the great robe filling it, God as dwelling among but transcending, my eyes perceiving here a greater reality than what I have seen, for it is the temple but the proportions are wrong, and changing, deepening as my eyes scan them. There is a likeness between what I have seen before and what I see now, but it is as if a whole new depth where added, a realness that makes the old temple appear only a shadow, the words of Solomon speaking out from it, will God really dwell in a temple made by the hands of men? This is a greater temple, a place of surpassing beauty, of smoke and fire, there is the altar, there the doors, there the sea, there the lampstand.

Then my ears too, hearing a thunder that echoes from the walls of this place, for I am both in the temple and perceiving its wholeness. My ears at first were dazed by the brilliance of the sound, the greatness of the sound, like a living thing almost, and in awe the words slipped past my comprehension. As the world focused, the words became clear, the repeated words, and my cowering mind recovered a comprehension, the sight and the sound explaining my heart to me, and I am dismayed

Holy! they cry, three times they repeat it, the emphasis exalting in its repetition, ascending as a mountain path to unreachable heights, the forbidding places of smoke and fire, like Mount Horeb where the Lord once thundered. The words of it at once are known, for this is a place where words are truth, where to contradict what is plain is unthinkable, for there is unity here, and the beings who speak it have no parts. They cannot shift and change, for lies have to do with change, and a limitedness of understanding, and these beings are intelligence, are all intellect. They speak what is true because to do otherwise is not possible, because in the presence of God all is seen and known, nothing is hidden, and what is spoken is, like the existence of the one who speaks.

Holy! This word penetrates me. My cowering soul is suddenly seen, as the works of the flesh are burnt away before the great presence in front of me. I am known, and in being known, I am terrified.

O for the shelters of my past, the sanctuaries of my works, the pleasant places of my mind, and the securities of my abstractions! All are gone now, in this terrible reality, for at once they are seen for what they are, and in being seen, they vanish. The light shines upon them and they burn away like the morning mist, vanishing like the dew, blown away like the chaff. They are gone, gone and I stand exposed, with nothing to hide me, naked before him, looking upon myself in my ugliness and feeling shame.

O Lord, I have read Moses and the shame of our first parents! How long have I clothed myself as they did, in the leaves of my own imagination, the inadequate covering of my petty pride! This foolishness confronts me now, tested in the flood of his presence and found wanting, the waters rushing over my head, the flood engulfing me. Now what I have made is destroyed, and I have nothing.

This is me, unmasked. This is the secret shame I have so long worked to obscure. This is the self that exists, the real, that which I cannot change or alter, that which in glimpses has long terrified me. This is weakness, ugliness, meanness, hatred, selfishness, pride, and an overweening desire to master all I see. This is what I hide in my words, my polite ways. This is the swallowing self, the galloping engorger, that which cannot be hid, always peaking forward and revealing itself, my hated being, hidden from all.

O Lord, now I have nothing, I have nothing, I have no works, no shelters, no foundation, no place to hide this ugly self in! Now I have no refuge for here in the terror and splendor of your presence all is lost. It is just me, in my shame and guilt, standing before the one against whom I have set myself. Whatever I had is lost, and you will destroy me.

Ruined! Ruined! And before his great beauty, the splendor and beauty of his holiness. It is terrible, but beautiful in its terror, as are all such things, for what can destroy us also draws us. Beautiful though it thunders, the attraction which the seraphs I hear cannot stop praising, for their actions are not monotonous but living, a joy, a joy my heart can conceptualize and therefore increases my despair, for I suffer not just the punishment of my shame but also the things lost. This was once mine, for there was a place where no one was ugly, God pronouncing all things good, and thus able to stand before him unashamed, rejoicing in the holiness known and seen, participating in it, two things concurring together, one greater, the other lesser, but unified.

This is itself, holiness describing unity, oneness, purity, unmixedness. There is no deviation in it, but there is exaltation, advancement, uprising, a thing seizing its created place, living in fullness as it ascends deeper. Holiness is a thing in its proper place, and so is joy, the delight in a thing fitted. God made all things for himself, and set them in the place for which they were made. Rejecting this, we rejected also our happiness, and now the world groans.

But the heart has not perceived these things, until now, until this terrible presence made all other things fade. O for the wasted days, the days of hiding. Now there is no hiding, only breaking, only destroying, only the eternal burning of his holiness. I am ruined! My lips reveal themselves unclean, bringing forth as they have the deeds of the unclean heart, the twistedness of my shameful self, and now with all things clear, all truths known, they cast me down.

There is only despair now. I die, and perish eternally.

[Thus man is brought before God. If he does not come here, there is no repentance, for repentance is a turning from the broken worlds created, and though few will have them burnt as Isaiah by the fire of his presence, many of us will have them removed by trial, the fire of earthly experience. But they must be surrendered or taken, if God will have us]

[The seraph flies to him and touches the coal to his lips, this coal upon which had dripped the precious blood of the lamb, a shadow yet, for God represented himself unto Isaiah in the temple]

Mercy!

How?

I see it, but it is obscured by the smoke of the temple. The altar! This place, real as it is, must also have a real sacrifice, a depth of sacrifice, with power as this place shudders with power! The sacrifice then, it too has power! O Lord, this is your salvation!

Now I am clean! Now in my exposure I am whole, I am myself, I am a man remade! Here I am!

O Lord, send me!

-----------------------

Perhaps I will later do a follow up explaining more fully his thoughts after the coal touches his lips.

Isaiah, undone

Isaiah 6:4

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

I am penetrated.

I am perceived.

I am known.

The works I have created, for years and years, they are burned away.

The presented wholeness of my self, it is gone, like chaff caught in the wind.

Who am I?

Who is this? Obscured by smoke, the ground shaking, the sound of his servants ringing in my ears, the flashes of light and brilliance emerging, a sight overwhelming.

O this flesh! I still have it, and now it is overwhelmed, overcome, the sight/sound of this merged world is too much to bear up under, and it fails. And the wholeness of it too, for I am one being, one in my existence, and there is a deeper weakness that is shattered, a weakness that this presence moves through me to behold, to convict, to cast down, and my tongue must be silenced.

Who am I? A scattered man, proud in a foolish way, of small moments, of small words, of small privileges and small duties, of a small regard from other small creatures, men regarding men. Pleased in my self for such things, things no disappeared in this new glory, things that could not be stood upon, things that only increase my guilt before him.

Catch the words in these weakened ears, the voices cry, 'Holy, holy, holy,' the emphasis exalting in its repetition, ascending as a mountain path to unreachable heights, the foreboding places of smoke and fire, like Mount Horeb where the Lord once thundered. They speak it for they are beings of unity, beings of truth, in full conformity because of their unchangingness, their permanence. They speak what they observe in truth, exalting that which must be exalted, compelled not by force but by their nature, as a being properly fitted for its role. They cry it because it is true.

Holy! O holiness is a terrible thing! O holiness is a beautiful thing, terrible in its beauty, terrible not in itself, beautiful in itself, but terrible for that which is ugly. O holiness, that burning quality, that which demands, holiness, it is beautiful.

O holiness, it casts me down! O holiness, it makes me bow, not as a volunteer, but because no other response is possible! O holiness, what is there but you?

What is it? It is glory. It is unmixedness, purity. It is itself. It is that which causes praise. It is rightness as it is living, a rightness expressed, full of beauty, full of truth. It is the law.

O heart, O eyes, how often have you read and seen the law, but you have not seen it! You have not perceived in it this burning, this throwing down, this reality of presence in it, that which in its dictation shone upon and reflected outward from the face of Moses! This is holiness, the law made alive, the law seizing! It is beautiful and terrible! See it, now, see it! Is it too late, for now I see Him, and he is overwhelming! I have never seen him in the law and now that I see him I cannot bear it!

O holiness, I am so far from you! O holiness, only in the sight of you am I captured by you! O holiness, you are surpassing in your beauty, but I am unclean, unclean.

What could be done, if I had seen him in the Law? If this holiness had shone forth, if it had been known to me, what would I have seen? Despair. My heart! My heart is unclean, and all that emerges forth from it is stained, my mouth and my lips, these standing forth for the whole of my conversation, all is unclean! What is there now? This presence will consume and I will burn, burn, burn!

Would that my heart could be remade.

O for a remade heart! Now that this is living, show to me the lowness and pettiness of my past. O Lord, in the glimpsing of you, even for these moments, all is changed! Lord, what is the world but a reflection of these things, the mountains of your grandeur, the seas of your unsearchability, the heavens of your obscurity, the grass and flowers of your mercy, the thunder and lightning of your wrath, the rain of your kindness, the sun and moon of your order! And I, in the meanness of my thoughts, content in my small victories, my position, my realm, this false world built, now penetrated overthrown!

All is seen, O heart, all is seen! Nothing is hidden. There is no falseness here, no external control, no manipulation of hearts and minds, there is only bareness, honesty, the forced examination, shown, seen, broken into. This is pain, to see this ugliness, for what is revealed in the heart of man can only be ugly, ugly in its rebellion, in its hatred of all others (for all are hated in this fallen heart, not in action, but in potential). I am seen, and known, and found wanting! Thus I tremble, I fall, I am here in the dust, in the mud, in the pit, on my knees, and I must cry out, this cry, this cry! Woe is me! Woe is me! I am ruined, I am undone, I am unwound and opened, all my schemes broken, my world burnt by the fire of this holiness, left only with my unclean heart and the actions produced by it.

[Thus man is brought before God. If he does not come here, there is no repentance, for repentance is a turning from the broken worlds created, and though few will have them burnt by the fire of his presence, many of us will have them removed by trial, the fire of earthly experience. But they must be surrendered or taken, if God will have us]

[The seraph flies to him and touches the coal to his lips, this coal upon which had dripped the precious blood of the lamb, a shadow yet, for God represented himself unto Isaiah in the temple]

O Lord, holy Lord, burning presence, mighty one, King, I have rebelled against you, but you have converted me unto you, you have won me over! This burning, I was ready, O Lord, I was helpless, needing only the decree of your word!

O Lord, this is your mercy, given at the turning, given when all else is taken, given when the heart is exposed before you, O Lord, if I am alive, then I will return yet to the earth, return yet to those unclean men amongst whom I live, and so Lord, you must burn into me the memory of this, that I may never again construct for myself what is false!

This is my reality, the openness of the exposed heart, this is truth, this is as it is. I am who I am, a man before you, not beautiful in myself, rather, beautiful in the fact of my creation, for all of your works are good, though in my sin I am twisted too. Beautiful as I am made clean, as I am cleansed by the fire of the sacrifice, this fire given to another, touching me and making me like you! O Lord, I can stand, I can stand before you, coming to you in the joy of your presence, coming to you as a man, as I am, in this body and flesh, exposed and known and loved.

This is mercy, the burning away of all that is false and exalting that which is true! O Lord, what allows you to do this, what mystery to be penetrated, behind the smoke filling the temple there is a mystery yet to come in which this is explained, laid bare, made known unto us. This is the promise, the approach unto God made clear.

O Lord! Teach me your ways! Show me your paths! Guide me in your truth and teach me!

Here I am. I am undone, but made beautiful thereby, sharing in the holiness which I know also celebrate. Holy! Holy! Holy! The Lord Almighty is holy! It is beautiful, remaining yet terrible, but its terror is external now, a terror outside this shelter. Here I am, me, all of me, first to last, every action, every motion, all known, all seen, every thought and word penetrated. Here I am, in the presence of the Holy One, holy alike in the grace of his will, made clean by his grace, celebrating what once spoke my doom, held and known to be loved, no longer to be destroyed. I am here, Lord, send me as I am, for I will go.

David, undignified

II Samuel 6:14-15

David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

O Lord, who has examined my heart, bring forth my praise in perfection, for I must groan what I cannot say, and if you do not purify it, my words must drop to the ground!

O Lord, my feet move, my hands wave, my head is thrown back, my throat is raw, my body in motion, all for the unity of heart and body, these two expressing to you what words cannot!

O Lord, you who made music that we may praise with the heart, who made music that the heart may be disciplined in its paths and approaches unto you, who made music that the frustrated soul might access that which he cannot express, who made music that this heart ache, this bitter sweetness might be relieved yet increased, O Lord, hear my song for it is your song!

O Lord, who placed this song in me, my heart yearns but is not satisfied!

O Lord, what can sum up your glory, satisfying my heart in the expression of it, return in full what I have seen and experienced?

O Lord, in the excess of these attempts my heart is lost and my mind for a moment passes deep into your presence, helpless but secure, overwhelmed but fearless, all affection unified on its object!

O Lord, this is as close to perfection as I can approach in this weak flesh, this heart bliss, this abandonment to your holy presence, for alone in my spirit am I clean, and my body cannot bear your presence!

O Lord, when Uzzah touched the ark he died, yet before you my fear changes into love, or rather the fear remains but becomes an empty thing in my self-forgetfulness, retaining the same shape but filled with a holy affection, fear and love mixed, disappearing, or becoming one thing, the obedience-love of the humble heart!

O Lord, my humility is not a conscious act, though it is chosen and sought, but it is the quietness of stilled heart, the quietness that exists side-by-side with my shouts and dancing!

O Lord, if I am undignified before you, it must increase, it must increase, until all dignity loses meaning, for there is no dignity in your presence!

O Lord, to kneel before you is an action of the soul, and so I kneel, I, the king, but a king at your pleasure, according to your great oath, and so I must be the first to lose my dignity, so that none in this kingdom would cling to theirs!

O Lord, my heart is humble and my eyes are not haughty!

O Lord, my heart is proud!

O Lord, I am a mixed man but in my praise I am purified, for my heart is taken and forgotten, a one-direction soul, my own self lost in the motions of the moment, all my heart his!

O Lord, take, take, take, for I want none of it, I want nothing of myself, for to possess myself is to lose myself, and my heart is my betrayer!

O Lord, take me, take me, I am yours and I have no power to produce, though my heart nearly breaks in the attempt, and I yearn to pour out all that I have, but you must take me!

O Lord, the frustration of this heart is that it cannot fulfill its desire, it cannot praise as it wants, O Lord, my heart longs to long as you would have me long, as you deserved to be longed after!

O Lord, I have no power to praise aright, all this is a mercy, all this is your great condescension, that God would accept praise from a man!

O Lord, you made all things!

O Lord, it hurts, it aches, this heart within me, feeling perhaps the pains of separation, the very nearness of my approach exposing the gulf that still remains, for you are invisible and my eyes cannot yet bear your presence!

O Lord, it hurts because it seeks, it hurts because my soul longs for you, because I long for you and you are denied me, in fullness, these tastes are enough to awaken my soul, but I will forever remain unsatisfied in this pain-filled flesh!

O Lord, the very hurting is a joy for what it holds out to me, confirming as it does the remaking that has fit me and will fit me for the joy of your presence!

O Lord, this is the promised hope, for Abraham, for his descendants, for me, and one day for all nations, O Lord, no rest for your people until you have done it!

O Lord, I will vow, no rest, no rest, set upon your walls men, the walls of Zion, men who will watch and pray and hope and cry out and call upon you, until that great day when all nations bow before the splendor of this ark!

O Lord, all this is shadow, this dancing before the ark of your presence, for though you protect it fiercely, we do not yet see you, though we seek you in shadow, we are satisfied only in substance, and my great dancing now only prepares me for the great dance to come, when music will be living, when it sill be perfected, the moments extended, satisfying and satisfied in one great dance, all motion but perfectly still, never ceasing or starting, when this flesh is burned away for all time, not abandoned, for you O Lord, you O Most High, O beautiful One, you have made known to me the paths of life, with eternal pleasures at your right hand, this promise in shadow, fullness to come, dignity and humiliation forgotten in the new body, O Lord, let it be so!

Joshua, reflecting on the stoning of Achan

Joshua 7:25
Joshua said, "Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today." Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them.

I see my world on three levels, O Lord, three rings of purging, three arenas devoted to you, in which you must and will reign. First, the world of our promised territory, a land flooded with immorality and idolatry. Second, in our midst, among the people of Israel, so tenuous in their obedience. Third, O Lord, the world of my own heart and life, the arena into which you spoke after Moses died, promising and purging by the word of your power, banishing fear and forgetfulness from it.

O Lord, we are fighting for this land. Here is our ancient inheritance, the land you instructed Abram to walk long ago, in the days of his sojourn, him walking the length and breadth of it, knowing its dimensions in anticipation of this day, the day when you would fulfill in his body (for we spring from him) the promise. Now we have made our approach, possessing it step-by-step, sensing in the land its hope, seeing broken desperation in the opposition of your enemies. They will be destroyed.

If I could meditate on the pathways of idolatry, the proclivity of the heart towards it, springing from our ancient sin and the perversion of our nature, I would see here its full flowering, all the depravities of the flesh at work in them, a god as a license to sin and lust, stamping approval on the violence of our natural condition, and darkening the mind in the worship of that which is opposed to the truth. This is the foulness of the land, a place that must be seized by force, taken, purged, freed from its slavery to the foreigners under which it groans. O Men, the earth does not support you willingly! This land was not made for you, and your torturing of it sets you at odds with one who made it, who made us as he made it for harmony together, not as equal partners but according to the great pattern, it serving and submitting to us as we care for it. This land, this promised land, is the great return, the great resting place of men, resting not in a cease from work, but a return to work in its fulfillment, the joining of men and their created purposes.

But O God, we must look on the land and admit that it is land like every other place, no more renewed than Egypt from which we came. We see these things in shadows, for the greater promise speaks of blessing, a blessing that ends, not momentarily allays, the pains of this fallen world.

But Lord, here we are, now, looking down upon this land, the slaughter of a city behind us, and deaths innumerable calling out to us. For we must, by the strength of strengthened hands, consume this land in an orgy of killing. We must, with myself as the spark, sweep like wildfire through this land, burning the chaff of mankind, threshing him beneath our feet, destroying the wickedness from it, making it fit for your sanctuary. This is the work of our hands, this great killing, already started, continuing soon against the men of Ai. Pour out your wrath through us, for we must be merciless!

The cries of the men and women as we killed them, the hate in their eyes! The blood and dust mingled in the fall of those walls, the wailing of the women, the quaking of the men! The sword in my hand thoughtful, considering, not blind in the war-madness of the pagan armies, strengthened by a recourse to temporary insanity, a suspension of the rational mind. No, this is not our path, we who fight for God fight from the conscious mind, from the reason, measuring what comes, listening. Thus our eyes and ears are open to the horrors of war, our reasons take them in to their fullness, and we know the pain of those we kill. But we kill them nonetheless.

O Jericho, I mourn not for you, though I saw with my own eyes the death of your masses, though I myself ran my sword through your women and children. Lord, the fierceness of your anger burns in your people, and we purge and purify for your glory. Before your anger, there are no innocents, even the infants whom we seized and dashed against the rocks were not blameless, conceived as they were in the sin of Adam, rebels by nature, offensive and unclean in their very selves, and unless God shows mercy they too must be purged. What is death in the natural world but a sudden suspension of his mercy? When infants are born dead do we consider God cruel? Our God bears under the sin of most men to show his compassion to his chosen ones, but have no doubt that all the pain and suffering this world can offer to men is a mercy compared to the terror of his burning presence. There is enough evil in the heart of every infant we kill to fill every kingdom of the earth with violence and hatred, born as we are, hating and hated, a people cursed and restrained from unending violence only by fear.

Violence against violence, such is the way, not in our hands to mete out towards their own ends, or at their own command, but in our hands as controlled and used, our hands as set to this task by God. Vengeance belongs to him, anger is his, the wrath that our swords deliver is his wrath, and if he is with us, then his enemies will perish. God is our master, our controller, our spear is his spear, and if he sets us against his enemies, he must destroy them until every living thing is dead. This is God, it is how he has revealed himself, it is how is made himself known, and praise him for it, for his revelation of this holy hatred, unearned (meaning, that he could have let us fill our lives with such violence until we perished, ignorant), is the great kindness that leads us to repentance, we who walk in the ways of God know that it is fear that he honors.

O Israel, look upon this and learn! Respond not with the confidence of these surrounding tribes, who glory in themselves in victory, rejoicing and celebrating the violence as good in itself. No, Israel, see your heart, that hidden realm, where a world of violence also lurks. There you will see the compassion of God, when you look upon those you kill and see a man like you, deserving death like you, but not favored, not chosen. Should this make you proud, O worm Israel? Should this make you proud, O worm Joshua? Forbid it Lord, you who look upon all men alike with the pitilessness of your law, speaking death without favoritism.

Look at the idolatry around us now, O Israel, O Joshua, and see not a foreign condition, but the pathways of your own heart! Look upon the unmastered appetites of these men and humble yourselves! Our God is a consuming fire, a God who even in shadow filled me with fear, the sword from his mouth convicting all alike.

Thus the second world, for in this battle we must keep ourselves pure, and demonstrate the fear of God among us! Achan, O blind man, who thought that God could not see, or that he would not act! Unbeliever, atheist, apostate, unclean! If God shows mercy upon such a man, that is his right, but here and now he did not. We stoned him, him and his household, all who sheltered him in his sin, so that there may be fear of God among us, that we may know that is the mercy of God alone that places the sword in our hand, his mercy alone separating this chosen tribe from the other tribes whom we come against.

Can you say that God is unjust? When Achan died was he not punished for his sin? And when the men of Jericho were slaughtered, did they not deserve death? God is not unjust, forbid your heart to even consider such a thing! He will show mercy, though, without consulting the feeble minds of men, and if he withholds it, that too is his right, for he is God, and he reigns. Fear him.

O Lord, in all things, we must praise your mercy! As your wrath is poured out, we who can see know that this is the end that the world is prepared for. This great purging is but a shadow and preparation for a greater one, and these external things show us the internal. There can be no unclean thing in your presence, the law declares this to us, and though our hearts are unclean, we know that your power can remake us, the sprinkling of the blood upon the people a great sign of it (for we know, we know, even Moses instructed us, the law is not the end, there is a promise yet), and the very fear we have of you is preparing us for it, that those who come in a poverty of spirit are favored. Lord, these things show me the way, the way of things, the pathways of your fourth world, that invisible one, populated by a spiritual people, the land which this land speaks of, the land Abraham waited for and longed for, O Lord, I long for it too.

Lord, I know the opposition of men, this mastered opposition present in my own heart, this obstinate rebellion which your future world cannot bear. I know you will destroy your enemies, that even now you endure them so that you can bring us forth, so that the third world of our hearts can be cleansed and prepared, fitted and made ready, this great purging our victory, a victory in our hearts, our hands, our swords, our spirits, cleansed and made ready for the one who made them, able to endure this wrath that we pour out, somewhere in the mystery of the promises.

A Few Thoughts on the Creative Process

1. I am striving to keep my language as fresh as possible, free of anything that sounds artificial.

2. I want to communicate, harnessing language, having it serve a greater purpose. Words in a pleasant arrangement are not an end in itself.

3. Beautiful ideas well communicated will result in beautiful writing. When my writing is most beautiful in my estimation is when the idea I want to communicate is most evidently seen. The idea itself, however, is not one that can be plainly seen, or else there would be little need for my efforts. To sum up, to make concise, to fit into a small phrase an idea of grandeur and ineffability...this is the goal of my writing.

4. Meaningless phrases are my foe, empty words my great enemy. I must know what I write, I don't want to write anything that is not experienced.

5. Behind it all is the power of sin in the heart, and the efforts to force the self to see truth. These men must speak to themselves because their hearts shake within them as all men's do.

6. These things are on my mind as I write: real communication, meaningful phrases, ruthlessness with heart sin, and a desire to glorify God in every action.

David, approaching the Philistine (Revised)

I Samuel 17:37

The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.

O Lord, look at the manhood of Israel, cowering in the shelter of their tents, afraid to walk forth from them and face this descendant of the Kenites, those people before whom we have shrunk back in the lost days, the days of God's wrath and anger. And now they risk such a thing again! And for what, the physical safety of a few moments?

O Lord, may all who see me now, may all who hear of this story in the future, may all who look upon this moment, these great events, O Lord, may all of them see and estimate these things rightly! Lord, forbid that any should see me as the main actor here, that any should consider me the main element, or that in this my strength, my courage, yea, even my trust! would be glorified. O God, these things are yours, and if I have courage, if I have faith here and now, it did not originate in me.

Listen, O my heart, and I will tell you the ways of faith, the pathways that this courage has taken, hear and learn and be strengthened, both now for the trial, and whatever will come in the future. O Lord, speak in my words as I speak to myself, in this discipline of my self-analysis I find your peace, stilling my heart before you to wait, yes, Lord, even now as I walk towards the confrontation quiet my heart. Here is my very self poured into the mold of your words and ways, the affections of my heart going up in the discipline of your truth, returning to you as praise after passing through the mysteries of your cleansing presence. Your Spirit, taking up to you my praise, making it beautiful, beautiful, though it comes from a stained heart. This is a miracle, a mystery to be seen, contained in the hope of the promise, the shadow of the sprinkling that Aaron and his descendants perform. O Lord, hear my voice.

Listen, listen, O heart, and know the power of the Lord. Dominion is his. He reigns above the circle of the earth. His voice shakes the very desert, twisting the oaks, stripping the forest bare. His hand smooths out the seas, measures the span of the heavens above. This is declared, in every language, by the heavens themselves, the glory the speak of is the vastness of God, the aboveness of him who made such things, implying a power beyond them possessed by him, a power that makes the sun seem dim, the thunder soft, and the wilds of the seas calm. This trembling power, that simmers and seeps out of the edges of all things, is the glory of the creator displayed in his creation. Lord, you make yourself known here, to all men, with a clarity sufficient to make no man innocent, a clarity that makes every idol a mockery, a self-worship, a willful rebellion.

O Lord, this is the power of God, a power revealed most particularly to my people, this tribe of men chosen from among all men, freely, before action, as you once chose Jacob over Esau. We alone among all men possess this revelation, first in the glorious deeds of old, then in the true law which shows weakness, and finally in the words of the promise which hold out to us the hope of your presence, a renewal of the image of God in us, and the joys and delights of the fellowship once enjoyed in the garden.

O Lord, what glory is contained in these things! This word, O Mighty One, signifies the presence of your quickening Spirit in them, that which shines forth from the words of the Lord and brings alive, this quality which your saints can never praise enough, can never give thanks for enough, for it is that which brought them alive!

Stand, O heart, stand. Be quickened by the memory of his glory. If I now walk forth, it is in the courage of a revealed power, a revealed glory, with a sure and undeniable evaluation of the proportion of things, seen from the new eyes of his followers, not the dead and dying eyes of idols and those that worship them.

This is what I mean, listen, O heart, listen to these words. The man who comes against me is a man, this can be seen. But such a man! He is the splendor of all mankind, a champion of champions, in the flesh he has a mighty man, surpassingly strong, abundantly powerful, a man armed with all the contrivances and inventions of earthly wisdom, the strength of the earth girding him, and his hands powerful for battle. A mighty sword is in his right hand, a mighty spear in the other. He is all the world can muster against the people of God, the pinnacle of its power, the summit of its strength, a man astride the world, challenging the heavens, a fist raised up against them, a defiance to all that is invisible. With what power can you come against me? he says. I am the power, I am the ruler, I am the dominion, for none dare threaten me, none dare oppose me! And like fools, the people of God cower in their tents, even the anointed ruler of them, even Saul chosen by God, once filled with the power of his Holy Spirit, they also look upon this man, then look to themselves, and they shudder.

For shame! To judge this man by his own standard is to flee from his presence. This is the pagan measurement, to measure ourselves by ourselves, to see in the power of the earth real strength, when it itself is held in place only at the whim of its Maker. Laugh at such things, O heart! Be offended for the power of the one who reigns. Who is this man, that he defy the armies of the Living God!

O Lord, you live, you live, and in your hand are all things! My courage is no courage, but just an estimation of things. This man is powerful with the counterfeit courage of the world, which is false because it accounts for itself and nothing else. The same courage is displayed in these cowering men. But to see the light of the Lord is to know the trembling power that stands behind all power, the one who stirs the seas and draws the sun across the sky and shakes the earth at his will. Would Goliath challenge the seas themselves? Would he hurl his spear at the sun? Yet there is one greater than both of these, whom he defies with no fear! Such calculations are irrational at their heart, the willing shuttering of the mind to the fact of the situation, like a child who closes his eyes in fear and imagines that he has made his enemies disappear.

Scoff at them, O heart, scoff at the men who set themselves up against our God. O Lord, surely this is no glory unto me, that you have captured my heart in days long past, that you have given me eyes that see and perceive the glory which others shut out, that you demonstrated your power against the bear and the lion on my behalf. What can I claim for myself in this? What extraordinary thing do I have that all the people of God do not possess? That I have faith is no claim I can make for myself, for what we call faith is no more than the knowledge of invisible things joined with a determination to act upon them, that I can see his power and know that in this battle there can be but one victor.

O Lord, you are glorified in my obedience now, you and you alone, none of me. My heart is after yours, I am a man after your heart, our hearts going out to each other according to the condescension of your mysterious nature, the pathways unknown but hidden within the greater restoration, that future son of the woman who will crush our enemy's head, our great enemy who even now whispers his encouragements into my lesser enemy's ears, who blinds his eyes to the invisible realities, and perverts his reason so that his confidence rests misplaced in the sword, the spear, and the strength of his arm.

This is yours Lord, all of it, my courage, your battle, my heart, his rebellion, the stone I sling, the sword he wields, the sun on my back, the wind in my face, the ground pounding beneath my feet. To see this invisible ownership is the rational action of a quickened man, a living man, the life in me springing from the life in you, calling out to that which it recognizes, holding me in hand as I run, swiftly, towards the battlelines.

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I Samuel 17 is the story

Now, here is a post I am finally satisfied with. The last one I hated.

What do you think? Better or worse than the other?

Also, I need to credit Tim Keller with the phrase "counterfeit courage."

David, approaching the Philistine

I Samuel 17:37

The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.

O Lord, you created me with eyes that see the world, with ears that hear the sounds, with an intellect that can evaluate the proportion of things, and instincts that act on these evaluations. What do I see, O Lord? I see a man approaching who is massive, covered in powerful weaponry, carrying a massive sword, and wielding a massive spear. As I walk here, I take all this in with a mind that is as equipped to process it as any man who ever lived. I am not insane, nor am I willing to take unreasonable risks with my life. I am David, your anointed one, son of Jesse, of the line of Judah, the line of the scepter, the line of ruling, and I have eyes like every man.

O Lord, I see also the worldly confidence of my enemy, a man like me, with eyes like me, who can evaluate and compare. He looks upon himself and he sees unbridled power, a power that has made him a champion, for he is strong.

The proportion of things is simple, O Lord, and only a fool would let it pass by unnoticed. I am a boy, young in my strength, and though I have skill, I have an inclination to war and an ability in it, I have powers in keeping with my size, my youth. So it goes. He is a warrior hardened by long experience, who towers over me, in strength superior, in ability he far exceeds me, and thus in analysis he does not fear.

This is the calculus taken by my men, the men of Israel, those who cowered in their camps like pagan men when he rode forth in his superiority, challenging the manhood of my people, or I should say, the Godhood behind our manhood. For implicit in his challenge is the superiority of is god, that is the god he has made, that they as a people have made, this god an idol of silver and gold, made by man, and thus of the earth, lower, beneath them, they god above gods, and hence the test of their superiority is the strength they can put forth, and embodied by Goliath, it is indeed glorious in the eyes of men.

Measure strength against strength if you are wise. Were we pagan men, we would be wise to cower here like fools, fearing the superior power of Goliath, or in treachery to devise some method to overcome his strength, measuring ourselves against ourselves. Fools! We are not pagan men. We are the men of Israel!

My reaction when I first heard his cry was the shock of a heart possessed. After all, God has long been my prize and treasure, since first I heard of him from my father's lips, a glory peeking through his words and the account of his promises. What was evident to me even then was the power of God, his ability, for the stories were no more than long accounts of his power and the men that trusted in it. Is this not our heritage, the heritage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Did not Noah trust in the word of God and his power when he built the ark? Did not Abraham venture on the power of God when he left Ur? These patterns seem so clear to me, so evident in the words we have clung to these long years. God's power and our trust in it. Every commended man has seen this, and every fallen fool has questioned it. Hence at the heart of things is an atheistical unbelief, a doubt. Doubt is the great enemy of our trust, let there be no question.

Doubt there was in the hearts of the Israelites when the shuddered back from the ancestors of this man I face. Doubt there was in Aachen's heart when he hid from God (note the absurdity of such a thing!) his stolen treasures. Doubt also in Esau's heart when he surrendered his hope for a mess of pottage. Doubt of God's power is the failing of all men, and in each situation doubt springs up anew, its edges felt even at the corners of my present action.

O yes, Lord, I tremble now in my heart as I walk. O Lord, with these eyes and these senses, I fear, for the man before me is huge, his strength superior. In my flesh, I am nothing more than all these men that tremble too, despite my declarations. This is no feat of screwing up my courage, as a man does who enters a situation he knows will be painful. I cannot, I do not, ignore or forget the physical calculus of what I face.

Who is this man, that he should defy the God who lives? The living God, the God who is there, this is the great hope of the Israelite people, the great hope of Abraham's descendants, for we do serve a God that is living, and if he is living than he acts, and if he acts than he causes, he creates, he determines, he rules. The Lord is a ruling God, a God who does not back up from man, but in whose hands man's heart sits. It is God who has hardened this fools heart, and it is God that has made mine supple within me.

O yes, O Lord, you have made me supple, you have heard me, responded to me, walked with me. I have faith, yes, I have faith, because you have placed it there, shining in forth in your word and proving to my heart your power. I see, I see, not the created realities of my earthly eyes, those that even the idols possess, but I see the uncreated reality itself, the power seeping from the edges of all creation, the power that is displayed day and night in the heavens, the power that convicts all men, from which the cower under the created idols of the world, Goliath, satisfied in the strength of his flesh, though one day he will die like every other man.

Thus goes the analysis, I seeing him in his strength, seeing also my self in my proportional strength, him confident, and I non-confident in this flesh. But I have information, knowledge, which he does not possess, because it is a knowledge that only my eyes can see, his cannot. It is a secret strength, the strength proven when I in this same flesh overcame a lion and bear, this secret strength which is so far beyond any worldly power, that when confronted with opposition it can laugh, it can scoff. Goliath sees me and laughs, but the proportion between my strength and his is insignificant compared to a greater proportion, his strength and the Lord's.

When he comes against me, O Lord, he comes against you. My actions are not foolhardy but wise, trusting as I am in a power that cannot fail. The Lord will show himself glorious, and those who trust in him cannot fail, for his words bind him to their defense, O Lord, this is faith, the connection between your spoken word and our venturing on it, this created thing which the glory of his Word brings to life, O Israel, hear and understand! Have faith men, for the God who stands behind these words is the Maker of Heaven and Earth! He does whatever pleases him, no can hold back his hand, and the created power of Goliath is like the grass of the field, no more! Lord, make my feet swift as I run now, guide my hand as I fight, for the battle belongs to you and I am no fool!

David, approaching the Philistine

I Samuel 17:37

The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.

O Lord, crap.

This guy is massive.

Jochebed, groaning

Exodus 2:23

23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

To be a slave is to have your present controlled. When we go out to the fields, we labor for fruit that we do not and cannot enjoy. We work and rest at the control of others, beneath the sovereignty of other men, of principles that are at or below us in value. A man controlling a man, unearned in his control, arbitrary according to birth and situation, a life controlling a life, though neither in itself has power. Slavery, therefore, is an unnatural thing.

Lord, we are slaves.

Lord, men control us. Lord, beneath the all encompassing sovereignty of your might there is a sovereignty over us. Lord, when we walk, they are around us, controlling us, giving pain or pleasure according to the whims of their own wisdom, mastering us according to these withheld or satisfied desires. Work and receive food, refuse and endure pain. Pain and food are our true masters, but you have given the power of these things to the Egyptians, men of this world, men who worship a pagan host. Lord, this is our slavery, a slavery of satisfaction meted out, a world controlled.

Lord, look on this. Lord, how can you look upon your people so controlled, so enslaved, so mastered? Lord, how can you look upon us and not be moved in your heart? Lord, have mercy! Lord, rescue us! Lord, deliver us! Lord, we are your promised people and we are enslaved in a pagan land!

Teach me, O my heart, of the ways of slavery, so that I may know and see them according to the light of the promises. First, that we come from Abraham, from his flesh, his descendants according to the promise given to him. He was told that from his loins would come a great nation, a people "as numerous as the stars in the sky" (meaning, of course, that as the stars are uncountable, so are those who come from Abraham, God can count the stars, having made them, and so he numbers us too). We are this people, this promised people, I from Levi, all my brothers too from the various sons of Jacob, the tribes of Israel.

Second, that this people, it was said, would inherit the land promised to Abraham.

Third, that according to the promises we would be blessed, and we would be a blessing to all nations.

Lord, you whose word cannot be broken, whose promises are for all time (such is the revealed reality of God, God as he is made known to us, for to see the promises themselves in the light of themselves, is to see them as eternal, their glory unfading, such is the nature of all that comes forth from God, his word stretching forward into eternity, existing as he himself does apart from the changing and dying of our world), you have made us into a people. We tremble, uncountable, amongst the Egyptians. But Lord, we are far from the land promised, and who can say that we either are blessed or bless, existing as most of us do under the shadow of idolatry, slaves to a foreign people? If the word of God is true, then it will produce its effects, and what is said will come to pass. This is the nature of truth, to conform to reality, it is reality, that which exists and comes from God, created by his Word even as in our rebellion we try to shape our own truth from our own words.

Lord, your promises are things to be gripped, things which are hands can grasp, things stood upon like a man feeling hardness under his feet in the midst of a flowing stream, or a sheltered place that stops the wind. This is how I will consider them, and how I will hold to them, me and my husband and our household, who walk in the ways of God as did Jacob and Isaac and Enoch. We hold your Word to be true despite the evidences of our senses, despite the labor allotted for us each day by the atheist rulers with no mind or heart for the reality of your presence. Yes, we can stand here and wait here, and these abstractions are reality through the glory that shines through them, making truth out of what cannot be seen and which seems to be false.

This is true, to be established here and now. But Lord, when I see my people, my people, my brothers and sisters, I must bring before you this complaint, this cry, this groan, almost wordless, that we are slaves, that we are ruled over, and that as far as we can see, your promises have not come true, they have not come to pass. Lord, look upon your people and see them suffering, laboring for that which is not bread and which cannot satisfy, their needs begrudgingly provided for by a people with no regard for you! Lord, this is slavery, to need, to be dependent on some thing, some principle, O Lord, we are slaves and the harshness of our existence is the absence of your compassion, for we cry and cry and you are silent.

Lord, I am not among those who have lost hope, who have melded to some degree with the other slaves, or with the Egyptians themselves. Lord, I have hope. I will not abandon it because you have not changed, and thus your promises stand. But Lord, I suffer too, O Lord, seeing the death of so many, watching in horror as my nephews were thrown into the river, seeing my people beaten and murdered according to the whims of a foreign people. Lord, we work and labor each day to satisfy those who cannot be satisfied! Lord, this is our lives expended in futility! Yet Lord, when you revealed yourself to our fathers you came in kindness, compassion, mercy despite your hatred of the sin that rages here. We remember this, and call to you, for though you were kind to our fathers, we cannot say you are kind to us, we cannot say this for we are slaves.

Lord, act!

When I groan, O Lord, when I groan under the cruelties of this slavery, I remember also my son. Lord, somewhere in the wilds out there is my son, my son, the one I once looked upon and saw deliverance in. Lord, who can tell the motions of my heart that gave me such a conviction when first I looked upon the son Amram and I had made? But thus it was, this child, no ordinary child, a child that we must risk for, that we must venture upon the power of God for, that we must intercede according to our trust in the promises for. We did, unhesitatingly, hiding him in our house (how silent was Moses as an infant!) until we could no longer, then in desperation sending him down the Nile in a basket. O Lord, how you proved yourself to us in those days, watching over our child, prospering him, preparing him.

Then, he fled. Not in fear, but in failure. Lord, he began the first steps of uprising, of rebellion against the slavery of these pagans, and he was met with complacency, hostility even. I remember his disappointment, he who had surrendered all the pleasures of Egypt for his people, who had risked the rage of the king for them. They were dead in their hearts, or dead in their future hopes. O Lord, are they dead still?

Lord, we are a people of weakness, a people of foolishness, a people who know the harshness of slavery, but prefer the small pleasures of our acquiescence to the future joys of painful freedom. Yes, Lord, these men of equality, that is, of no greater power than us, except in the sovereignty given out by the hand of God, Lord, they are owners according to your pleasure, and Lord, your people they are dead. Lord, I am not, I know many who are not, but Lord, you have to work and stir and bring alive this people before they will even cry out to you. Lord, I am alive in my desire, alive in my hunger, but only because you have shone into my heart the glory of your promises and in your shining made alive! Lord, work in this way, bring deliverance in this way, stir in these people so that they will cry out to you, so that they will groan, offer to their hearts the future hope of you promises so that with one voice we will cry to you, in longing, hunger, desire! Lord, we are your people but you must make us your people, you must take our hearts and set them on you so that the slavery can be seen, so that we can move and work into the greater slavery, that is, the slavery to one greater then man, which is the only freedom!

Lord, we are dead in this complacency, joined to the world of pagans in the deadness of our hope, for slavery and worldly freedom are one and alike, the only choice being an internal or external master. But in life, brought alive, made alive we are free, free in our slavery, free in a master that can give freedom in our wholeness, or scope to acting according to our creation! This is freedom, O Lord, bring it to us, we long for it! I long for it, and with a greater longing long that these people also would long for it, awoken by the cruelty of this world to the promises that offer freedom from it, our freedom to be slaves to a world not yet created but promised, a world in which groaning will cease from our flesh for it will be perfectly fitted to it, this freedom according to nature, a great hope, a great future, a great master who can bring it, and a desire fitted for that which is brought! O Lord, act towards your people, first in creating and then in satisfying, the desires of our promised condition!

Aaron, mourning silently

Leviticus 10:6

Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, "Do not let your hair become unkempt, and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the LORD will be angry with the whole community.

The heart will not be silent but rages. Speak to the heart, speak to it.

Speak, silence it, instruct it, still it. The heart must be instructed, the heart must be owned, possessed.

Silent, quiet, my heart rages, my heart is silenced. Be still. Be still.

It rages forward, it rages forward, O Lord, what is a man, that he should oppose himself so?

My sons! Lord, I held them when they were born, I looked at their faces, I kissed them, carried them, fed them, helped them walk, run, my delight, my joy. Lord, these were my sons, my flesh, my wife's darlings. Lord, this was my heart, my heart, my heart that was burnt when you burned. Lord, look upon the fullness of this, these dead men were my sons.

Silence. Be silent, O heart.

Lord. I am a man, flesh. You are God, all-powerful. I will be silent before you, quiet in the fierceness of my rage, acknowledging the natural pathways of it, but not excusing them. I will be a child before you, still.

A child before you. A child before you. They were my children, my children, Lord, my heart is breaking forth again, I will be silent in choice, O Lord, subsume, subsume.

Take my heart.

Lord, those boys, those fools. O Lord, they are my children but they were fools. I have known their ways for years now, seen in them the lack of sight possessed. O heart which loves, die now in the futility of it, the weakness of it. There is love and there is love, a natural going forth of the heart towards that which it protects, and then the exalting self-giving love, a self-forgetting love. My sons were men too, men existing before God as we all do, men loved by me, but not by God, in what sense? For we know love exalts, we know love protects, this is love is it not? Would you say a mother loved her child if she tossed him into the fire? What love is there in this burning, this consuming?

Lord, Lord, we who are wise and see the paths you choose know you are a God of burning. Lord, we who have heard your voice in its power, and seen your works not just in the physical grandeur of them, but in the secret holy power in them, we are the ones who fear and know. For God is fearful, beyond control in his operations, beyond manipulations, an unbridled presence. You are a God of anger, a God who will destroy, a God who will purge one day.

But Lord, my heart's love, my sons! Who can look upon the corpse of a son burnt and not revenge himself? O heart, be silent, you stray, O heart, know and fear, know and fear!

Lord, I will be silent. I will cover my mouth. You are just.

Ah yes, justice. Justice then, unveiled here in this desert, given as a prize to us, we his people, the possession of the Law. There is no justice with no law, no punishment, but no promise either, for the word which stands behind the law stands also behind the promise. We understand so little of these things, but we know enough to say that the Law is some inseparable part of God's covenant with us, the place of contact initiated so long ago, shown in the shadow of Adam's obedience, mysterious for so many long and dark generations, but now bursting forth, the Law in its beauty, its perfection, a revealed God in action, a straightness emanating from God and dividing.

But Lord, we who see, we who see know that the beauty of the law is a beauty remote from our experience, a beauty like the beauty of a diamond, a distant beauty, a foreign beauty that is complete in itself and takes nothing into itself. Apart from us, or perhaps, to Adam, it is beautiful, flawless, and in the hope of it, it may one day provide beauty again. As a form to be molded into, it speaks of transforming beauty, but in it to us, O Lord, it is a burning.

Lord, it is an exposure. Lord, it is a terror. Lord, it is a bringer of death. Lord, in it you bring and have brought death. You have brought death here, here, to my own, my own children. Lord, the Law surely slays all alike. But my children are dead.

Fools!

Lord, I loved them. For your law in its requirements is a terror and a bringer of death (the law brings death only in relation to our performance of it, not inherently, for Adam died in the breaking of the Law, how long, O Lord, can I occupy myself with such abstractions), but Lord, it also speaks of worship. Those fools! Lord, I loved them though, these men who could not see, who forgot in their pride that all worship is obedience.

O Israel, do you think a holy God would permit himself to be worshiped in any way but according to his proscription? Are you so unaware of the natural weakness of your hearts and minds as to imagine that you could devise a method of honoring God? You who cannot even approach this throne except through the sacrifice of a high priest? Even this is a sham, not a sham, but an appointed means that signifies, for can a goat atone for the sin of a man? What proportion is there between such things?

O men, O heart, O sons, O future sons, know that the Lord is a holy God! Know that the Lord is a consuming fire, a God who has brought to us the revelation of his worship, but a God whom vile flesh approaches warily. You must come through the sacrifices, you must come through the priests. Now I sit, unmourning, silent, a mask of a man, holy in what I signify, able to represent to these unholy people the drawing near, while even my heart rages, for I am silent but my heart will not be silent.

Be silent heart.

When they swung their fire, those fools, they worshiped not the God of Abraham, but the empty vanities of their own minds, a self-worship, rules invented, as if God were altogether like them. God does not change, O men of the earth, he is the same forever, and he is approached only by sacrifice, the way appointed. Do they think their own inventions could open a door when God had once promised death for all? O fools, O my loved sons, did you not know that all men stand before the Lord condemned, that the very law we were given is meant to throw us down before him, so that in the shadow of these vain sacrifices we might see the forgiveness that is to come? But only in them, only in the means God has given, salvation is found nowhere else, and if you are not cleansed by the fire you will be consumed by it. We are nothing, vileness, filthiness, unclean in the this flesh, never cleansed so long as it persists. Cleansed in shadow, perhaps, but still possessing that which the presence of God can only consume. We are shielded from him for our own sake.

Be silent, O heart. Worship him in the discipline of your emotions. My anger is no worship, my rebellion is no worship. My submission, my obedience, these are the sacrifices of the spirit, the worship of the heart for you. Be silent heart, your sons are gone.

No resolution. I loved my sons, and they are gone. Still my heart, before the God who has both promised this way, but filled us with the terror of his wrath. He has and will show himself holy. To know him is enough, this mystery vanishing in the greater mystery of surpassing love, which could overcome this fierceness.

Be silent, be silent.

Jacob, limping out of Peniel, Pt. 4

Now comes the climax.

Laban, my father-in-law, alienated from me. I had wept when I found him, but now I moved against him, expanding my flocks at the expense of his, under the pretense of obedience and familiarity. Those years were hidden years, from the outside years of little action besides the slow accumulation of children. Hidden, I say, in that all the while my mind was in motion, my heart considering things, the God of my fathers in pursuit while I schemed. My schemes won much from Laban, slowly, carefully, taking with my secret ways what God brought.

I say pursuit, I have said it before, and I think it is an important word to consider. God is a pursuing God in the sense that where he lays his favor he acts. My life shows this plainly, being selected before birth to be over my brother, then God appearing in Bethel to assure me that he would be with me and bring me back safely to the land of my inheritance. These facts sit simply with God, facts stated by him, a certainty in him that transcends the experience of man. Man is a striving creature, a working creature, taking what he can with strength, or stealing it with deception. Men in general choose one of these two paths towards the acquisition of their wants, and in me, the circumstances of birth and inclination had made me a deceiver. This in itself is no different from thousands of men on the earth, and the same pattern will likely be repeated for infinity. There is no change for men, nothing new under the sun, except in the application of these things, which lays hold of every instrument available.

I hope these things are clear from my story, that they can be seen clearly in it. Men may seem to change according to the failure or prospering of their strength/deceptive works. But nothing can move them from these paths, for where the heart leads, man will follow, whatever path is required of him. All paths, they say, lead to destruction, meaning that no matter a man's course, he ends his days asleep in the dust. There is truth in the pragmatic grimness of this expression, for its evidence is everywhere. Men die, their works perish, all that they labor to build, or scheme to grasp, escapes eventually from their hands, even though they grip to the end. Men hope in vain for something different, those at least who can see the futility of their ways.

But pursuit! The ending of these days and ways can come by the intervention of a living principle, of a God of change and action. See that I was pursued, that the hope of my fathers was put in me by an initiating God. What was I when I was born? Conceived in sin, heir to the cursed flesh of my father Adam, of no value in the world, able to offer him nothing. And that was the pinnacle of my righteousness, for all the days of my life I have chased after the deadness of a fallen world, scheming, planning, taking, a sheen of faith upon it all! Yet to me these promises were made, over and against my unbelief, for I had no thought of them when I slept that night and saw the glory of the one who lives!

To be pursued is to be awakened, for the pursuit is also the call, a voice that summons, irresistably. When I heard that voice in that day, it was a summoning voice, a voice that brought to life that which was dead, and sat in my heart all the days of my long sojourn amongst Laban. All those days among him, in my heights and my depths, in the breaking of my heart and the shattering of my covers, the voice sat in my heart and called, called, and in my heart the resting upon it increased. Those days were pursuing days, the work of converting my soul unto him was long, but it was only as long as God needed for me, ignorant, unaware, thinking myself rested upon him when I was only incorporating him into the great schemes of my heart, the taking of what I needed.

Read the events of my life as a pursuit and you will understand! When Laban deceived me, it was God who worked through him, exposing to me the cruelty of my own heart. When I expanded my flocks at Laban's expense, it was God himself who did it. This work also shows the wisdom of God toward me (O Lord, who knows me, how perfectly did you pursue me!), allowing me to imagine my schemes successful, that somehow those strips of bark and milk were creating for me a vast flock. Lord, how patient you are with such a hard-hearted man! It was you who prospered my flock, not me, you who brought forth the speckled ones at the right time! See also that when Laban pursued me he shamed me, choosing to honor me, love me, bless me, when in my heart I was afraid and prepared to fight him.

Lord, I have known you, I have known you for a long time. When I remember all these things, from my days with Esau forward, I see the paths that you have taken with me have been perfect. But I see also the moments when I hung by a strand, when my faith was nearly broken, when you took me like a bruised reed and did not break me. Lord, all my days you have kept the wick burning, it is you who does this! Lord, what am I, to have these things done for me? Who am I that I am wanted? What have I done to deserve this? O Lord, how ugly my deceptions appear, unmasked now, uncovered, I see the heartlessness of them, the hatred of all men that is displayed there, to take what I want for myself, to own and dominate at the expense of all others, O Lord, how contrary to the self-giving, the compassion, the love, love, the great love of God, for that is what has taken me, chased me, nailed me down, overcome me! How gentle you have been with me, taking me through all things, patiently waiting for the day when you could purchase my soul for all time!

Lord, this is what you did last night, I know it, I see it. O God, you are my God now, no longer the God of my fathers, but the God of Jacob, the God of Israel (this new name, O Lord, to be a deceiver no longer!). I am yours, simply.

When I heard of Esau coming, I knew it was the end. The last time I had seen him he had sworn to kill me, and now, as I returned to my father at the command of God, he was coming. He will kill me with his four hundred men. I am powerless.

Powerless. Listen to that word, for it is the final step of this great pursuit, it is the climax of what God has done, and in doing it, he has completed it(never completed, but brought to fullness). For what remained in me, remaining still but now mastered by God, what remained in me was the pathways of the old man, the chosen ways of my deception. He who had won my affection, who I was determined to follow, who I claimed even, he saw the work that needed to be done, the work hidden deep in my heart hardened there by long experience, and so he exposed it. He took me and made me fully known, to myself and to him, and so in this burning he took my heart and made it free. Bound it was, in ways I did not recognize, ways unfamiliar to me, but which made it a slave, a slave to the necessity of its protection, a slave to its own independence, even as it hungered for dependence. O yes, I hungered for God, I desired him, but in the fear and pride of my broken heart, I could not come to him. So I had to be brought, the wrenching of the moment as painful as anything I have ever experienced, a pain I now carry in my hip as walk, limping out of Peniel.

We wrestled. He came to me as a man, he came and though he spoke no words, I knew what he wanted. He wanted in, he wanted those secret ways, and as man almost possessed I resisted. I responded instinctively, protectively, unwilling to let him take me, for though with my heart I wanted surrender, yet also in my heart there raged a terrible fear, and I saw that fear had been what drove me all the days of my life.

Fear was behind my deception, a terrible fear, a fear that grew as exposure was risked and experienced. Fear had driven me, had hidden me from all men, and though I was slowly giving myself to the one my father called his Fear, yet I knew (or he knew? We both knew in our wrestling) I could not give it up, I could not stop. I was no master of myself, whatever mastery there is an illusion. He wrestled with me, wrestled to take it, to have it, to break me down, to take my heart for himself, to own it, and my desires conflicted to, a man haunted, wanting and hating with the same tortured heart.

Who can fathom the ways of God? Could he not have overcome me in a second? But in the wisdom of his pursuit he modulated his strength perfectly, matching me so that neither of us gained the upper hand, wrestling for endless hours, all the while my heart was breaking, changing, being taken over. Then, when morning came, I still clung to him, exhausted now with a weariness I had never felt, and I felt a terrible pain in my hip. The man had touched it and it exploded with pain, popping out of place within me. Now I lay, broken, overcome, my strength failed, my emnity ended, yet still clinging to him, to God, to my maker and master, to my long pursuer.

I say I clung to him, for though he had long pursued me, now the pursuit completed and I clung to him. He had hunted me down and my opposition, having been broken, turned into something else. Now he was dear to me, sweet to me, I little understanding even what was going on in my heart, but now I clung to him, not to overcome him, but overcome and so loving. My heart subdued was no free in its offerings, seeking from this man (how did he come as a man? what shadows are there in this?) the assurance that the moment sang out to me. That long wrestle, the long contest of the night, begun fiercely but ending in my heart's love, my heart overcome and willing now. I asked him for blessing, to be blessed by the one who had taken me here and who now I had given myself to, the giving and taking mingling at some point in that long night.

See the perfection of his ways? I saw him and lived! What other moment would I have given myself to you, except in the moment where all other defenses were broken? Before I could offer myself to him, he had to first strip away all other things, all other heart-loves, and so he came to me this night, when I sit weak, going now as I am to almost certain death, but content in it now, my children already to be made into a great nation, certain also of his protection, his perfection, needing no longer to take for myself through strength or scheme what God has promised by his words. What can Esau do to the promises, or what can he do to me? I am God's now, his possession, his trophy, the prize of his long pursuit.

So I limp now, bearing in my body the reminder of my dependence, hoping now in his word, knowing that he is mine, and I am his. I have enough now to marvel all the days that remain at the depth of God's grace and the perfection of his wisdom. There is enough for me to sing of his great love for eternity! This is real, me, a man running, run down himself and taken! All this was done freely, had to be done freely, and in the observation of these things there is nothing but a redounding of praise unto God! What else can there be but this? My heart is clean before him, washed in the struggle of his pursuit, a heart for him, exposed by him and therefore a heart cleansed of fear. There is no fear in love, for love has seen all and knows all, and still takes in. God be praised forever.

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I highly recommend reading Genesis 25-33 for the context of this story. This is a profoundly personal story for me, because Jacob is a character I identify with deeply. The four parts are not designed to be read separately, but as one whole. But I wrote them in parts because it would have taken too long to write it all at once.

Jacob, limping out of Peniel, Pt. 3

There are certain memories we hold in our mind as more significant than others, for reasons we often come up with later, as if now we know who we are and can pinpoint exactly what has brought us here. This preciseness is an illusion, for the true pathways of change and transformation are mysterious. I am talking, of course, about my character, my inner man, not the twists and turns that brought me physically to Laban's tents, or the small decisions that found me laboring 14 years among his flocks and left me with two wives and 12 children. Those can be laid out simply, summarized in a few minutes, finding Laban's daughter with her sheep, indenturing myself to him out of love (lust? desire? love is a confusing word because of the self-giving it conveys, something I did not yet understand) for Rachel, his deception, the slow trickle of children, one after the other, that began to emerge, the increase of my flocks, and so forth and so on. All these events culminated in my fleeing from his presence and have brought me here where I am, limping out of Peniel having once again encountered the Fear of my father.

Such were the events of my life. But who can explain my interior life? Who can understand my own heart? Who will tell me of my transformations? Men do not so much change as harden, habits forming and exacerbating over the years the inclinations of the heart. A man is what he is, with no reason to change so long as what he wants he gets, and the slow shifting and deepening that occurs simply make furrows, deeper, deeper, until escape is nearly impossible. This is man, in himself, follower of his heart and desire, a slave to his stomach, in bondage to his flesh (meaning, that like his flesh he moves according to the apprehension of his senses, as a man draws back his hand from flame).

Transformation, what it is it? What can change a man? External circumstances? My circumstances certainly changed, from a solitary man, wandering through the wilds, to a man with two wives waiting in his tents. Children brought more change, as they are prone to do, for though I possessed the servants to care for all my children, yet each one I took for my own and spoke to. Patience is the gift that children give their parents, patience and certain calmness, like the calmness that great responsibility mixed with time can bring (indeed, this I learned was somewhat of the calmness I had sensed from my grandfather, the calmness of years and experienced goodness). But who is to say what effect these things may have on a man?

And what has wrought it? My will? Was I the master of myself, causing in myself the growth I experienced? Was it the events themselves that achieved their result, and so we are to bring glory to the lifeless operations of chance and circumstance? No, listen, listen, listen, I will tell you that if God is God than he has caused all things, and so my change is his glory, or what I experienced belongs to him, and I am displayed before all men as a reminder of his splendor, his power, his great love. I am a man, but I am loved, and if I am loved, then come, children! Experience his love, for if I am loved then surely all he has chosen are loved, and surely his love is yours for the seeking! I am here so that you may have confidence, O children of men, so that you may see that the God of this world is a pursuing God, a God of perseverance, a God of patience, unlimited. He will have you, if he wants you! And if you want him, than come, come, come for if he loved me then none are beyond him!

O Lord, you remember those days too, the days after I left Bethel, when I traveled in awe and fear, full of the memory of that night. The words still rang in my mind, your words of promise, they rang out until I met my cousin and wept on her shoulder. The weeping confused me then, surprised me even, the strength of the emotion that rushed forward. My emotions were always obscure things to me, but I had never been a man to cry, even when I wanted to, for I feared such directness, such exposure. But some constraint had been broken in that day, a change, for when I saw her I cried, I cried because she was my cousin, God had led me, his words were true and the hope of them suddenly stormed forward! Hope is a heartbreaking emotion, because it is a longing, an unknown cry, a sweet bitterness, sweet for what it holds out, but bitter in its distance. I cried for forgotten hope, hope unbidden, not known to me until it arose. The words of God are powerful.

But time passed as well, as the days flowed forward, and memory faded in the inevitable way. I hoped from that day (I now mark it thus) I met God, but the process of it was slow. I remained Jacob, the deceiver, the man compelled to protect and control myself, and though I will say that the day I saw that vision was a significant day, and though I did begin to change, yet I did not, me, in sovereignty over myself, I made no changes, but was changed. I still moved in the deception of my ways, creating the world I longed to be in, blocking out those that moved around me, sowing the seeds of discord and hatred. All lies are founded in hatred, since they conspire to observe and dominate others, and so to lie is to hate, and in my lies I yet despised the world.

Seven years my labors amongst continued, the object of my work always around me. How I longed for her, how I idolized and idealized her! She was a woman, merely, that is to say, not fit to satisfy what were really insatiable desires (insatiable desires can be set only on infinitely satisfying things). I worked for her. She moved my labor, and I did not begrudge a moment of it, in fact, I would have worked longer had Laban demanded it (this is what I mean by it seeming like only a few days, for in my longing the days seemed endless, but in comparison to what I would have agreed to, it was a small sacrifice). Such was the fixation I had on her, Rachel, a woman of beauty, grace, delicacy, intelligence. I was for her what she desired from me, a man to please and win, gathering what I needed to be what she wanted, an unknown to myself, the patterns of change working on two levels, I for her, and God in me, at cross-purposes really. Seven years is a long time, day after day, and we men of the earth are malleable creatures. The construct of my person continued always, even while the deeper work remained unseen. All I knew was that the God I had seen was becoming my love, and I worked contented in that knowledge, imagining his favor, the hope I had intermingled with the longing I had for Rachael (intermingling also with the lust I felt for her, for let us admit that contrary things are always at work in this fallen flesh).

All this crumbled swiftly on that wedding day, when I, deceived by my uncle, took for myself my great love's sister. They say that there is no self-righteousness like a liar accused when for once he speaks truth. In the same way, there is no anger like a deceiver deceived. I was deceiving those around me in countless small ways, hiding from them the angers, failings, fears, hatreds with which my inner man was torn. Yet I imagined myself quite clear of such things, and thus when I woke to find Leah there, not an undesirable woman in herself, but not mine, not my queen and love, I felt such surpassing anger that I was suddenly filled with clarity, a clarity of seeing pretense ripped through. Deception unmasked is an ugly thing, showing the nature of it as supreme self-focus, the ignoring of all other emotions, all other experiences to secure one emotion, one experience. Laban had deceived me, and never again would my deceptions have the savor the once did. The world shown for its falseness could no longer satisfy.

I say it could no longer satisfy. Whose work is this? Do we not all possess insatiable desires? All men create worlds for themselves, all of them! This is the nature of men, and in the crumbling of such worlds we say brokenness consists. But who breaks these worlds? They carry with them, of course, the seeds of their own destruction, but who can cure us of our enamoration with them? My heart is certainly no master over where it goes, going to what it wants when it wants.

And then, more so, who gave me the experience I had? Does not God rule this world? Did he not lead me to Laban? Is his sovereignty not over my long love and deception at Laban's hand? This work in me is the pursuit of God! His hand is power and guided by wisdom, though these considerations alone do not encourage the heart towards him, for the same is said of a general or conqueror. But those words he spoke, always when his power was shown it came with the reminder of his word, his love, his faithfulness, his promise. To receive the promise was to receive his love, and though for those long years I ran, to some degree or another, he pursued.

O Lord, you knew my anger in those days. You knew also the slow crushing of my hope, the slow crumbling of my world. The household was so far from what I had spend seven years constructing in my head, the woman of my heart showing herself, like my heart, full of hidden things. The fractiousness of those sisters, their rivalry, the pettiness of their quarrels, these daily broke away the layers around me. Laban and I were forever separated now by the fire of my resentment and anger. Even as my sons came forth, they provided no solution, though they were a great delight to me, yet I knew something wasn't right, something remained absent.

The pursuer was preparing his final assault.

Jacob, limping out of Peniel, Pt. 2

How can I enter again into my mind that day, O Lord? For now I see these things through the lens of my knowledge of you, gained since then, and so the events are always filtered through you, through your grace and mercy, through your pursuit and perseverance. Though at the time all seemed strange, imponderable, too weighted to consider, in reality these things were given not so that they would be understood but so that they would be remembered. In the moment we are generally poor interpreters of our own experiences, too prone to self-justification, to eager to explain away what demands to be examined and understood. Then, I had reasons (what a misuse of that word!) for all my emotions, a ready explanation for whatever affections I had, all designed so that I could swallow and accept about my deceptions, my lies, my sin (to call it what it is). This is the way of the heart, which cannot hates to act against itself. O Lord, have mercy on my descendants, those who will come from me, from what I have seen and done! Search them and know them, and make them known to themselves! What a mercy it is to see sin, to understand it for what it is, to test and examine our emotions, to even know that such a thing should be done! Take my thoughts captive, O Lord, to your self-revelation!

I fled in pride, captive to my heart but considering myself its master. I reigned in myself, but still a slave, for though I was determined still to create, yet I hoped for a newness. I, acting against myself, and therefore a slave to something besides myself, or a slave to the multiplicity of myself. O for an undivided heart, for the loveliness of purity! It was an interior contradiction, conflicting desires, one tired and longing, the other desperate and hard. Can you see the heart of a liar, can you understand it? It longs to be known but refuses to make itself known. It hungers for an intimacy it fears. Longing fuels half of it but fear the other half, and each emotion increases as the lies continue and deepen. Who knows where I would have ended if I had continued in this way? Dead at Esau's hand, or a hand like his? Perhaps moving from place to place, repeating the same pattern of increasing deception followed by exposure and flight?

But then you came to me, O Lord, you came to me, God of movement, God of activity, who called out in the garden when man hid! Lord, now I can see my past clearly and know how small was that thread that held me to you, the sliver of the promises, the rememberence of Abraham, those small desires buried deep! O Lord, they were tenuous, weak, barely comprehended by me, yet you are the God who carries, the God who will not break a bruised reed!

Night. I slept, my head upon a rock. I dreamt (or saw? Seeing unveiled, seeing deepened, for my eyes could not bear what was seen) of angels and heaven and the glory of God made known, inexpressible. To recount it is to give only an outline, like a profile on the side of a tent created by fire, for my eyes saw what cannot be seen, glory or light made into form, a glimpse of something shining through the world, showing the weakness of the world. It was akin to what I saw in the words of my grandfather, the two alike somehow, not really in any way except that they both called out to a part of me that was only brought alive in their presence. There were no words I could speak, and there seemed to be no time, not time stopped, just time not expressed. I heard the words, the words, O God, your words, which penetrated, showing truth, words that created a world as my words did, but a world real, a world to be touched and felt and experienced.

It was God who spoke. I will be with you and watch over you wherever you go. This was spoken to me. I suddenly possessed these words. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Lord, you spoke this! He to me, spoke words that could never be taken back, to me, Jacob, the deceiver, the twister and user of the same words, and in the glory of the moment I knew they were true, they were sure, they could not be retracted, that they would never be regretted because they were spoken by one who already knew all things, all futures, and by one who had already seen me, already known me, already chosen me by the mystery of his will and ways. O Lord, who can trace out your paths?

Morning. I woke, my head on the rock still. Then, I feared. Fear came first, visceral, immediate, then the reason for the fear filled my mind. The Lord was here! But my fear had a different taste than the fear I had felt in my dream, the fear that had brought me silent before the glory, before the light of his presence. The fear of the morning was a self-looking fear, the fear of a man who lies in the presence of one who knows him. God was there, and though the words he spoke were to remain with me, yes Lord, even now, even till today, yet in the morning as the light of the sun spilled upon me I thought only of escaping. If God was in that place, then he would see me, see me, and eventually he would know me for my every lie. He would see the secret shame of my soul, the secret fear, and I could not bear to be in his presence when he discovered me.

Fear moved me, though the memory of his words still echoed (let us all know that within moves conflicting principles) and I put the stone from my head as a memorial to that place, that place where I saw his glory. In the moment, then, I resolved to end my lies, to end my deceptions, to break clean with myself and others, that this new place I traveled to would be the place of the new Jacob, and that I would return to the house of God, to Bethel, to the stone there set, and that I would be his servant, and he my God, as he was to Isaac, as he was to Abraham. My God, those words never passed my lips, I owned him not, he who saw through me, for I could not abide there. This was my house of God, this place where he was, and I would leave him there, come back to reclaim him in my cleanness, if he would care for me. These were my thoughts, even as the words remained in me, the slow pursuit begun here, the pursuit of Jacob, the great love coming to take me, for take me he would, though not until I was stripped, broken, made bare.

I move ahead.