To say (even we as believers) have never encountered unbreakable word to such measure as is being revealed in us as unbreakable, seems too bold a statement. Nevertheless, is it not so? To say we are now in discovery of the true, even that true God who speaks and is speaking Himself in us, and to us, and into us to make us also true (as He is) through Christ, is not something for which we are provided prior reference. There is nothing of us gleaned from our time “in the world” upon which we might say this is not all absolutely new to us.
We may think we know what honesty looks like, (or love, or life, or integrity, devotion, loyalty, or a thousand other things the world looks after as good things) but when God speaks with unbreakable word and of unbreakable word we are either given grace to see or must lie. Either all analogy gives way as it must, or we are yet living only in shadow of type and are ourselves only shadow men. God is patient.
Listen if you can and are made able. And if you (or we) hold the terrible truth of God with some trembling in your own commonness of dust as before the God of all creation…you (or we) may be able to hear. For all is new here…not like new. The faith of Abraham, commended by Christ and spoken of often to us through the scriptures was of this nature related by the writer of Hebrews:
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going”
This is too terrible for any man to receive except by “a” grace given. For what man does not soon discover how deeply held is his disposition to appear as one knowing where he goes and what he does? Yet there is this great gulf of difference also soon learned (is a disciple made one able to pay attention?) that what has appeared once as man walking purposefully and knowingly is now revealed to him as all stumbling to a terrible end (even in himself) while the one settled by faith to stumbling through a place unknown to him, yet finds (and testifies of) one all along the way ready to rescue and pick him up.
I understand how this may sound mumbo jumbo. Both men are stumbling through, but one, yes, but one does not think he is. He is self convinced he knows all the hows and whys of what he does and is more than willing (no, greatly devoted) to making a show of how purposeful he is in his proceeding(s) with all knowledge of them. To himself he can…and will…show “he knows”. This man I know only too well. And I would think we all have had some experience with him, as being in him.
But the man of faith, this new creation for whom and to whom all things are being shown as new, has something of that unbreakable word in him of having to let go of all he once set his compass by. His only plea here is, and can be, for mercy. He has nothing to assure himself he is plowing straight, nothing (once so grand to himself) that he is remaining in bounds by looking back and gauging his own doing well; for he is where he has never been before. At best he can look (though it may seem back as in memory) and only see where God has appeared to him as help all along the way. He is losing sight of his doings…seeing only the merciful hand of God.
As need be read of Abraham. And though none (certainly myself) can bring any accusation against him, you will find he had much to learn about being preserved in his walk, about steps taken that were indeed ordered for him, but of which he could never boast of having done everything rightly.
And to put what may appear too fine a point to it…that which appears too weak, too ignoble, too easily dismissed as a poor place to set one’s hope for, or as weakest and most frivolous way of life and being…that is in plea of mercy…is being shown this man as a strong, and even strongest suit.
All that knows better than mercy would say “if you just did it right the first time…you wouldn’t need it” or “if you just knew what you were doing you wouldn’t need it or have to find yourself in plea of it”.
Just “be” better.
But.
There is no knowing of anything greater than God’s mercy, nor His delight in showing it.
Happy is the man who is robbed of his ability to think he may maneuver around it, try to be what doesn’t need it, or appear as more than he is as one exempt from its necessity to him.
For he gets to see how God delights in showing it in a place he has never been before.
And yet…he knows it as home.
As home for which he has held no prior reference.
Not like home.
Home.
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