Abel, Dying

Genesis 4:10

The Lord said, “…Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”

I am dying.

Death comes. Unaware I walked, my brother at my back, walking towards the field, pain suddenly intruding, uncomprehending, for a moment stunned, fading, fallen, a strange pulsing in my ears, my eyes still open, regarding the sky, then a face, mirthless but smiling, hate-filled eyes, cold satisfaction mixed with confusion, withdrawn into himself, holding my gaze for a moment then looking away, the stone dropped.

Lord, keep my mind for you now, in this perishing, as my memories flow over and against each other collect my coherency, let me consider and think, that I may honor you even here in my death, for death is ours, death is mine and Cain’s and the world’s, an inheritance we all possess, and to die is my preparation.

Remember, O heart, in your pain, remember the lessons of death, that which death speaks to you, remember it and speak to God! O Lord, death upon me is terrifying!

O Lord, this life escapes from me, flowing out the blood which contains it, and in my dying there is helplessness, an ending, a seeming finality that I cannot stop, cannot control. Well did you curse men when you gave us death, that uncontrollable consumer, me the first of all men to experience it, for it chases us down and we cannot escape.

I remember the first time I saw it. Certainly death has been present in the earth since that day, since the day of cursing, but my parents sheltered me from it for many years, the days of my growth when in the artificiality of our household (artificial in the contrast with the wildness of what surrounded us) my parents shielded me from the chaos of the world. But they told me of it, the power of it, the inevitability of it, teaching me the lessons of the brokenness that would be mine. When my father judged the time was right I saw it, going with him to the flocks, walking with him through the hills as we guarded the ewes from that which stalked them.

Then one night, I heard the cry, strangely childlike, of the distress. My father, already awake, shook me, telling me to hurry, urging me to come with him, and we ran in the dark, guided only by our ears. When we found her, the lion still stood, a confrontation unexpected, at least by me, though my father must have known it. By the dimness of coming dawn, and the remaining brightness of the moon, the scene was gray, colorless, the blood from the ewe a darkness on unmarked white, the menace of the lion stilled for a moment, the cries ceasing, my father with his staff wary but fierce, my heart seized by a terrible fear.

So brief was this moment but its memory was still strong, for the emotion stamped it upon me, the surging of my fear, that sudden uncertainty (for fear comes only when the outcome is obscure) of safety, the lion before me a coiled danger, and I knew that I was fragile, flesh, vulnerable. O this was a newness! What did I know of mortality then, when I knew of no death, no end? But now I feared the ending of my life, my heart clung to it, for the soul knows nothing but itself, comprehends nothing but itself, and death that terrible nothing, that swallower, what is it to the ignorant man? It is fear, it is emptiness, it is an overcoming, it is terror. Non-being, a horror in its nothingness, confronts us in death, whatever scale it is on.

The lion, startled by our appearance, fled. My father bid me pick up the ewe, so I gathered the body into my arms, a motionless thing. I looked at my father and he was crying, his head bowed. What is this, I thought, what sadness, what mourning? My father’s face in the grayness of that morning was perhaps as memorable as anything else that passed, for on it was edged the deep sorrow of things lost, the death speaking to him with a clarity, that what was hinted at in my experience was to him a full story. For a long moment we remained there still, my arms cradling the deadness, my father walking in the past, remembering. Then he spoke.

He spoke of the words that had passed between him and God on that day many years ago, though not so many years really, as we reckon it now, though father said the days then were different, that they changed without changing, the way the grass grew without growing, and the animals existed together in unity (to him, these were all interconnected, though my mind struggled to see them this way). Lost in the memories, he spoke, though much of what he said was past comprehension, his words grasped and reached beyond me and into me, the world of old a mysterious place. But what emerged came out with a sufficient clarity, the tree sacramentally set forth for his obedience, the spoken word of God, this mysterious choiceness of our creation, that man in his image was choiced, and here the fruit, here the tempting, here the choice. Yes, God said, eat of it and die, and he ate.

O Lord, death is this world, death, and now I too die!

But, O Lord, (this word a beautiful word), but in the mystery of death, in the covenant you made with him, there was no provision for mercy, no extension outwards absolutely promised, no promise at all, though no guarantees in the other direction either. Why this persistence, why this broken world? That convenant spoke nothing of it, which is why my father fled from you, fled from the terror of your presence in the breaking of it, anticipating if anything that the word you spoke would come to pass. Lord, you spoke death for the breaking of it, and thus death must come, but Adam (man) yet lives, and continues, and perpetuates.

Thus in his weeping, even as he spoke of this decay, this world getting worse (did he see this new horror?), he spoke also of the promise, the promise to be waited for. This also was wrapped in shadow, in the dimness of past, but in itself clear enough to look ahead to, as all promises must be, containing that which the future holds out to us, and what can we live on if the future does not speak to us? I also am a man of the future, looking to what is ahead, that promise to be waited for, speaking of death also, containing death, shown in the robes my father was presented with, the robes that still cover over the nakedness of my parents, the robes of his shock when he saw death for the first time, death at the hands of God, this new thing, a ceasing. God did it, God spoke it, and in the promise also speaking, speaking his words as possessed not heard.

Yes, hear this world, the promise is wrapped up in death, the crushing of the head, the offspring of the woman. This world is not ours, O Cain, O Cain, why did you not tend the flocks with me, or take at least from me the gift with which to please the one under whose hand we are for these short moments endured? O Cain, you choosing your plants, your fruits, the labor of your hands, the sweat of your brow watering them, this labor a sign of the brokenness of the earth according to the word of our father, the Word once spoken, not a place to be controlled, no place to receive life from. O Cain, we cannot control this land, though in your pride you sought to, that sacrifice no sacrifice but the works offered, as if anything but his mercy would suffice, when he holds back from us the death that will come!

No, I die here Cain! I righteous in the approval of my sacrifice, learned from the one who was pleased in it, learned from the memory of my father’s robes, learned from the death all the world shudders under. You and I the same but called forth differently by this promise, you in the scowl of your works and pride, I in the brokenness of the seeing heart. I see death and mourn, but you triumph over it! Strange then that my sacrifice should be death and yours an attempt to control life. Yet in his speaking God chose mine, and you, bitter man, you broke with the power of your arm my life, and now I die.

Lord, this is the pathway of it, a sudden turn, that I, approved and loved, and he, rejected and unloved, should find ourselves here. I, tough loved, die, and he, unloved in his idolatry, is master. See this, and know that the jealous heart cries out, my blood a sign of it. For what do we make of a love that allows itself to be so trampled? Death is a mystery, but you in your dispelling power have set forth the light to guide us in it, and in this guided path I found my death! O Lord, this justice already threatened but the promise guaranteeing it, so my blood stands outside this promise, for the promise is surely a shielding promise, giving to my parents their covering when in the inadequacy of their leaves they were exposed. What shield was it to me here in this field when Cain’s hand destroyed me? Lord, I am the father of all who will trust in these promises, but what will my blood say to them? Let it cry out, then, let it cry out to you, that they may be comforted, that your promise may be a fit shield for those that like I seek in it the death shelter from the death that surrounds them, though they too die. In death, the promise shields from death, a dying man speaking justice, and a new hope for a new world, where justice lives and is, blood being my life, and the morning ever dawning.

Noah, observing the cleansed earth

Genesis 6:8

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

The waters having receded from the face of the earth, the new life growing upon it once more, the growth of life spreading from the rim of the flood region, where the dove flew, finding the olive leaves which showed to us the dimming of God's wrath against his creation, the work of his fingers, the perfection of it spoiled by the disorder of a thousand rulers, that which all creation hints at, seen in its small imperfections, manifested in disease, the war of tree against tree and animal against animal.

Consider for example, the plants of the forest. Walk amongst them and you will find on the surface a pulsing life, a variation co-existing together in a seeming harmony, one plant shading another, the animals living among them, here a fruit, there a fungus, moss in the dampness, seeds spread by the wind, a diversity of color, size, etc. This is the testimony of the eye, giving evidence on first glance of the wisdom, creativity, joy, life-giving quality of God and his works. In all God's work somewhat of his character is made manifest, from the glory and power of the wide heavens, to the consideration in the life of the smallest creature. This is the echo across creation of what God said when he made, a declaration we carry on record from the first one, the man who first experienced God and whose line possesses and passes down the promises, our progenitor Adam, who heard and told that God pronounced all things good, a pronouncement which like all God's words contains a delineating and filling truth, both in accordance with reality and itself a shaper of reality.

Thus creation is good, and indeed, the very word itself implies goodness, for the creation stems from the maker, and in this way aligns with the maker, coming forth in a line from him, in accordance with him. What is good, at least as we see it, is no more than a manifestation of his essential character, a glimpse of him, his overruling, absolute as only he is absolute, though in a certain way of thinking, relative. But this is an unhelpful thought, before which we ought to close our mouths, cover them over lest we offend him who has such marking out power, for before such an absolute, there is no comparing power, as though one could redefine the self outside of him, redefined relative to him, giving the soul power of choosing. This was the serpent's path, in truth a setting the self up against God, being God before whom we remain insignificant, small. He alone has a defining power, for he alone created, and from the creator comes all categories. Can we be but what he has made us to be? This, after all, is no more than to say that we are obeying creatures, a lower order than him who made us, thus living and existing to obey, this our worship before him. This is what we were bound to in Adam, the obedience which was laid out before him as a choosing creature.

He absolute, we obedient. This is our fulfillment, the goodness of God perhaps relative in that perverted sense, but yet this is the pathway that offers to us happiness and life, for from him flows life, this alone exposing the great dependence we live under, that he alone gives us life! Such freedom as we imagine we purchase in our disobedience is a choice perhaps, but no life and therefore a greater slavery than what men imagine a return to God would entail. Submission to our created order is the only freedom, for what God made for us, indicated in the diversity of our bodies and souls, is the joy of a free obedience, a riot of interconnection, and order beautiful, precious, that freedom which in the promise we will one day be restored unto.

What freedom is there in that self-following? Men constrained to the seeking of pleasure, having no ability to act against themselves, all the time seeking that absolute in themselves, though what cries out in this but that man was not made for it? O foolish man, would that you could not live in the weaknesses of your nature, for what we see as weaknesses are no more than what God has made, he making all things good, and thus that weakness is his doing. Take yourself as you are, O man, and live! If God is good, his creation is good, and if you exist then you are creation, for look at yourself and what surrounds you. It is all other, a thing you can in no way control, this only a weakness if God is not good, but he is good! If he is good, then live in your weakness, for it loses its weakness and simply becomes.

O men, such were the preaching I gave, to long for the promises, to repent of self-obedience, to flee from the violence, hatred, bloodshed, exploitation, emnity, sexual depravity, all that broke out from the heart of man as he went forth from Cain and the ways of unfaithfulness. O the ancient hope of Adam, broken, when he saw his son ruined, and Cain a hater! Men against men in an orgy of power, blood, brokenness! And one line, alone calling on God, clinging to the promise he gave, the head of the serpent crushed, the woman's line reversing the ancient curse, the explanation of all this pain and suffering given, to the smallest child and the oldest man. Yes this was my preaching to them, I alone, my voice rising amidst the clamor of a thousand opinions, alone in the plain, as men spread their uncleanness throughout the land. There I labored, building the ark with my sons over the long century, this ark among them as a shelter, always calling, always inviting, a voice that spoke the mercy of God amongst the chorus of his wrath and anger, for the world he had build would not for long bear under the sin of man.

Yes, and look closer, O heart, at the forest, and see, see the roots of a thousand trees entangled in a relentless struggle for the diminished water of the soil! See the strong and the weak in a hardened opposition, the weak fleeing and the strong mastering! See the diseases among them hidden but spreading! See the pain of every creature, the hunger, the violence, the world itself reflecting the horror of man's heart, a fallen creation through which sin has spread in shadow! Yes, see this and mourn, mourn that ancient evil, and mourn that your heart has brought it!

O world, what we have lost!

Righteousness, the rightness of things, this is God's to restore, to return to the earth. How will he do this? Understand the patterns which he gave me, that I may remember them and understand again what is laid out for me, what my walk is, that I may, O Lord, my your great mercy, follow the pattern of my ancestor Enoch! Remember, O heart, this great key of the saints, the rememberance of God's words like a stamp upon our soul! This is our circumcision, our seal, the words made real in the power of his presence.

I, like my father, clinging to the promise of God, watching as the world around me deteriorated in the increase of man's wickedness (increase, perhaps in the cummulative effect, though it was always the inclination of man's heart, always, everywhere, in every occurence, to follow the evil therein). Then, bursting forth in like kind to the promises (more direct in my experience of it perhaps, but no less real in what it held out), the voice of God instructing. That it was God's voice was never questioned, nor that in its instructions it must be obeyed. If the word was real, then it was to be obeyed, the two imply and complete each other, one an invisible reality and the other its external proof.

Yes, his voice came and by faith in its reality, I build the ark, though we were far from any water. But, it must be said, the apparent likelihood of the fulfillment was hardly a factor, for whether we were close to water or far is only a consideration if we are thinking of things according the relativity of man's power, as if we should prepare for battle against such and such because of his nearness and likelihood of attacking us. But God is God, his word an absolute that stands apart from likelihoods. There were no other considerations except that he said he would do it. So we build the ark.

But look deeper and remember the promise, O son of Adam, O Noah! There in this world of sin we stood and believed in the words of God. There we heard of the coming day, the day when God would flood our world with his cleansing water, with it wiping all life from the face of the earth. There we trembled, my sons and I, before the power of God and with one voice called out to the men of the world to save themselves! There held out to us was the salvific promise of God, that ark, that refuge, that great shelter into which we fled as the day came, the shelter our faith ushered us into, not meritoriously, as if in hearing of God's salvation we had earned it! No, we fled into those doors, my sons and I, huddled before him, saved from the wrath of God as the world was remade.

We came forth, O maker, to a new world, a world cleansed, but in shadow only, a world representative in its newness but of no actual newness, for the waters that spread over it were simply waters, containing also in their essence the spread of sin, and thus of no ultimate value. No, the power of something greater is needed to renew us here, and as life grow it will remain in the patterns we have long seen, the competition, the brutality, the strong and weak opposed, the blood of men once more to spill out into it. There the rainbow, that new promise of his grace as a mediation of all his actions to us, that he will bear up under the sin of man until the promise is fulfilled, this adds even to the promise a new dimension, a new depth that my sons will pass onward as we wait.

O new earth, you are new in the hope of your arrival each day! You are new in the renewal of the promises to you this day! You are new in the reminder of the cleansing presence of God, that renewal of the reality of your power, which will sit with man in this record and memory, that he may be restrained! O filter through the mythologies of every man this anger, this wrath, that in their error they may yet be restrained, letting the echo of it fill the earth and call men back, call them back, that earth though it shudders may endure until you bring forth your promise from it, and in this renew it, for the promise is for the curse that shudders everywhere in her! And I, Noah, will worship you here for the mercy and grace of your promise, the sacrament of the rainbow before me, passing onto my sons both the memories of this great cleansing, and the mercy of the God who preserves all those that he chooses, a people who posses this promise, awaiting the fulfillment that is to come.

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Genesis 6-9
Noah is called a "preacher of righteousness" in II Peter 2

David, aware now of his dead son

John Donne:

Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

II Samuel 12:20

Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped.

My soul is quiet before you, the quietness of an honest mourning. There is a peacefulness in my heart, the peace of an assured forgiveness, the peace of rest in God. I stand before him here in the temple, worshipping, a man made known to himself, a man with new light, but the light shines from the one who also looks, an examination from one who already knows what he examines. I am here, silent in the humility of this new depth to my heart, but at peace for the one who exposed it knew it already when he chose me that day long ago, when Samuel poured the oil over my head and his Spirit filled me. He is still mine, for he owns me, though his owning is a hard thing.

O heart, examine and know yourself! This new placidity is for your subjugation, that rebellious center revealed, brought forth as the hand of God lifted itself off me for a moment, and the dark ways were shown.

There were days in my youth when God made every moment alive, when as I tended the flocks his presence brought a joy I could touch and feel, a transporting joy that shattered the youthful hardness of my heart, that old rebel, the betrayer was captured by God, and I sang and made music to the Lord! My singing was a new song, a song with words but beyond words, or rather, the words invested with a power that revealed the deeper truths, the actualities. Yes, I sang, my heart aflame with love for him, a sincere love, an exalting love, and he was my all. What foundations did you lay in me as I tarried in the fields, O wise God? What pathways did you clear to your heart as I sang and worshiped? The very nearness of you was like a stamp on my soul, or rather, like the glory of upon the face of Moses, a shining that faded only slowly, renewed as it was day-by-day in my approaches to him.

Then, O sustainer, O refuge, O shield, the days of my fleeing, when sometimes I seemed abandoned by God, when I cried out like a spurned lover, when denied you were denied me and my heart beat with love for you, for the distance made my memories stronger, increasing my desire like salt to a thirsty man. In your denial, O Lord, you were strangely present, for there was no forgetfulness in those days. No, I daily cried to you, and the moments in which you came were like lamps in the night, like the streams of the Negev, sharpening my thirst, increasing it, satisfying it. O my heart still beat for you, you drawer of men, you fierce one, for it was shown another part of itself in those days. You were joy, and you were desire.

O Lord, then, then, how great was my joy in the victories you gave! You did not withhold the request of my lips, but gave me victory, glory, a crown of pure gold, a throne, a promise, the ark of your presence, the sword, all these things from your hand came to your anointed one! Then surpassing them all, the glory of the great promise, my son to be my Lord, him to rule forever, I under him unlike the pattern of sons and fathers, this a mystery, but glorious in its mysteriousness, set on top of all the promises our people possess, it gave me that great psalm, the inspiration of your Spirit moving my tongue as it burst forth from me, that he would be the priest-king, the great one, the eternal one, like Melchizedek!

I sat in my palace that day, having come from the house of God, the reflected glory of the Lord still full upon my soul, a joy surpassing, seemingly unceasing, joy and desire met in the fullness of his presence, promises, mercy, it was all mine!

Then, it faded.

What darkness came upon me? What obscured him from me? It was not like his withdrawals, of which I was familiar, that universal experience of his people when he sharpens their desire through an awareness of his value. This was...different, its motions hidden from me, like when the over-sated stomach loses the tang of food, eating to eat or drinking to drink. This was not a reversal of the pathways of my affections, but a slow ebbing of them, their disappearance, even as in my manner and conduct I retained a seeming normalcy. My worship continued, my life went by as usual, my friends were my friends, I ate, I drank, I slept. But something was missing.

O God, I should have cried out to you then, for though you did not seem distant you were further away than you had ever been in former days! O God, my wanting of you had never vanished, and in my pride I never imagined that it could, I never knew that what had always been consistent was constantly maintained in me by you! O God, I perhaps wanted to want, sometimes frustrated by my lack of desire, but I thought that this was the normal way of our interaction, a gradual comfort once victory was claimed, in reality a base complacency, a forgetting, a contra-choosing! O mourn, heart, mourn the sin in you!

O yes, this was sin. This was the wickedness of my heart, that which had lurked all the days of my life, from the joys of my experiences, to the longings of his absences, to the exultations of my victories, always my heart was wicked, crafty, watching in wait like a lion under cover, watching in secret to catch his victim, and drag him away in his net. Undead sin, left alive by the unwatchful heart, the assuming heart, the foolish man who considered his donated desire his own, though its true owner could retract it as he would.

Time passed. The spring came and I stayed home from the battles, leaving Joab to fight them in my stead. I, who had always fought the enemies of God with the zeal of one jealous for his glory, who had charged up the hill against the giant, instead I sat on the roof of my palaces, satiated by what lawful desires I was afforded. I looked upon her. I desired her. I took her.

There is more in the recalling than that simple recitation of facts, for much business occurred in my heart as the decision was being made. It was a turmoil, my heart both rebelling and recoiling from it, but my desire hung heavy around me like a mist, and made all things confusing. To dispel would have taken a mere moment, shining into it the light of his law, the law about which I once wrote, "The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes." But there was no desire to dispel them, for I hid in them, and though I see that God held me even as he loosed me, it was I who brought the mist in, it was I whose watchlessness left open the gates of my heart, who staggered towards the pit in my path with an empty mindlessness, overcoming my objections not with answers but with a suppression, an internal shouting down that simply led me to sin willfully, I who once said "Keep your servant also from willful sins, may they not rule over me."

Willful sins rule over us, they are our masters, for in our choosing we are slaves, slaves. There is no freedom in rebellion, all darkness blinds, and the flesh once given room will take all. One sin led to another. I, David, I am now an adulterer, a murderer, a liar, and a thief. This I was in my heart, now I am that to all, having taken, I can never give back. But above all of it there was an empty buzz, a forgetfulness, a sunkenness. There I was, in the miry pit, as I had long cried out from. But now I was poured out like mud, lifeless, existing merely, worshiping in the same outward way, but a hidden man. I was dead in my desire, but I didn't know it.

O Lord, what mercy you showed me! For there I would have continued, my desire for all time subsumed by what can be seen and touched, my former joy a forgotten thing, dim with the memories of my past, a man under the shroud, helpless in his emptiness. What we are unaware of we cannot fight, and this shows the grace that God gifts to us far beyond what we can imagine in our weakness, this grace of seeing and fighting, the grace of calling and crying, the grace of knowing our distance from him, knowing even the offense we have done. For though I knew my sin, it was the half-knowing that stayed in my reason, the propositional fact of it admitted and squirmed under, but it did not make me gasp.

Then, rushing in, it came, the words of Nathan like a hammer, breaking, destroying, throwing down, and suddenly there was nothing but my sin before God, that waking that comes, like a man half-asleep who snaps into a fuller consciousness from the shock of a loud voice. It was like light, but not the gentle light of a lamp, no, the searing, merciless light of the summer noon. I had known it, but now it was before God, his awareness of it so terrible that I could only admit it, I could say nothing else, for there was nothing else to say. This was a glimpse of all men before God, for surely all will be one day exposed, they are exposed now, it only rests to bring it into their present awareness, and to brought in it now, in this life, not to be destroyed but to be given mercy? O Lord, this is fodder for the rest of my days, for here is a new sight, a new understanding, given when I thought all was understood, all known, all experienced. No, David! There are new depths to be seen, new depths of mercy and grace, each exposure magnifying it!

So now I sit in the temple, worshiping. I will never gain back what my soul has lost in these sins. This is real loss, a real mourning that flows naturally from my deeds. All men face such reckonings, and it is a principal part of the joy of wisdom that such things are avoided. So my son is dead, and though I will see him one day, he will not come back to me. This is a sadness, and my heart mourns it.

What do I do now, Lord? I have learned of myself. I have seen secret things that shock me, a heart once so strong for God, now revealed as impure, selfish, violent. It was always so, but now I see it. O Lord, there is a terrible fear, a trembling fear, that you will one day remove the hedge around me again, and I will fall. O Lord, preserve me!

O God, the humble heart is aware of its weaknesses. The humble heart sees as grace every holy action, every holy desire. The humble heart claims nothing for itself, but returns all to you. The humble heart is dependent in everything, O maker, everything! Lord, if you turn a deaf ear to me, I will be overcome!

O Lord, you are the one who makes his dwelling among the humble. Then, if my heart is humble, you will always dwell with me. You who makes the heart humble, make mine so! For in the worship, I am again flooded with the sense of your presence, your goodness, your grace, the assured faithfulness of your covenant, that you preserved me here, bound me up in your word and saved me, though all of it is yours! O God, I see my heart in the light of your examination, I see the terrible weakness of it, and Lord, I hate it, I hate this flesh, this sin, these dangers, this sojourn is already too long, and dangers crowd around me. O God, preserve me, this poor man, take me as you have always done, restoring the joys of my salvation, granting me also a willing spirit that will sustain me til the end.

And now, let me teach transgressors your ways! O Lord, my heart though humble now, is a heart yet and I doubt it. Men of Israel, do the same! You are never beyond any sin, any falling, even the ones that in your pride you would scoff at. The weakness is in you, it is your inheritance, and unless God sustains you, you will fall. So come before him, worship and plead with him, roll your whole soul upon him, and he will carry you. His grace will come and you will be at peace.

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Many psalms are referenced.
The story is 2 Samuel 11-12

Caleb, tearing his clothes

Numbers 14:24

But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.

O Lord, this sojourn almost over!

O Lord, the goodness of the land glimpsed!

O Lord, this tantalizing vision experienced, me in the land, walking it in the joy of anticipated possession!

Lord, this promise, this promise, this has been my feast for years, living and breathing in the promise with the hope of things to come. I have made a life upon it, sustained in the long years when we cried out in Egypt. How many times was I mocked, even among my own people, for making the promise my desire? How often was I told of the emptiness of it, the foolishness of hoping for impossible things, the dead words heard by one of our fathers. How much better to make our lots here bearable, to improve the conditions in which we labored, to dissipate amongst the Egyptians, to join with them in the society they were building, and thus to honor our God amongst their gods through the glory of man's works. This was the pragmatist voice, supposedly, the voice of the self-described practical man, that at the very least we should drop the noxious idea of our cultural peculiarity and superiority, that vexing thing to our masters. The thought of escape seemed distant, even as the burden of slavery grew and grew. In such circumstances, men could either abandon their hope, or cry out, or convert over the life of their faith. Some gave in, the overseers amongst us, what some men made of Moses before he showed himself. Others gave up what hope they had, rebelling emptily, dying in the cynicism and brokenness of true despair. But we, we lions, we cried out.

There next to the bones of Joseph we cried out. There in our slavery we cried out. There the promises were as real to us as they ever have been. There the compassion of God was made known, the compassion of moments and days, hope born again and again as we cried, in the crying strengthened, for he would come, and we knew beyond knowing that what he spoke was true, the words of it coming to our hearts as they did to Abraham's. We possessed the promises and in our mind they were framed real.

Ah faith, that magnificent thing, how dear you are to the hungry heart, both satisfying it and nurturing the hunger, increasing it! O faith, in its nature it brings close distant things, so that I stand as close now to the promises as Abraham once did, for the power behind them neither waxes nor wanes, a steadiness that makes the fulfillment as sure if it were still a thousand years distant!

But now, does closeness increase the trust? For I have walked in the fulfillment of the promises, I have seen them and tasted the fruits of them. O they are there, the goodness of the land a real thing. We walked it, examined its dimensions, testing the claims of the God who promised it. O God, did my heart ever doubt the truth of your word? Did I ever question that the land would be what you said it would be? No, no, never Lord! This heart is a steady heart, a heart that is all for you, that beats and burns with only one love!

Lord, I will have no other master!

This is my heart, from the beginning, a heart for you.

But Lord...

[for a moment, he can hardly think]

Lord, I am here on the cusp, on the bring, on the edge, the thing promised here, here, Lord, I am here and I saw it, and it was mine for a moment, it was ours, Joshua and I seeing its spaces and hunger was brought to the pitch that they call fulfillment, as it was lifted into itself, O Lord, I was there, it was mine, and now, these people, O Lord, give them...

Lord, take away their wicked hearts, Lord, forgive and overwhelm them, Lord, do not destroy us! Lord, what can I say that will appease you, O Lord, my mouth is shut before you though my heart rushes forward...

Lord...

[he rips his robe]

Hold them back, O master of hearts!

Lord, I know that my heart is not special in itself! Lord, that I can see and hear is not mine to possess! O Lord, I stand before the promises like every man, their content the same, spoken to each man alike, yet for me to hear them is no act of my will, no choice that I took, for I was compelled into my cries, my heart taken not given, though given once taken, and I have no claim on the joy that such a sight brings!

Lord, you can do this! Lord, you can do all things! Lord, you took us through the Red Sea, destroying the Egyptians behind us, feeding us from the sky and guiding us by the fire and smoke! Lord, this is your power, over all created things, and my heart is no less created than anything else! Lord, then, take them, take them, restrain them, hold them back, O Lord, I can taste the promises and my heart longs for them!

How many times must I repeat this prayer before the quality of my heart has been shown to me? Lord, fulfill your promises and give us this land! Lord, I long for it! I know it is a shadow only, for who doesn't know this when he sees his body decay before him, knowing that a blessing from an eternal one must be eternal and that the promises we have been given are our blessing according to the word given to Abraham, and that the land stands for the substance which is ours as well, they that can see and hold, a more real place as the promises are more real than the words of men!

Lord, these men are fools, fools, no fear of God is in them, and foolishness is weakness opposing strength, a wrong and irrational estimation of things, and they who oppose you have even seen you in the fire, have watched as you consumed Nadab and Abihu, as you destroyed the firstborn of Egypt, as your plague burned among us, as you killed with your snakes, with your fire, O Lord, how can they see such things and still oppose you! O the obstinancy of the hardened heart! I have seen and trembled, but they have seen and boldly oppose!

O Lord, I long as my heart, in the mercy of longing, and if I have to ask again and again and again I will, for all my heart is for the great future, and I want nothing from this world, I will not be denied you, for I already possess you.

Lord, they choose the slavery of Egypt over you! Lord, they shake before men of the Earth (what matters the power of even the mightiest men before him who reigns?)! Lord, they humble themselves before flesh and stand proud in front of you! Lord, they harden their hearts and close their ears!

Bound we are, bound by the Words of God, bound by the constrains of what he says. These boundaries are not like the chains of Egypt, that which mediated all our actions through the pain and pleasure of our flesh. No, these bounds give us a scope to act, a power of motion that is the treasure of those who can see them. For if God has promised us this land, than we are bound to enter it, but there is a fearlessness in such an entrance, a fearlessness that the heart leaps to life in front of.

Their bodies will drop, empty and dead in the desert. Lord, but preserve the people, preserve them, preserve me! Preserve your promises, your word, the only hope of this broken world, the promises that give land to the landless, the promises that penetrate deeper to the blessing, the deep blessing, that which makes living so I come, drawn by the goodness of it into a complete heart, a heart for him, a heart that cries out in all things, always fixed, always centered, always set where the life comes forth, from God, from his hand, in his words we live and breathe and have our being, and this life of faith, this spiritual life, glimpsed in the shadow of the goodness of the land, it will be the preserved hope always of my heart and those akin to me, my people, your people, O Lord, sustain us that we may bring forth the life of this promise, punish and purge us, that you may succor for all time the people by this terrible warning, and I, my name bright by the glory shining it, may one day walk here, one day take it all for myself, possessing and owning it as only the promises can deliver! My heart cries out and will not cease!

Abraham, on Mount Moriah

John Owen:

The peculiar specifical nature of faith, whereby it is differenced from all other powers, acts, and graces in the mind, lies in this, that it makes a life on things invisible.

Genesis 22:1

Some time later God tested Abraham.

This is the foreboding, the waiting, the long gap between promise and consummation. Here the victory lies, here the sight of things invisible is made known, and what man is made of, his heart's treasure, exposed and made known to him.

O Lord, with what surfeit of emotion do I tremble before you! This is spoken by an old man, a man of age and wisdom, familiar with waiting, with deferring, with putting off the hope of the years, not that it makes the promises dim for me, for in some mysterious way the waiting has made them brighter. Or perhaps it is my eyes that are sharpened, for the years have made me more yours, more set apart from those amidst I wander, even in the failings of my flesh my heart has been brought forth more fixed, more steady, more ready to suffer for what will be gained, that future thing, seen in its outline but not yet discernible.

Not that the fixedness of my heart has evened out my emotions, nor made the arc of them less extreme. It seems this changeableness, this mutability is a mark of my nature, and the waiting does not destroy it. I am sometimes high in the joy of your presence, happy with the surpassing happiness of a grasped possession, for in such moments what is mine in fact becomes so real that I taste and feel and see it. This is the exquisite joy of my belief, to be presented with invisible things, a spiritual joy that sustains. For I fall too, dark times of terrible doubt, when the sand and dust are all that is real, when the flame of my joy runs low, a dim light amidst the darkness of the idolatry of the land. But here in these darknesses there is a persistent presence, God's voice recalled, his promises known and seen, and though my emotional experience of them varies, yet they are there, real, objective, a rock in the river of my affections, or to alter the metaphor, like the ark amidst the floodwaters, a refuge in the storm. It is there, it is real, and as I wait, it only grows more real.

Then also, those great confirmations, the speaking times when I heard his voice! His presence with me in my victories, as I rescued Lot and defeated the kings, when he represented himself to me as the priest-king (this man, a real man, make no mistake, but his presence like a glimpse of the promise, and I in shadow gave him the tenth, for it was his), when he destroyed the cities as he said he would, then finally, the birth, the bringing forth, the new life I held, Isaac, my son, my dear son whom I love, my flesh, the great sign of God's power and love and mercy and promise.

O God, you who knit together necessary things with your great gift, love that uniting force, that binding thing that makes all interaction a joy for those who possess his favor, who breaks us in our actings of love, bringing to humility joy, to lowliness a surpassing exaltation, who gave the promises through your love, making its fulfillment the very son whom I love, do you ask too much from me?

O heart be still, be still. Lord, you made love that the joy of all may increase, for love is joy amongst diversity, the joy of difference and other, and my love for my son is a love indeed, true in its actings, though imperfect as the heart from which it flows is imperfect. Lord, I love him.

Reason with me, God, speak with me now, for my mind and heart tremble and shake. I was told that I would have a son. Yes, God, you spoke this to me, and I believed it, for the speaking voice would not be denied, and you overpowered all that would resist, from reason on downward, or rather, that a higher reason was gifted to me in your voice, for to be aware of your power is no unreasonable thing. I believed it, though my body was as good as dead, and Sarah's womb long since dead, a hope that we had left behind some thirty years previous. This was a hope against hope, though a rational hope nonetheless, and you who cannot be resisted brought the fulfillment. It was a tree of life in our household, Isaac the joy of his mother, the pride and great delight of his father, a long deferred hope at last fulfilled, and YOU proven, you shown in your power, your goodness, your great love.

But Lord, it is more than that, is it not, this son of mine? Is he not part of the greater hope and motions of the promises, the motivating idea of my fathers, all the way back to Adam himself? Is it not the continuation of your work from the beginning, him on who the trustworthiness of God is pinned, the one from whom you are to bring forth a seed who will crush the serpent's head? We know this promise too, though upon it (not a new promise, but a fuller picture of the old) we have placed the renewal of it which I received, meaning that connected to the crushing is the blessing of every nation, a family from me that will be blessed, meaning if anything, that good will be done to them, the highest good, the reversal of all evil which is the hope of every generation. Newness! Life! An end to the groaning of the earth! Yes, in Isaac is bound more than the small joys of our happy family. Lord, here is where your glory is hung! Here your Word speaks and what is brought forth we all hope in, we all surrender too!

O Lord, but it is my agony too, in the midst of all this. It is my love which cries forth in my heart when I consider it. To take and kill my own son! What cruelty is it to ask such a thing? Lord, you have never shown yourself false to me, and so I break down such thoughts in the fire of your Spirit's work, but nonetheless, what I see is death, breaking, love destroyed and burnt out, an end to all hope, and my flesh's return to dust. This is Isaac's death, for me as the shadow, a father's love crushed as all those who hope also, past and future, must be crushed in truth.

So it seems to me. O Lord, forgive my poor sight. I am no God, no maker, no Lord of men, none but a servant, a wanderer, one resolved to wait, to fix the disciplined heart on the lowly paths. God is God. I am a man. This alone is enough for me, for though I cannot see those invisible things, I can act upon the word of them, I can make my life upon them, for in his words they become real things, though my eyes and mind know them not. Do you trust the Lord? It seems the question comes down to this. Do I trust that he will not break his promise to me? Do I trust that he is good, even in the crushing and killing of all that my heart loves? Do I see his power beyond my understanding?

I believe that God can raise the dead.

O Lord, I believe it, I do, my heart does, though I know my hand will tremble and shrink back once the knife is in it! For O, I still see so imperfectly, my trust is still so fragile. I will act, I will, O Lord, I will do as you say, but God be merciful to me! Take me, take me, take me, that I may act in obedience, that the heart may act against itself and in this way be cleansed.

O God, command me, instruct me. I am resolved to obedience. This has been my path since you first spoke, the long days of waiting filled with the joy that obedience brings. I know, I feel the faint stirrings, I sense in the invisible realities, that this obedience will bring joy, for each moment of obedience is a worship, worship that draws me nearer to him, nearer to the one for whom all this waiting is designed, and though a certain burning brings pain to it, it will make sweeter everything. Isaac, I will not possess him in disobedience, for then I possess him not to love but to control. God must have him, I must love him as I must love all things, for God to take and give as he will, as he has done. Lord, this is the discipline of my heart, to love according to your decree, to give and receive according to your hand, to enjoy to the fullest what is your gift, to hate and turn from all that opposes you. Isaac, I love him. He is yours, for my love is sweet when it is mine, and I will not see it changed. Take him Lord, through the giving you requested, a sacrifice of the promised one, a shadow, a hope, a love made pure. These are yours, as are all things.

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Genesis 22
Romans 4
Hebrews 11
Galatians 3

The John Own excerpt is from his commentary on Hebrews.

Self-examination

Listen, listen, all you who profess the name of Christ, I must question you!

Brace yourself, that I may question you, and open yourself up to answer.

Be honest and open, for there is one who peers into your heart, before whom you cannot but be honest whatever you say to yourself or to anyone else will pass to the ground. This is what you must seek, to align the secret paths of your word with your consciousness, to know yourself, to examine yourself and thus know what lies in the dark depths.

Tell me, then, professor, do you long for Christ to return?

Do you?

Search that heart, does joy spring up in it when you contemplate the return of Christ? Do you hunger for it? Is there a physical intensity to it?

You know, I'm sure, that the return of Christ is coming? That the Word of God, which has never failed and will never fail, states again and again that we followers of Christ live and sojourn now in the great gathering, the great bringing together of the sheep, that time that precedes and in all things looks to the great return, the day when we look up and see riding on the clouds the one for whom our soul was remade?

Do you believe that in your redemption you were truly remade, reworked, given a new heart and mind, a mind equipped to understand the word by the power of the Holy Spirit, and a heart designed to long after the things of God? That therefore in an essential way in your redemption you were made to long after Christ?

Have you read the Psalms and the intensity of David's longing as he cried out to God?

Do you recognize this pattern, the great pattern of all God's saints, that they are denied him though the long for him and that therefore they cry out?

Does your flesh cry out as all created things do for the return? For this is what the very ground does beneath, longing for the day when the sons of God will be revealed, when we will be remade?

What affections then, are left for the sorry things of this world? If your heart does not thrill, and listen my children, listen, there is no use pretending or playing, no, these is too serious a matter for play-acting to come in, for no one is impressed with you! Search your heart and bring to the fore your real emotions, for there is nothing fake before the presence of God, all that is false is burned away in the fire of his holiness! No, if your heart does not thrill, then ask it and ask yourself why.

Why do you not long for the one to whom you have professed such dear love?

Why is it that you do not long to see him return, though in your words and life you claim otherwise?

Where is your affection for him? Where has it gone?

Is your heart set on this poor world? When you think of the future, do thoughts of your earthly hopes and dreams crowd out what in truth should sit enthroned? And ask again, do you push aside all holy things to set before your mind the vanities of this world?

Listen, my children, listen, for these are the things of God and we must handle them with care lest we be consumed like the sons of Aaron. Do you claim his name as did Ananias and Sapphira yet present only a part of your affections onto him? Do you pretend in your obedience like Achan while holding back the wedge of gold that sits in your affections?

Ask yourself these things, please, please, please, for these are the matters of your eternal soul and Christ himself said that not everyone who said that not everyone who says to him 'Lord, Lord' will enter his presence finally. O I love you, I love you, and so I plead with you, treasure Christ, if he is not your dearest hope and delight than come to him in repentance and seek forgiveness.

Our hearts are imperfect, our longings mixed, and while we are in this flesh we will find ourselves struggling and striving against such things. But think on Christ, search your hearts, and long with me for his return! He is coming, and if you do not desire it above all else, then you will have no part in him when he arrives!

Jonathan, reflecting on his friendship with David

I Samuel 18:1

After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself

O Lord, how imperfect is the loving heart! The more it loves, the more it sees the weakness of its love.

O love, love, how weak you are in this heart of mine, how dim your motions, how dependent your actions, how low your motivations! O love, give to me your fullness, for in your fullness I disappear, though happy and complete! Self-forgetfulness is the sweetest emotion!

David by all rational considerations should be my enemy, and so it is whispered throughout the household of my father that we both play each other false, that the professed and much remarked on love we share is no more than a carefully manufactured front, a calculated machination, a deceiving maneuver designed to confuse each other while in competition we make our alliances, each pursuing for his own ends the throne that has been promised to David when my father dies. Our friendship a veneer upon ambitious hearts, perhaps on some level sincere, but at the bottom a temporary convenience, a scattering of dust in my opponent's eyes. The root of our supposed rivalry is my loss, the supplantation of the scepter from the rightful (in the eyes of the world, no more!) inheritor to the youngest of eight sons. This is how it looks, David from a semi-obscure clan (and shepherd when anointed! the people often scoff at this, forgetting my father's origins as a donkey wrangler) an upstart driven to prominence by his heroic exploits against the Philistines, Jonathan the royal son, the deserved owner, heroic in my own right but not acclaimed by the people. I know that the gossips love to talk about our approaching emnity, the day when Saul dies and the two rivals grasp for the throne, like men of the world, as if this were any other kingdom, and the throne any other throne!

No, this is foolishness, spoken only by foolish men, men who cannot penetrate and know the power of God. He, after all, chose David, even as he did my father, sending the holy man Samuel to anoint his head and proclaim him king. This is the decree of God, spoken through his prophet, as he decrees all things. A word, a spoken word by God himself, declaring and decreeing: "This man will be king," the oil pouring down his head symbolizing the glorious presence of the Spirit in him, the Spirit of God which enables men to rule. This is the pattern, once done for my father, though the Spirit has long abandoned him, never dwelling with him, even then just coming upon him for a few moments, those brief days of his glory when he prophesied and by God's power struck down our enemies. Those days are over, my father's power gone, and now he coasts on the memories in his own mind and in the people's. He cowers and blusters alternately, according to his perception of his power, hiding when weak and strutting when strong. It is pathetic to watch.

I love my father. I cannot but love him. But this love makes no unreasonable claim on me. I will obey him as king, as father, as the created order demands that I do. But if he sets himself up against the God of heaven, he will not find me at his side, for no man can oppose God and live.

I must submit my heart to God, and where my heart goes, so goes my conversation. Were David the most odious man in Israel, he and I opposed in spirits from natural differences, were he hated by me in bitterness, yet even then I must submit my heart to what God has done, for God has done it. Need there be any other reason but that God has done it? This is easy at times and hard at others, but it is as it is. Let God's word stand, and you may stand with it.

Remember, heart, remember when you ventured on God that day when my father hid! O heart, thrill to it, the memory of fighting in his power! O to live through and for him is a great gift, and in his power I am as I should be. This will ever be my glory, charging that hill with my shield-bearer, carried up by the Spirit-given confidence in God's power, the sudden realization that God could save whether by many or by few. My heart owns that day, that moment, and it cannot be taken from me.

This memory, in its positive manifestation fuels my consideration of God in his negative manifestation. Alike but opposite, for the God that struck down the Philistines with my sword can also strike me down by David's sword. This is fear, a lower emotion, a motivation that is neutral with regard to David himself, considering as it does only God, not the one God defends. Thus it is also my joy that the one God defends is also one my heart springs up to defend, the one for whom my sword will ever move, the one to whom my whole self submits, for though I would submit to him as an ordered act (meaning, that in my submission to God himself I also submit to the one his hand places over me), God has given grace, a surpassing grace, to unite also my heart to the one to whom I submit, making it a joy.

David is my friend.

Friendship, that unique gift, that beautiful thing, reveals to us that God is a God of comfort, that God is a God of good pleasure and happiness. For what is more pleasing than a friend? Men can interact with each other as they choose, in kindness, patience, cheerfulness, but in the sudden mystery of two hearts, there are unnoticed connections, congealing into a whole that is greater than its parts, a joy that exceeds what the rational mind would expect, both a joy and an enjoyment. Friendship delights not only in the object but in the delight itself, celebrating itself even as it celebrates each party. For I love David, but I also love our love.

What can I say about the man? We enjoy one another's company. When I am with him, I feel safety and joy, that I can share all with him without fear of reprisal, without fear of it being leveraged against me (so opposite from what the slanderers make of us!). I return this also to him, hearing of his secret sins and fears, the distresses of his position in its awkwardness. Because I have surrendered my heart to his kingship, serving him indeed as king now, for he is king before the Lord and I also stand before the Lord, because of this yielding we have peace and trust, a trust that moves beyond our situation, transcending it for it gives us a glimpse of each other's hearts. What God gives, he gives, and we possess his gift, this friendship, unexplainable, though a mystery contained, that is identified as a mystery and known in its reaches.

In parts, examine it. First, there is a mutual direction, a shared goal. Friendships can be summed up by this, though this is not friendship in truth. Second, there is time spent, certainly acknowledged as a essential part of friendship! Third, hilarity and laughter, that marking of all friendships, the causing of joy in one another. What is mutual laughter? The spilling out of joy taken in one another? It is hard to define, but friends share this. Fourth, a persistence, a moving through, a determination towards a person. No friendship is properly known until it has been tried, until something has examined it. Fifth, something.

Yes, an ineffable something. Can you define it, even as you recognize it? I will define it, though in its definition it will perhaps grow more mysterious, not less. It is a motion of God's Spirit that makes our spirits one. This is friendship, a oneness that is almost unbreakable, that rests in the spirit of each man but is nurtured by their actions, their choices. Why does God cause this in us? There is no necessity to it, no requirement. Yes, we live in community, one with another, banding together for mutual protection, the providing of strength where others are weak in an exchange that makes the whole people stronger. But friendship goes quite beyond this to endue such strengthenings with an unexplainable joy, to give us these heart connections that exalt and magnify our shared paths. For in friendship we walk together, a necessary action, but it is unnecessary that the walking should also be a joy. What grace is displayed here! What surpassing compassion! God reveals himself to us in our friendships as a God of compassion, even as he revealed himself to Moses and to our beloved ancestors!

But we are men yet. Friendship, even at its most profound, can be broken, destroyed, the gift of God swept away. Friendship can grow cold, distant, a joy lost, a pleasure forsaken when the self is remembered, when in the midst of its self-forgetting joys we are ambushed by a sudden sense of our selves, a sudden reminder that this is two in one, and that in each moment to be one requires a forsaking of something.

This is how it is in this poor world, in all things. To gain greater joys we must forsake the lessers, and friendship is no different. O to be king! I won't deny that my heart desires it. Nor that as David reveals himself to me, the thought comes unbidden that I deserve it. Then also, to see him in the fullness of his adulation, when the crowds acclaimed him as greater than Saul, in those moments my heart betrayed me in the pettiness of jealousy, for all men desire the praise of the people, and I am a man after all! No perfection, no flawless selflessness yet in this poor flesh. I see and desire, the longings of my undisciplined heart occasionally breaking forth into unlawful emotions, and hatred lurks beneath my love, always.

Therefore, I will walk in the chosen actions of love, the deliberate choices of self-giving, the discipline of it like a fasting, even as I nurture our friendship and fan the flames of my love for him. He is my friend, one for whom I will give all, to whom I have already given all. He will be king and I will pass into obscurity, serving him according to all his needs, making him greater and myself less, and in this submitting to the created purposes of God. That also there is the joy of our unified spirits is only the abundance of God's grace, a sign that there is joy in him to overflow into all things, that our future will be friendship, and that somewhere in the mysteries of these things is a communication of him. If this pleasure is mine, what will we posses in the future, when all the lowness of our natures are burnt away, when the oneness will be seen and understood, when the whole people of God will stand in their future redemption as one, all under the chosen head, in the pattern of my submission to David? Friendship reveals God, as all his works do, showing that God is love, that in unity there is a joy that surpasses what can be attained alone, that in knowing a person, we must first make ourselves known, and that God has prepared a deeper unity that our friendships here can only shadow, can only hint at. Unity, then, is our great desire, our great joy, our great pleasure, our great hope, and in the knitting, his abundance of love is seen.

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Jonathan's life is scattered throughout I Samuel
Read especially: I Samuel 13, 18

I use "conversation" in the older sense to mean "behavior or manner of living"