The Inheritance

It was time. God had spoken and the hour had finally come when they would start walking into their inheritance. Yes, they would have to fight for it, but what should that matter if the Lord Himself was fighting for them? Victory was as certain as the rising and the setting of the sun each day, for, after all, it was the One who had set the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night, who had set the stars in their places and appointed times and seasons, it was this same God who had spoken to him and told him that he would lead these people to inherit the land. When god spoke, the world came into being; when God spoke the descendants of Abraham would inherit the land.

But tonight was a night for memories, for he knew that what he was about to do was part of a story that had started long before he was born and that would continue long after he was gone, which would include his children’s childrens’ children for untold generations. It had started when God had called out childless Father Abraham from the land of the pagans, called him out to be the father of a great nation (though his wife was barren) and to inherit a land which he had never seen. Eventually he had a child, Isaac, but the only portion of the land which he ever owned was the grave plot of his wife. Isaac, and, after him, his son Jacob, and then Jacob’s twelve sons had been sojourners in the land, until the famine had led to their relocation to Egypt, where Jacob’s son Joseph had been sent by God before them to prepare the way. And there the descendants of Abraham had flourished until Pharaoh grew so afraid of their numbers that he enslaved them, until the cries of their oppression went up to God, and in the fullness of time He sent them Moses, the Deliverer.

And this was where Joshua’s own story had begun. He had been one of that nation of liberated slaves who had followed Moses after the fatal night of the Passover, and experienced the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, and stood at the foot of Sinai, where God called them to be a nation set apart, holy to Himself. He knew that God was the Almighty Redeemer of His people. So he had been thrilled when he was chosen as one of the twelve spies to go and find out about the land they had been promised.

That was when he discovered that most of his fellow spies (in fact all of them except faithful, courageous Caleb) still had the hearts of slaves. Their bodies may have been rescued from Egypt, but they still carried the oppressor’s yoke in their hearts, believing themselves helpless and refusing to take hold of the freedom God had given them. Where he and Caleb saw amazing richness, a land flowing with milk and honey, they saw only insurmountable difficulties. They were too afraid to take hold of the inheritance God was giving them.

And so the Lord waited forty years for a new generation to arise, a generation born in freedom and dependent on their God. These were the people Joshua was about to lead into the Promised Land, so that they might claim their inheritance at last.

Learning love

As the thirsty ground lies open to the rain,

So I stand, unclosed,

Vulnerable and willing

Offering my heart.

As I stretch my too-tight body

Against the cramps of life

So I relax into love

And the knotted places smooth.

As I sing to myself in the daily tasks of life

So may we sing together

Not harmony,

But counterpoint.

As my breath catches

At the world’s sharp beauty,

So I see your glory,

Amazed into gratitude.

As I learn to pray,

Halting between dust and wonder,

So I hold you fast

In the breathing of my soul.

Reflections on Luke: 1:1 - 4

This is the first post of a long-term project: I want to work my way through the whole of Luke's gospel, passage by passage, as a set of reflective poems -- not a theological commentary, per se, but as a set of personal responses. Some will be direct reflections on the text, others will be my own reactions to the text. Anyway, I will doubtless refine the project further in the writing of it!

So here is the first, based on the first 4 verses:

1: 1 - 4

Most excellent Theophilus, I write

A full account, most structured and most sound,

Of a particular man, a known place,

In a particular world, the world you know,

And it shall blow that world to smithereens.

You wanted facts? Dear Sir, I give you facts:

Of miracles, of wonder and of awe.

The lame that walk, the blind receive their sight,

The deaf now hear, the very lepers cleansed,

The broken and forgotten are set free,

And death, yes death itself, is overcome!

Is that enough? Then Sir, I give you more,

(And all checked out most very carefully):

And I will talk of angels and of songs,

And wisdom that did not come from this world,

And teaching that would melt a heart of stone,

If stones had ears, and, through these careful words,

A scholar’s words, the facts, Sir, just the facts,

I pray that you will see the face of God.

I pray that you will see what I have seen,

That you will see the glory that I know,

And taste, with tears, the wonder and the joy,

The mercy and the promise and the love:

See God Himself come down as mortal man

And make a way for man to come to God.

My dear Theophilus, meet Jesus Christ!

A Time to Die

He climbed slowly up the mountain, knowing it was the last mountain he would ever climb. And there had been so many, so much climbing. Long ago there had been the slight hills of Egypt, where one had stood to watch the slaves labouring away on Pharaoh’s latest crazy building project. There had been the steep places he had crossed when he fled Egypt, and the hill he had just come over when he saw, ahead of him, the bush that burned but was not consumed. He often pondered that bush, seeking to understand the mind of God through the symbols He used to communicate. Only now did he wonder if perhaps he himself was perhaps that bush – inhabited by the very glory of God, and driven by Him to actions he himself would never have imagined, nor thought himself able to accomplish, and yet, never eaten away by that inhabiting glory. He remained himself, whatever mighty wind the Lord breathed through him, and that, in itself was a marvel, utterly different from man-made explanations of the way gods worked.

There was the hill, too, where he had stood above the battle against the Amalekites with his hands raised in prayer, until he grew so weary that Aaron and Hur had to hold his hands up for him. And the Israelites, led by Joshua, had prevailed, because his prayers had prevailed. And now he felt the weariness of his approaching end, and with it a great peace. There would be no more battles, and no more mountains, it was Joshua’s turn now to lead the free children of slaves into the glory of the promise, to fight against all kinds of evil and teach them to follow the God who called them home. Once it had hurt him terribly to know that, by his presumption, he had forfeited his own right to enter the Promised Land, but now he no longer minded.  He had done his part, and it was enough, and now, once more, he could be alone with the God who had called him. The Promised Land was precious, but he had met with the One who gave the Promise, who was, in Himself, the fulfilment and meaning of every good promise that had ever been made. It was time to move from the symbols and the tokens into the True Reality, and, step by step, as he climbed, he felt as i9f his heart was making its own pilgrimage back home. It was time to be done with the busyness and clamour.

And he thought then, of the greatest mountain he had climbed, more times than he could now remember, Sinai, where, while the people below him trembled in terror, he had walked up into the very presence of God. Even now he had no words for that encounter, only a memory of such glory that all his tears were turned to rainbows, the sign of God’s mercy to man. He had walked with God, and in the tent of meeting he had talked with God face to face, as a man talks to his friend. And now there was no terror in the approach of death, it was no harder than walking to a friend’s house and accepting their hospitality contented gratitude. God would take care of the rest