“Behold, I am making all things new. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” Revelation 21: 5-6
It’s easy to be intimidated. It’s easy to deny. It’s easy to avoid, defend, pretend everything’s as it should be. It’s easy to be fooled, it’s easy to be complacent, it’s easy to hide in the hardness of your heart—even easier to just switch sides.
But it’s hard, exhausting, sorrowful, and heart-crushing to refuse to close your eyes, to stay to hear the cries, to shut out all the pious advice to never empathize.
Is this you? Are you deeply grieved and discouraged by a world so badly bent?
What will you do when you're the only one left still walking around with a conscience?
Take heart! “Alone” is not the way the story ends, for the ending is a person.
Come, he says. Come all you who are thirsty, grief-stricken, with empty heart and ego offered by willing hands.
Come—all you who will (as time unfolds) conquer evil itself with love for God and neighbor.
Come! Pray without ceasing, endure every blow, and hold tightly to me, the Truth you well know.
”Blind unbelief may see only the outer world, growing old in its depravity and doomed to vanish before the presence of holiness; but faith can see the hand of God in the shadows, refashioning the whole. The agonies of Earth are but the birth-pangs of a new creation.” G.B. Caird
The hand of God in the shadows
Have you seen him moving behind the scenes? Look within, look around—in dark, hopeless corners, goodness flares to life. Beyond the thrashing and desperate clashing of self-inflated monsters, a joyful future beckons.
Last month, I spent a weekend in the Bavarian Alps, and awoke to cowbells, church bells, and songbirds announcing a new day. I rocked along on crowded trains, where people whose language was not my own kindly offered me their seats. I walked around Paris, my senses delighting in food, enchanting chatter, and endless works of art. I lingered in Chicago—enjoying a neighborly block party, later a 4th of July parade, and softly sang my favorite hymns while holding my premie, precious grandson. Everywhere I travelled, I peered deeply into life, and tried to sip it slowly.
But mostly I looked for God in the unfamiliar and unpredictable. What are you doing, here and right now? How can I join in, and see what I am blind to?
Here’s a lie we too easily swallow: The only things that matter are earth-shatteringly important. Follow the spotlight, and the bank of microphones to find what is worthy of a mention, and who deserves attention. And then ignore the rest.
Yet, in the Bible, God illuminates, amplifies, even glorifies lowly, unremarkable, everyday humanity. In fact, according to the Beatitudes, his favor rests not on the rich and powerful, but on the poor, the grieving, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, peacemakers and persecuted. The very human beings who tug at my heartstrings too.
If God were writing the headlines:
Newborn slumbers on her sleep-deprived mother while her grandmother marches for justice.
A kind woman bakes a cherry pie and offers it to her new neighbors.
A cheerfully jingling ice-cream truck slows for running children, and an elderly man pays the bill.
Tomatoes, ripe and impossibly red, are picked by a practiced gardener.
Fireflies dance the sun away while a young girl practices her scales.
A man makes his lunch in the early morning and faithfully drives to his job.
A nurse holds tight to an age-spotted hand, as his last breath quietly fades.
These simple acts of humanity, and faithfulness aren’t wasted. They are the prayer-powered building blocks for the future God is shaping.
Nothing is in vain.
“Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings, and for that matter one’s fellow non-human creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make” (NT. Wright in Surprised by Hope).
In every choice, in every moment, we are invited to allow a future renewed creation spill over into the present. Don’t you think it’s worth our joyful participation?
Excellent and inspiring.
Beautiful words! ❤️