Thursday, November 23, 2006

The Mighty Ones and The Blanket

Its been awhile since I posted last and for this I apologize. Perhaps it was my recent foray into learning Chinese that finally forced me into doing some typing in English. I mean 一个男人 can get a little flustered trying to communicate with his own brain after awhile. It is cool though to start to recognize some basic characters.
In the meantime I have also had some time to ponder things and one of them was the word God spoke to me a few years back regarding the prayers of the saints. It was during one of those open prayer times that Wes Campbell loved so much (Korean style, he and Gord called it) when some people were given the mic to pray outlouder. As I listened to the prayers there was a noticeable bent to them all and as I wondered on this and struggles to enter in I heard the Spirit say," What is this fear that fills the hearts of the mighty??" Suddenly it became obvious. What I was hearing was the same sound that I had heard coming from my lips so many times. It was desperation. It was a faithless begging. I believe that in the heavenly tongue they refer to it as whining. At least the Buddhists have the good sense to mask over this ritual with a lot of clapping and clanging of gongs etc to awaken the desired ancestors before they get to the heart of the issue. We on the other hand raise this baleful moaning that reminds me a lot of what I hear from the back of the minivan when we say that we are not stopping at Burger King this time. Its pathetic. Especially when I remember all the times I have done this.
It is really quite easy to slip into this mode, frighteningly easy actually. All it takes is a steady diet of worldly opinions to slap some mud on the internal gyroscope. Then to attempt to bring some balance back we glop some human reasoning (my personal fave) on the other side. Since this must be done in equal proportion to the mud on the opposing pole we have to measure it out with some judgments and squint through vague perceptions to get it all right. When the whole mess begins to wobble like a cheap tire our only recourse seems to be the aforementioned whine. I don't know about you, but personally I have never found this approach to right the gyro.
What does work, on the other hand is to pull the wobbly tire over to the side of the road and proceed to a full stop. This may be difficult since braking with said tire is somewhat tenuous. Once stopped though, the rebalancing can begin. Firstly we have to look in the mirror (rearview mostly) of the Word so as to pick out the beam that has caused the vague perceptions and judgments. This will allow a sudden, sometimes overwhelmingly, new view of things. Then we grab the hose of God's word, crank up the pressure and let the ol' gyro have a good blast. I've found that if I set the nozzle to praise it gets those first layers off with wonderful ease. The clingy bits will usually succumb to a scrub brush with some soapy promises on it, and voila, you have a shiny clean gyro.
The cool thing about the gyro is that it can only get spinning with some help from Dad and after cleaning it off it becomes surprisingly easy to see that Dad really loves to give it a mighty rip (c'mon dads, you all like too showboat for the kiddies, dontcha??) The other thing is that you realize that you are a son/daughter that is dearly loved. You realize that you too are mighty, simply because you are mightily loved by Dad. It changes our prayers, our perceptions and our personality dramatically. It will even change me to the point where other people will want to be around me, now that's dramatic!
When you pray from this place the first thing you will notice is that the piercing whine no longer fits, and instead of sounding like pious zeal it will simply sound like what the angels have been hearing.....whining.
Children of God let's never forget who we are and Whom we serve. It's great to be a kid!!!


Oh yeah, p.s. : the blanket is that burden that wants to bury you in comfortable apathy and tell you its alright to let the gyro sit there, unused.