Where Are They Now?
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
the heart of Biblical Greats
October 2nd, 2021
Romans 8:3-4, ‘God went for the jugular when He sent His own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered into the disorderly mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.’ (the MESSAGE)
the GOD of the Universe
Genesis 1:1-2, ‘First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.’ (MSG)
This is where it all began. The great Divide, the chasm. The Once Upon a Time Unfairly Tale, and it will, eons and eons passed, eventually, have a happy ending. But not the ending you or I imagined, nor do we get there in the manner in which we envisioned, and in truth, I wager, it is not as the God of the Universe conceived either…when He first started scripting our story.
I cannot fathom the lengths that God would go to for me. I cannot wrap my mind around the Word of God. But if I am to believe what I read, then I conceive that God was alone and lonely in the fluid, murky void. I picture Him puzzling how to spend all the ages He had flowing from His hands, lifting them in a shrug, as He thought about me. I like to think He illustrated my frame, drew me with lovingkindness, mixing His spit with some dirt on the ground, listening wistfully for my laughter. He painted a smile across my face as He set my eyes to open. Then He breathed His breath into my lungs and poured His grace like liquid love into my dead bones and I came alive! Like a Father, I fancy He took my hands and hid them in His own as He began to waltz me around the Garden. I hear the music of breeze sifting through leaves, the rustle of time playing with grasses, and the warble of a bird isn’t lost on me. The world around me is pregnant with expectation, and birthing pains are squeezing a new day into existence. The gestational period, the waiting, comes to a sudden halt, however, and at once, there is a shift in the atmosphere.
Quickly the vision dissipates and a wisp of cold air blows like winter sneaking between cracks in the glass. I see through the haze, all that is broken and lost, and I feel the sadness of a Father Who has lost what He dreamt about when it was just being delivered. If I could envision the heart of God, which again I cannot comprehend, I imagine I would see a profound grief, the bereft barrenness of a once expectant hope for companionship, company, fellowship. I watch again as He mixes His love with dirt, breathes once more, and kisses fingertips in a Voila! sort of way. And again. And again.
I fathom meagerly in all my humanity, His fading hope and increasing frustration, as time after time, we fail His expectations. But He never lets it show. He never lets it go that He gives up. He never even sighs when He breathes life into yet another lung. He hopefully and eagerly blesses endless messes, believing even in the brokenness of His creation, a tiny shrug, a little shuffle, an occasional yawn, but He keeps spinning the wheel, molding the clay, remaking the vessel.
I wonder if He ever grew fed-up. If I could see Him now, would I see the exhaustion in His eyes from birthing thousands of generations of hopeless people? Would He sit down and rest His elbow on a jiggling knee, placing His chin in the palm of His hand, and would He surmise that He made a mistake? Would He wish He could go back to the drawing board and maybe paint a pretty sunrise? One with all the promise of a new day to be discovered, nothing faulty with the sun dripping itself over His canvas like orange juice spilling from a jug. The ebb and flow of a perfect rhythm as He waltzes with the tide like He once waltzed with me before I let Him down.
Deep inside, I bet I know the answers. The thought comes to me as if it is being inhaled from an internal source. A peace floods my dry bones and tears of joy spring to life. “Naw, I wouldn’t do it any differently, child,” He whispers. “I’d do it all over, again and again. I have and I will. For Eternity.”
John 3:16-17, ‘”For here is the way God loved the world—He gave His only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in Him will never perish but experience everlasting life. God did not send His Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it!”’ (TPT)
