I raise an open palm to the heavens amidst a sea of closed and angry fists shaking with violent disdain towards the sky.
There will be anger and violent words, profane language like never before spoken aloud to the Lord, if one is honest here. Our fear of fragility always comes out in the deep voice of the hidden heart- it must all be said, this holy language of profanities, to recompense for our past silences on subjects pertaining to the state of our degenerate souls.
We are a proud people.
We need everything to be just so to suit our great pride. Otherwise our broken humanity is entirely overcome.
What do You make of our feeble nature?
You work in every lost and hidden moment to make Your own into holy children of light, the ones who appeal to their Father in heaven.
Such an appeal to heaven can happen in those rare moments when Christ communes with your soul in the most mundane and insignificant activities that would otherwise be just another task forgotten entirely with the passing of a single hour. This is how you know that Christ is indeed within You, that He is divine, and that He is divinely hidden inside of your soul. This is that moment when the soul makes an appeal to Heaven because it longs deeply for Him, even when the mind does not comprehend Him at all.
Sometimes He remains hidden from us so that we may grow upwards towards Him with greater longing, our tendrils stretching up towards the sky and searching for Someone to cling to.
What is one to do when placed under a psychological pressure that tugs at the heart in directions that would have seemed impossible to bare under ordinary circumstances? This pressing produces a new wine that is offensive to the palate because it is too new. We reject our faith because it is stupid! But stupid faith requires Grace, which is why He chooses the foolish ones of this world. The fruits of this season will not be appreciated until long after the passage of time. We appeal to heaven for that time to be now!
I sense that my hidden heart is in frantic preparation to receive her King. Such preparation is a time of chaos and flurry of the mind, as one might realize that the entire home is a terrible mess and a most Distinguished Guest is on his way. Once He arrives and she realizes it is too late to make order of the disarray that is her home, she can only receive Him at the door with face to the floor and palms pressed upon His feet, her forehead bowed to the ground in total surrender to His witness of her incompetency at being human.
We feel that this tension is too much. Is there any formula to conjure up Your presence?
Your Spirit is evasive when this question is asked, the answer always moving like the sea, always changing like the sky.
And yet. As the world shifts with every tide, You are the only Constant that never changes- for this we are in awe, and for this we are frustrated. Why must something as dry as Your Word be the antidote for our misery? We look blankly at the pages of Your Scripture and wonder in our great ignorance, "what is it?". We cannot understand the Unfathomable, and yet He sits accross from us in human flesh waiting with repose for our undiginified response.
We spend our entire lives trying to make sense of the world and our surroundings. We never can, not really. And so in the end one must fly to Christ.
For where else can we go?
There is no other Truth to fly to! All else is empty, all else is shifting sand with no substance or form. Deep cries to deep. It cannot be any other way. The path of faith is full of peril and pain- His cross is our home, His grave is our consolation, and His eminent radiance is our highest call.
And so we are always searching, always longing. Always hungry and thirsty. Striving for something to cling to.
Christ, we cannot cling to Your Spirit with our physical hands of flesh! And this is maddness to accept.
Those who direct such desires towards You will raise an open palm to the heavens amidst a sea of closed and angry fists shaking at the cosmos. These are the many who accuse the universe of injustice, screaming demands and flinging hatred towards the One who will not bend in accordance to the base and depraved will of the hopelessly broken human condition. Such filth rages like a fire through the world, lapping up with a firey tounge every soul who chooses that wide and wayward path in deliberate defiance of the King. There are many for the way is so hard. The Unknown is so difficult to press into and requires a common Grace from outside the self, a grace that works its way within at such a slow rate that it is maddening.
And sometimes what seems like a rejection of the Person of Christ turns out to be a violent and profane conversation of a holy and indecipherable language exchanged with Him at the level of the soul, a conversation that lasts for days and weeks and months and years and only at the end produces the fruit of endurance which leads to salvation of the whole person- body, mind and soul.
We long for You, Jesus, so why do you remain so hidden?
Where is the King? Why does He not ride in and take His rightful throne on the earth? Why does He allow his creation to wander and squander, to destroy itself?
I know He is in the Scriptures which I lay before me in the light of the morning, my Grandfather's worn Bible which now has both my ink on the pages alongside his own. This Bible is a connection from past generations who prayed for me to the current generation which prays for mercy- mea culpa. Yes I know He is with me in the light of these mornings when I sit with my Grandfather's bible.
But where is my Lord in the dark of the world? When hatred and fear press in? When my great unbelief cows my faith into a corner and mocks it into humiliated submission?
I have seen a pattern in my fallen behavior of passing massive heaps and great loads of judgement upon others around me so that I am therefore rendered helpless to repent through self-reflection upon my own inner daemons. Is this intentional, or habitual? I cannot say, but I think it is the test of time, a trial which will be with me all my life.
I wonder now, why did God make His people wait for 40 days at the foot of the mountain while He spoke alone with Moses, the multitudes tired and confused and hot in the middle of a vast and vacant desert? This was on purpose, making them wait so long they experienced the full extent of the Egypt inside thier bones.
Why did He try them so, to the point of breaking?
This is the purgation of His people, the drawing out of the poision which must be removed in a slow and steady manner, like diamonds formed from the dust over so much time under great heat and pressure.
And in our honest response, we do make idols of our impatience and worship them in our fear.
Why is He making us wait for so long in this vast and vacant desert? It is cruel. For He knows that we will fail! And then He will make us wait for 40 more years after that, wandering the hot lands of arid dust, left with only His manna and His shade to remember His mercies. This is how the voice of the hidden heart becomes strong enough to make an appeal to heaven- in the wresting with inner daemons, the inner world of darkness which must be slain and layed prostrate before His nail-pierced feet.
Sanctification can only happen in the desert. The journey is long and ardurous- do not be dismayed if you loose your faith, for it will be returned back to you seven-fold.
