Preparing for Home

C.S. Lewis wrote that God doesn't want us to ever mistake 'this place' as home. There are days in which it is easy to see this world is not the best of places. There are people who try very hard to make the earth 'hospitable' and think it can become paradise.

The problem of making our world paradise is that the physical nature of this world isn't going to let us do that.  Romans 8:18-22

God isn't going to allow our hearts to be set on things for very long. A quick jolt of reality: the physical body and the earth 'groaning' post warnings daily. Still, we press on with the idea that man can make it happen.

This season has made me long for home. More specifically, it's made me long for someone to hold my hands up because I can't hold them up anymore. We all need to someone to hold our hands up every once in awhile. That isn't a woe, it's just life.
Everything that could go 'wrong' or 'south' or 'into the pisser' has happened. Of course, there is an objective. God always has one. He has chosen us to refine, make worthy, lovable and ready for that day, blessed day. Being that God has been called the "Hound of Heaven", I know he's going to pursue us because that is a part of his nature. Our job is to find that objective, even if it's hidden from us for a time. I think I get into trouble when I stop looking for God's purposes in circumstances. This season has been a case of intermittent acceptance of what God is doing. That's really no way to go about embracing the Cross.

My nature is one of retreat. Trials have a way of forcing us into a crisis of belief. The consistency in which trouble finds us shouldn't be a surprise, yet I find myself surprised and stunned it comes!

I've really got no other place to go, no other person to run to, no other thing to indulge in. In this moment, the affections of this world are slowly losing their hold. Each person has specific affections. Although we share a commonality in weakness and sin, our weaknesses and our sins belong wholly to us and to that point, God must eradicate that which is, ahem, unlovely in unique ways, specifically in a way only we will understand. (Run on sentence, anyone?)

Zachariah could have his heart changed in a instant with a good spanking. Noah didn't really need a spanking, we could and still can look through his soul and that be enough for him to 'get it'. The "look" didn't work with Zach; he wasn't buying that. Well, that explains you and I. What God can use to shape me won't be the same with you. No, he's going to get your attention through that which matters to you. Look, life happens, so I'm not suggesting people are involved in this chastening (such as loss and so forth). I am talking about holding onto things: Idols.

Yes, the idols in the OT may have not been what you are holding on to right now. That makes you a bit superior doesn't it? I mean we don't have problem with forming a golden calf out of gold and we certainly don't have any issues with Asherah poles! C'mon, that's not me!

Can you hear God chuckling right now?

Yea, this world and its stuff, my stuff, is passing away. Losing its shine. What I think and had thought can bring me life is nothing more than cheap whiskey, with a bad after taste.

So, Lewis writes about this world in his marvelous Narnia series with this brief view of "Is this all there is?" moment about this world:

“One word, Ma'am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.”

To further stomp this horse, I offer yet another conversation found in Lewis' series. A conversation took place between Aslan and Jill regarding the things Jill could pursue, yet still thirst.

“If you're thirsty, you may drink.”

They were the first words she had heard since Scrubb had spoken to her on the edge of the cliff. For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking.
Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time, and the voice was not like a man's. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I'm dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the Lion.

“May I - could I - would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.
The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to - do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.
“Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

"I daren't come and drink," said Jill.

"Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion.

"Oh dear!" said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I must go and look for another stream
then."

"There is no other stream," said the Lion.

I suspect many of us would like a different stream through the course of the events in our lives. Jesus even asked if it were possible that the cup he was about to drink from be passed on and he be passed over. Never the less, he surrendered. Perfectly.

Yes, there is no other stream. The last few months have brought an array of emotions and responses, both inarticulate and articulated by me. Knowing body language is the most easily read indicator of what is going on, I wonder how the "BL" has looked, both by the people around me and the cloud of witnesses. I know that I betray the peace he gives often with my body language. I don't do well with hiding whatever is going on, good or bad. I'm trying to get better in looking the same, no matter the situation, and I think I am. But, that and a cup of coffee gets me, well, a cup of coffee.


The constant reminders of world events and the brevity of life keep dust ever present. I am dust.

Nouns and Adjectives on the Throne

Nouns and Adjectives on the Throne

For years, I never used the word "sovereign" as a noun.  I knew it could be used in this way—"Like a sovereign," writes Shakespeare "he radiates worth, his eyes lending a double majesty"—I just never did.  But trial and tragedy have a way of waking us to words and realities overlooked.  There was a time that whenever I closed my eyes to pray I was leveled by the image of the throne, and it was empty.  It was somewhere in the midst of this recurrent vision that I realized my neglect of the noun.  Was God indeed the Sovereign who spoke and listened?  I had often used the word as an adjective.  But adjectives, like good moods, seem to come and go.
The prophet Jeremiah depicts a Sovereign that cannot come and go, simply because He is.  God's sovereignty is not a coat that can be taken off when all is going well or when all is going poorly.  God does not cease to be the Sovereign though the world refuses to bow or "distant" seems a better adjective.  And God's words are not stripped of their sovereignty though no one is listening or no one responds.  The Sovereign of all creation is always sovereign, active, and near.  It is we who are inconsistent. 
Jeremiah chapter 6 begins with an image of the Sovereign speaking to a people unwilling to listen, an honorable Judge whose words are dishonored.  "To whom shall I speak?" the LORD inquires.  The question is a lonely one, reflecting both the prophet who speaks and the Sovereign whose words are ignored.  The inquiry also has the force of sarcasm:  Why bother speaking to a people who won't hear?  But the words are not a commentary on God's behavior; God is not throwing his hands up and suggesting the route of silence.  Rather, it is a commentary on God's words themselves, which are weighted with the compulsion to be heard.  Though our ears are closed and we scorn his warnings, the Sovereign speaks and his words go forth with power.  "God is always coming," says Carlo Carretto.  "God is always coming because He is life, and life has the unbridled force of creation.  God comes because He is light and light cannot remain hidden."(1)  God's decrees from the throne create and sustain the world.  There is a person enthroned in every word, bidding the world's response to every call and every sound. 
Yet we listen with stubborn ears and apathetic wills.  It is not a blind and stiff obedience God seeks, but a response appropriate for the Sovereign embodied in God's words and concern for creation.  The people of Israel were responding with formality in sacrifice while acting shamefully in other areas.  Today we might respond the same, making nods to religion in public or private, but refusing to wholly bow to the Most High, and hence, settling for something less than real humanity.  For in their failure to listen, the Israelites were losing their ability to perceive altogether.  "They acted shamefully...yet they were not ashamed; they did not know how to blush" (Jeremiah 6:15).  In human failure to kneel before the Sovereign of all creation, we lose something of what it means to be human. 
I don't know why the throne was empty every time I closed my eyes some years ago.  Perhaps I had removed God from the throne long before tragedy hit like a roaring sea and seemed to remove everything in its wake.  Perhaps God was ruling from the rooms where we needed God most.  I don't know.  But the emptiness of the throne forced me to reexamine the one who inhabits sovereignty itself.  Carretto's words once again hit the gist of such examining:  "The true problem is this:  Is God an autonomous presence before you, like you before your friend, the bridegroom before the bride, the Son before the Father? […] Can you meet God as a person on your road and prostrate yourself before Him as did Moses before the burning bush? […] Can you experience his presence in the dark intimacy of the temple as did the prophets?  In short, is God the God of transcendence, and thus the God of prayer, the God of what lies beyond things, or is He only the God of immanence, revealing Himself in the fruition of matter, in the dynamics of history, in the promise to free mankind?"(2)  Is God the Sovereign you will trust at the center of all things?  Upon a throne high and lofty, God asks us to look again, calls us to walk in ancient paths, and promises we will find rest for our souls


Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1974), 3. 
(2) Ibid., Intro.