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Let’s take a quick look at the heart of the New Covenant:
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:27-32, NIV) In Mark’s rendering of this moment, one of my favorite details also gets added into the opening of this party at Levi’s villa. After introducing the party-goers—“tax-collectors and disreputable folk”—Marks casually mentions: “For there were many such people among his followers” (Mark 2:15b, PNT). Under the New Covenant, disreputable people are constantly, instantly drawn to the presence of Jesus, where they repent, follow Him, and instantly, constantly throw parties of salvation. You see, the “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” is actually communicable: it transmits straight from Jesus into the repentant heart—freeing it—and teaching it the new way to party. How to turn right around and hold “a great banquet,” like Levi. How to invite “a large crowd of tax collectors” and other sinners. How to properly mix and mingle with the other “disreputable folk” already around. How to rightly rouse some rabble with the newly righteous, now-repentant rest of this rabble around Jesus. In fact, for any branch of the Church, any denomination, any church, any fellowship, any Bible Study, any accountability group, any Christian individual, I’d ask you: Are these sorts of “great banquets” of salvation breaking out within your midst? Are you constantly seeing this “joy in heaven” happening within your four walls? Do “disreputable folk” have the habit of gravitating to what you’re doing, finding repentance readily, following Jesus, and joining the party?
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Just this morning, I was meditating (yet again!) on the wonders of Romans 8 and simply couldn't get past the section below. Friends, the freedom-in-Jesus we have on a Monday morning, and will have all week long, is a "magnificent liberty," like a breath of Heaven for the world around us to experience through us.
Give this section a read: All who follow the leading of God’s Spirit are God’s own sons. Nor are you meant to relapse into the old slavish attitude of fear—you have been adopted into the very family circle of God and you can say with a full heart, “Father, my Father”. The Spirit himself endorses our inward conviction that we really are the children of God. Think what that means. If we are his children we share his treasures, and all that Christ claims as his will belong to all of us as well! Yes, if we share in his suffering we shall certainly share in his glory. In my opinion whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own. The world of creation cannot as yet see reality, not because it chooses to be blind, but because in God’s purpose it has been so limited—yet it has been given hope. And the hope is that in the end the whole of created life will be rescued from the tyranny of change and decay, and have its share in that magnificent liberty which can only belong to the children of God! (Romans 8:14-21, Phillips) In Luke 22, Jesus says to His friends: “I shall not eat the Passover again until all that it means is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
So, hearing that, we might ask ourselves: What does it mean? Well, think of Isaac asking his father, Abraham: “Behold, the fire and the wood, father, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Gen. 22) Or, think of the Levitical instructions: “The … lamb you shall offer at twilight, and shall offer with it a grain offering and its drink offering, as in the morning, for a pleasing aroma, an … offering to the Lord.” (Ex. 29) Or, think of the exiles returning where: “the priests and the Levites had purified themselves… So they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves.’ (Ez. 6) Or, think of the prophets saying: “he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Is. 53) My friends, the “fulfillment” of the Past-Present-Future “meaning” Jesus is pointing to, on that Thursday night, is none other than the reality of Himself! He is the “lamb” the Father will offer… so that Isaac… so that you and I… need not die! He is the “lamb,” commemorated with grain and with drink… who, on our behalf, brings pleasure to the heart of God! He is the “lamb” who, by His “slaughtering,” welcomes back the exiles: we sheep who had wandered away from our Shepherd! He is the “lamb” who “opened not his mouth”; who bore the entirety of our separation in silence: who freed us forever! Let us enter into this week, following our Good Shepherd, who is also, by the way, the incarnate Lamb of God! You turn the corner of a quiet Jerusalem street, then head on straightaway, seeing a flight of outdoor stairs up ahead. You climb the stairs toward the room where, you're almost certain, everyone is. You pause upon the top of the outdoor landing. You catch your breath for a moment; then open the door to the Upper Room.
The light is low: just a few small lamps burning atop the single long table across the way. The air is warm: the smell of the lamb; also, the warmth of the people sitting all around the table. You step inward. Your eyes, adjusting to the light, are taking in the faces of all your familiar friends. They—it would seem—have been waiting for your arrival to make up the group. Off to the right, one of the houseowner’s servants is down on His hands and knees—His back to you—carefully washing the feet of one of the twelve… You take your place at the table, over toward the opposite end. You look down the length of the table, seeing all the elements of the seder. You are vaguely aware that the room is a little quieter than you might’ve expected—it’s as if no one wants to talk; to break the near-silence. You are looking down the row of faces, reclined as they are on the dining couches… and that’s the exact moment you realize the strangest thing about the scene. Where is Jesus? Earlier today He’d sent out Peter and John to get this room ready… off they’d gone to do so… so now that you’re all here… where is He? And you are just about to ask this question to the friend sitting beside you… Just about to satisfy the evening’s main curiosity… When, turning over the other way,—away from that friend to your left—you realize it’s your turn to have that household servant wash your dirty feet… You kick off your sandals… they clunk down to the floor… You feel the firm heavy grip of the Servant’s hand upon the back of your heel as He carefully begins washing your feet, one after the other, with cool clear water. The silence in the room continues as before. Then, your feet now feeling good as new, you feel the warm comfort of the towel, drying them off, one after the other. The Servant carefully slips your sandals back on… And as you think to be polite, to incline yourself to thank this nameless unknown servant of the household, you raise yourself on your elbow to do just that… And there He is. Jesus. At your feet. Having only just finished washing them… 130 He teaches about the coming of the Kingdom Luke 17:20-37 LATER, JESUS WAS ASKED by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he gave them this reply: “The kingdom of God never comes by watching for it. Men cannot say, ‘Look, here it is’, or ‘there it is’, for the kingdom of God is inside you. . .” * * * Not so many days later… PETER STEPS OUT THROUGH the doorway into the bright Jerusalem sunlight. The whole crowd below turns and looks up. From this parapet, he can see across the rooftops to the Mount of Olives. The gnarled trees of Gethsemane are visible. The foot-trail that winds up from the Kidron, past that run of untended grapevines, is visible too. He can see the place their feet trod together: he remembers the feeling of going up…and then going back down.
He looks down at the crowd beneath him. A strange, uncity-like silence is ascending. A warm west wind is blowing out of the wilderness, carrying scents he smelled on those days when he and the others once baptized… The silence below awaits… And as he steps to the rail, in harness now to the Presence that lives inside him, clearing his throat, letting the words within him arise and coalesce, Peter is suddenly conscious of one final thought—like a whisper to his spirit on this morning of the day of Pentecost: “The Kingdom of God is within you, Peter.” Remember: The faith that initially led you into relationship with Jesus is the same faith that still encounters Him and will, ever after, lead you onward. The Holy Spirit, within, is the spirit of faith to trust Him ever more; the same Spirit that, day by day, led His own heart in intimacy with the Father. For Jesus Himself told us how this works:
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. You see, Jesus, in His desire that you should know Him, asked the Father to send their own Spirit—the Spirit of truth—that you might approach Him from within. When you read of all the miracles and adventures of the Early Church, all the ins-and-outs of their daily exploits “in the Name,” you are reading the tale of never-ending encounter with the Living Jesus--by the Holy Spirit. So may the Spirit who endued those men and women with their unconquerable spirit, and gave them consistent experience of the Risen Savior, give you a heart aflame with love, joy and the passion of Jesus Himself in the conduct of your days! That, as one of its members, you will show the Church the heights and depths of what’s possible in Jesus so that the whole—the Body—will be reanimated and reenergized! Let us, together, open our hearts and minds to so encountering Him! Let us so open our hearts and minds this day! The Kingdom of Heaven is just like Jesus: always looking for the lost. It quickly comes to terms with those ready to be redeemed. They are chosen by Him and sent out to do His work. Out there, they find themselves increasingly surrounded by other rescued ones He’s rescuing. (Some of His choices are surprising in revealing His graciousness: there is seemingly no accounting for His taste in people.)
The Kingdom of Heaven pays out what He offers: His personal presence; a calling throughout life; eternal life as the final reward. Our work for Him will be as valuable to us as our present awareness of His presence is: we may experience eternal life, not “someday,” but right now. Alas for the ones who waste their lives in gradating royal brothers and sisters! Blessed are they who enjoy that particular wealth of the Kingdom today! (from Mt. 20:1-16) “We must understand that God does not ‘love’ us without liking us—through gritted teeth—as ‘Christian’ love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core—which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word ‘love’.” Dallas Willard The Divine Conspiracy * * * * “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.” (John 13:34, NLT)
Today our Anchor Gathering community considered the ongoing qualities of Pentecost: the fact that, in our day and age, you and I are the bearers of the very same Spirit of Jesus. So, with that, it's always inspiring to remember the fruits which immediately followed that first Pentecost: how the life of Jesus continued transmitting via His friends, disciples, and the ever-growing, never-ending Body.
Then those who welcomed his message were baptized, and on that day alone about three thousand souls were added to the number of disciples. They continued steadily learning the teaching of the apostles, and joined in their fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayer. Everyone felt a deep sense of awe, while many miracles and signs took place through the apostles. All the believers shared everything in common; they sold their possessions and goods and divided the proceeds among the fellowship according to individual need. Day after day they met by common consent in the Temple; they broke bread together in their homes, sharing meals with simple joy. They praised God continually and all the people respected them. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were finding salvation. (Acts 2:41-47) My friends, let's go live this week from the "spirit of that Spirit!" Then, in the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a deserted place, and there he prayed. Simon and his companions went in search of him, and when they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.” “Then we will go somewhere else...” (Mark 1:35-38a, Phillips) * * * Did you know: it really is a fool’s errand to try to manage people’s response to your life? to try to “game out” what just might happen—in your absence—to your reputation? Here’s what I mean: Watching the life of Jesus, it becomes abundantly clear that He kept no eye on the “effect” produced by His life: on the way He was being, by others, perceived/received. In the Present, He simply did the will of the Father… and then, really and truly, left it at that. He wasn’t constantly preparing for potential ways the Future’s understanding might attach to Him: He hardly ever seemed interested either in His own reputation or, really, much in the Future.
So, the further and further we go into normalizing our current culture—where it’s thought normal to “curate” one’s daily life, as well as others’ perception of that life—it’s important that, every once in a while, we remember that it’s not particularly helpful to our hearts. It’s an attempt to stage-manage others’ understanding of one’s life, while actively mortgaging one’s own Present against some potential Future—but in other people’s minds! It’s a funny little thing that we’ve gotten very used to. Let us, instead, together, “go somewhere else...” His Kingdom is a kingdom of glorious suffering, unrecognizable to the world whose broken ways He came to right: He will spread His arms to call all, to embrace all, to welcome all into the arms of the God who has always loved them.
His yoke, light and easy, rests upon His shoulders just as perfectly naturally as did the crossbeam which He carried up Golgotha’s hillside. He staggers not under the weight of your sin. He walks upward, heavenward, carrying it. His Holy Spirit trails along behind Him wherever He goes. Joy lights the path of this conquering King. His Kingdom conquers the world by His own perfect adherence to the will of the Father. In other words, “It is finished.” God, in his foreknowledge, chose us to bear the family likeness of his Son, that he might be the eldest of a family of many brothers. He chose us long ago; when the time came he called us, he made us righteous in his sight, and then lifted us to the splendour of life as his own sons.
In face of all this, what is there left to say? If God is for us, who can be against us? He that did not hesitate to spare his own Son but gave him up for us all—can we not trust such a God to give us, with him, everything else that we can need? Who would dare to accuse us, whom God has chosen? The judge himself has declared us free from sin! Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us! Can anything separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble, pain or persecution? Can lack of clothes and food, danger to life and limb, the threat of force of arms? Indeed some of us know the truth of the ancient text: ‘For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter’. No, in all these things we win an overwhelming victory through him who has proved his love for us! I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 8:29-39, Phillips) This week, at Anchor, we considered how the Vineyard-owner from the parable of Matthew 20 might be hinting at something like the following:
“Isn’t it wonderful,” Jesus asks, “that just as I was wonderful to you, I’m always choosing to be wonderful… to everyone?! Look around,” He says. “Look at all the people I’ve got you rubbing shoulders with, every single day: these are the highest work of your work in my fields.” He smiles even more broadly. “Or were you starting to think that the moral-of-this story was only your personal morality, your self-righteous hardwork, or, even worse than that, promise of eventual reward. Oh, my friend—it is so much more than that! Back when I called you—back when you and I understood together where all this was going—did you misinterpret what we were doing? Yes, I sent you into the world; yes, I sent you into my vineyard—but what did you think we were doing there together? We were in the vineyard—you and I, together; shoulder to shoulder—not to talk about its fruit, not to be knowledgable about its potential eventual crops; even to constantly point to the fruit as if the fruit was the thing. The fruit is a part of the thing, yes. But the fruit, my dear friend… is not the thing. “The thing… is my calling you… your coming along with me… our going-together into the fields of this vineyard. The thing… is us… together. Just you and me, as we’re walking out every single moment of the moments that are making up your life: the thing… is our life together… together. “And do you wanna know what’s especially wonderful? “That the more you come to terms with just how wonderful what we’re doing together is…the more you’re celebrating being part of this glorious work-with-me… well… in the midst of enjoying the work, delighting in me, doing this together… that’s the moment when others start to wonder--these people doing their lives around you--why YOUR life is so full of wonder. As you’re walking around with me… learning to see the world like me… you’ll start to look, to others, like me. “And, you see,” He smiles now with the greatest affection it is possible to conceive of, “that is the thing. That’s why I called you in the first place. That’s the whole of the Kingdom of Heaven. My friend, that’s what we’re doing, here, together: living our whole lives together, so that everyone may have life in me.” “The new revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the new way of approach to the Infinite Father manifested in the appearance of the Son, had created for the primitive Christians a new life and had illumined them with a new light. It gave them a new insight into the relations between God and man, and a fresh manifestation of the bonds uniting our Father in Heaven with His children on earth. It made them see with new vividness the way of God’s salvation and the duties which God required of man.” Thomas M. Lindsey The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries I love these descriptions of the “early days” of the Body:
Jesus was their new revelation; the new way of approach to the Father; their new life; their new light; a new insight: He was the fresh manifestation of the new vividness of the way of God's salvation. What if you and I lived that new, new, new, new, new, fresh newness all week long, this week, so that others might get a glimpse of Him? Sounds to me like quite an adventure! The key to the “Great Commission” (Mt. 28:18-20) is imagining that you’re the only person to whom He spoke it: that its fulfillment is entirely contingent upon your obedience. All at once, then, all of life becomes the most marvelous adventure alongside Him: He daily hands you His authority, sending you places for His purposes, calls up your courage, allows you to be the hands and feet and lips of His glorious Gospel.
The Holy Spirit--His own Spirit—will empower everything you do! And He Himself will be with you; beside you; within you! Never forget: Your witness for Him lacks for nothing. “To you whom I love I say, let us go on loving one another, for love comes from God. Every man who truly loves is God’s son and has some knowledge of him. But the man who does not love cannot know him at all, for God is love. To us, the greatest demonstration of God’s love for us has been his sending his only Son into the world to give us life through him. We see real love, not in the fact that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to make personal atonement for our sins. If God loved us as much as that, surely we, in our turn, should love each other!” 1 John 4:7-11, Phillips * * * * “The primacy of love in the spiritual life is not an arbitrary, imposed condition; it is inherent. If you have the Spirit, you have love, and if you do not have love, you do not have the Spirit.” E. Stanley Jones
Growing Spiritually 54.21 We labor and strive because of our hope; not toward it. Our living Hope is already beside us; with us; within us.
54.22 The Kingdom knows no hierarchy, no classes, no ages, no statures; only abiding in Jesus, union, unity, oneness. 54.23 Let your speech, life, love, faith, and purity be His, for His are what our Heavenly Father recognizes. 54.24 We end by absorbing what absorbs us. 54.25 The salvation of Jesus rides out upon my day today. 54.26 Give a great and growing attention to yourself, and you will quickly learn how fleeting are these particular diminishing returns. 54.27 Give only a sliver of the same, offering the rest to anyone/everyone: how great shall be your days! 54.28 Caring even a little leaves room for infinite growth. 54.29 (Not caring: a choice for death.) 54.30 Speak seldom of what you somewhat know. Speak never of what you know not. 54.31 Be reasonable. 54.32 Don’t be less fun than Jesus. “There is a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient, inattentive listening, that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and thus get rid of the other person. This is no fulfillment of our obligation, and it is certain that here too our attitude toward our brother only reflects our relationship to God. It is little wonder that we are no longer capable of the greatest service of listening that God has committed to us, that of hearing our brother's confession, if we refuse to give ear to our brother on lesser subjects. Secular education today is aware that often a person can be helped merely by having someone who will listen to him seriously, and upon this insight it has constructed its own soul therapy, which has attracted great numbers of people... But Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Life Together As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed Him. (Matthew 9:9, ESV) * * * "The Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not come to the world in order to bring a doctrine; he never lectured. Since he did not bring a doctrine, he did not try by way of reasons to prevail upon anyone to accept the doctrine, nor did he try to authenticate it by proofs. His teaching was really his life, his existence. If someone wanted to be his follower, his approach, as seen in the Gospel, was different from lecturing. To such a person he said something like this: Venture a decisive act; then we can begin. What does that mean? It means that one does not become a Christian by hearing something about Christianity, by reading something about it, by thinking about it, or, while Christ was living, by seeing him once in a while or by going and staring at him all day long. No... venture a decisive act; the proof does not precede but follows, is in and with the imitation that follows Christ." Søren Kierkegaard
Judge for Yourself! As shared before, here are a few more of my Pointillisms -- these ones could be a mighty declaration over the week you're living (maybe even read them, over your week, aloud!)...
45.49 In Jesus, I shall never be condemned. 45.50 In Jesus, the Holy Spirit looses my life from death and the Fall. 45.51 In Jesus, the divide is bridged. 45.52 In Jesus, the former Law is already fulfilled within me. 45.53 In Jesus,—by His Spirit—I have His outlook ever available. 45.54 In Jesus, I presently have peace. 45.55 In Jesus,—by His righteousness—I am utterly, ultimately, alive. 45.56 In Jesus, my current life is contemporaneous with eternity. 45.57 In Jesus, I too am a son of God. 45.58 In Jesus, I too am an inheritor of the wealths of the Kingdom. 45.59 In Jesus, I am on display as one of His glories. 45.60 In Jesus, I am gloriously free—in order to free. 45.61 In Jesus, I know where this is headed. 45.62 In Jesus, the Holy Spirit is replacing my age-old spirit. 45.63 In Jesus, that Spirit translates my life, my thoughts, my prayers. 45.64 In Jesus, I have nothing at all to fear. 45.65 In Jesus, I have everything to hope for. 45.66 In Jesus, I am being made like Jesus. 45.67 In Jesus, I shall be sustained just as certainly as I was known; created; saved; called unto. 45.68 In Jesus, nothing separates this life from His life. Jesus came: to reveal the heart of God; to establish the Kingdom of Heaven; to show us the Way; to give us His Word; to die to set us free from sin; to conquer death; to ascend to intercede on our behalf; to send His Holy Spirit; to allow us untrammeled access to the Throne; to send us out to make all this known to everyone; to be with us in perfect power; to be with us in His own brand of fearlessness; to ask for more of everything He offers; to receive everything He offers; to be with Him—as He is with us—every minute of our lives.
How are we doing, in daily pragmatic experience, with receiving all of the above? When you are wronged by a brother or sister from within the Body of Christ:
* When you are wronged by a man or woman outside the fellowship of the Church:
At this week's Anchor, we considered a series of statements from the Feast of Tabernacles' message of Jesus, from John 7, and I want to share with you a few of my favorite takeaways:
Towards the end, Jesus says to the crowds, “I shall be with you only a little while longer and then I am going to him who sent me. You will look for me then but you will never find me. You cannot come where I shall be.” In this and the final statement to follow, Jesus not only points ahead at what is to come, but He also demarcates the differences between the “ways of the world and the flesh” and the glories of the “Way of the Kingdom and the Spirit.” Consider what He’s saying here of the world and the flesh: It is constrained by the construct of Time--“only a little while longer”—and of the distance between God and men--“I am going… but you will never find me.” Also, the world and the flesh, unchanged, unredeemed, cannot do anything to change the equation: “You cannot come where I shall be.” But what of the “Way of the Kingdom and the Spirit”? It is UN-bounded by time—eternal, everlasting, unchanging—and, thanks to the coming Ascension of Jesus, completely connected between God and man, Heaven and earth. And though, yes, we “cannot come where [He] shall be,” as we are, He is in the business of utterly remaking us so that it’s possible. How? Read His final statement, as John writes it: “If any man is thirsty, he can come to me and drink! The man who believes in me, as the scripture says, will have rivers of living water flowing from his inmost heart.” In other words, the world and the flesh are thirsty, uncertain where to go with their thirst, and desperate at the level of the heart for life, and for true living. But, in the Kingdom of Heaven, and by the Holy Spirit Jesus will offer to “any man” (note that “any”), we may drink to our fill, believing in Him--NOT in thirsty old religion—and, ourselves, become a river of living water for the world to come and drink from. Do you understand? By the Spirit He will pour out upon His friends and followers, we, His friends and followers, are meant to become the fountain of JOY, and of JESUS, for this world. Yes, all may come to you and I… in order to drink OF HIM! What an awesome, and humbling, honor! 98 He sends out the Seventy to minister Luke 10:1-24 LATER ON THE LORD commissioned seventy other disciples and sent them off in twos as advance-parties into every town and district where he intended to go. “There is a great harvest,” he told them, “but only a few are working in it—which means you must pray to the Lord of the harvest that he will send out more reapers. “Now go on your way. I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Don’t carry a purse or a pair of shoes, and don’t stop to pass the time of day with anyone you meet on the road. When you go into a house, say first of all, ‘Peace be to this household!’ If there is a lover of peace there, he will accept your words of blessing, and if not, they will come back to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink whatever they put before you—a workman deserves his wages. But don’t move from one house to another. “Whatever town you go into and the people welcome you, eat the meals they give you and heal the people who are ill there. Tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is very near to you now.’ . . . * * * In the moment… IN A DISTANT WAY, he remembers (almost as if by some kind of second-sense) how it felt to create the entirety of the scene around him.
The composition of the water-molecules, infinite in their expansive lake-sized cohesion, lapping against the scraggly shoreline: he remembers making them. The heights of the opposite edge of the lake; the sloping-up and descending-down of their western fringe: he recalls shaping them with his own hand. The sound of the bird calls, the chirruping of the crickets, a distant howling of dogs, the wind, the rustling of the leaves—he thinks about his many conversations with his Father; how they’d compared and contrasted the strengths and weaknesses of attaching certain heavenly sounds to the earthly sounds bestowed on each. How the sea, the sky, the earth, the heights, the depths, the stars, the sun, the planets, the deserts, the forests all resounded with their component parts in the heavenly. How it all resides within his heart and mind—both then and now—as he sits by the sea and watches the way his friends all go out. He is watching these thirty-odd pairs of them walking away. He has placed the whole power of the Kingdom in their hands. He closes his eyes to take a nap in the sunshine. “Corrupt forms of love wait for the neighbor to ‘become a worthy object of love’ before actually loving him. This is not the way of Christ. Since Christ Himself loved us when we were by no means worthy of love and still loves us with all our unworthiness, our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. … “What we are asked to do is to love; and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbor worthy if anything can. Indeed, that is one of the most significant things about the power of love. There is no way under the sun to make a man worthy of love except by loving him. As soon as he realizes himself loved – if he is not so weak that he can no longer bear to be loved – he will feel himself instantly becoming worthy of love. He will respond by drawing a mysterious spiritual value out of his own depths, a new identity called into being by the love that is addressed to him.” Thomas Merton
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