I am a bow on Your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break.
~Nikos Kazantzakis
Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother He named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of His hand He hid me; He made me a polished arrow; in His quiver He hid me away.
~ From Isaiah 49
Oh beloved, it is true.
Each of us is born with nearly god-like power. We were made in the image (not the facsimile) of our Triune Creator. And the problem is not so much that we have the power. The problem is that we have have none of the controls necessary within our selves to make these powers to do any good.
Instead, what happens, is that the weakest part of us – the flesh – quickly adapts and morphs and mutates to become a parasite to what we really are.
But the weakest part of us has a voracious appetite. Our Flesh (the old me) is like a 5 meter, 500 gram tapeworm that eats a 150 KG man, alive. Our flesh takes our godlike power and wastes it like a sailor wastes money on shore leave after six months at sea.
We thought we had everything… and we almost did. We thought we could push the boundaries of our little empire to the edges of the planet. Some of us throughout history have just about done it. But, as any finite supply of anything is, well – finite – we run out of gas. The glorious sun of our life starts to shrink and set.
And, this is about the best thing that can happen to us.
We say we must do all we can. Jesus says we must let God do all we can.
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
Can we see it?
As the gaseous ‘sun’ of our near-godlikeness fades; as the fuel is consumed, we contract. We become nothing more than a ball of grey ash. There is nothing left to power us from the inside. There is only stoney center, surrounded by dust.
We had missed it. We thought we had enough gas. But, this little sip of fuel (that we thought were huge) we were given was merely a glimpse of the real power we were too experience. It was like the substances within an egg that feed the bird until it hatches to new life. It was only designed to get us to this empty moment.
What?
Yeah.
“Wait? We say. “What is this? What am I experiencing?” As our confusion – as the flame of my old life fades, I begin to travel in a new orbit around the world. It is strange, and so cold at first.
Suddenly though, as the cold hard stone we have become rises above the plains of this world we come into contact with the Most Beautiful Light we have ever seen. It is The Son’s Light shining upon us.
SonLight. Warming. Enlightening. Empowering. Clarifying. Renewing. Completing. Saving.
OH! We thought the end of us was the death of us. Yes, it was. But not the death we feared. Rather, it was a death of all the things that really were not designed to stay with me. Just as a bird leaves its shell, or a butterfly escapes its cocoon. … We are freed to be free.
So, do you feel like your life is flaming out? Do you feel like your life is nothing but a dust-covered rock? Perfect. The moon you have become, is about to rise and see The Son shining with Love and every other good thing.
Moonrise. Wait for it. It is beautiful.
Afterword:
Jack (C.S.) Lewis shared the destruction of his own domain…. : “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused be wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”
~ CS Lewis, as His
