Lord, what a change within us one short hour spent in thy presence will Avail to make! What heavy burdens from our bosoms take! What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; we rise, and all, the distant and the near, stands forth in sunny outline brave and clear; we kneel, how weak! We rise, how full of power! Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong or others, that we are not always strong, that we are ever overborne with care, that we should ever weak or heartless be, anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, and joy and strength and courage are with thee!
~Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench (1807-1886)
Sing to the Lord, all the earth! Tell of His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, His marvelous works among all the peoples! For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are [found] in His presence; strength and joy are in [found] in His dwelling place.
~ from 1 Chronicles
Inhale beloved. Smell that? It’s Him. Breath deep.
There is for us, a tremendous battle to believe. But once we have yielded to the Truth, The Truth will not give back the ground He has taken. He wants to invade our being, and make the inner place of the man we are – the inner sanctum of His Presence.
And surely, this One is not lonely. For the universe is but a stage for His greatness – and all creation is in Him and with Him and for Him. No, this One who has no real need for us, shows us the purity of His Love by taking the weakest of dwelling places and remaking it into a fortress of His goodness and joy and peace and strength and hope. For a man yielded to, and filled with the presence of the Almighty, is no longer a potential victim of the enemy. He is, rather, whole and full and without any need to go any other place.
As we allow it, the very G_d of all creation brings all of Who He Is to bear on our situations and soul and body and spirit. And one of the most wonderful things G_d brings along with Him is His joy. What is joy? Joy is the manifestation of the strength of G_d. And this strength is the product of the very core of who G_d is.
Love.
Oh the joy and strength of a child who simply knows and rests and runs under the conviction that he is the dearly beloved of his Father!
Fear sloughs off like an old skin.
Strength grows beyond measure.
Freedom hits us like a bomb.
Truth flows in our minds.
Righteousness begins to be a matter of course.
Joy is no longer simply available. Joy now super-abounds, for we know there is no end and no change to the Source of the joy in which we now live.
And we begin to actually, truly, and powerfully Love other people.
Can we see it? In the manifold wisdom of G_d, the victory He consummates in our lives has both everything and nothing to do with us. For us, and for eternity, the victory is for us and our personal relationship with the most stunningly, perfectly Beautiful Being in the universe. But really, we see that the victory is equally not about us at all. For we, in becoming the joyful dwelling of the most Joyful Person ever, become a platform for this Person to share His Joy with others – through us.
Now, surely, the manifold wisdom of G_d is deeper than we can ever (yet) hope to ever understand. But, in the part where none of His work is about us, we still get the exceedingly wonderful privilege of being part of the miracle of changing other people’s lives through the Love and Strength and Joy He pours through us. We get to en-joy HIS work, as though it were us doing it – even though we never could have done the work in the first place.
Stuff like this smells like victory. Smells like Him! Oh my, what a delight to be in the Presence of Love Himself!
