"Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory, and that you may discern the paths to its home?"
Job 38:19 &20.
Life untamed. Longing married to potential. Understanding and Intention in unison...
Recently, I had a moment which staggered me. I was reading Genesis 2 and found myself truly astonished at what was described as happening there.
Before Eve, before the rains fell and before Eden became Adam's official residence, The Lord takes the newly alive man and begins all that will be... in the wilderness.
As I mentioned in a recent post here, this is profoundly significant in the light of the commands God will give to Adam, and through him to his offspring, in respect to his purpose and role beyond the homestead God provided.
Listen to what the Lord says about this:
"Subdue (the earth) and have dominion over all the creatures of the sea, and the sky and the earth. Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have these as food" (Genesis 1:28-30).
And again:
"The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden to work and to keep it".(Genesis 2:15).
The provision of Eden and the creation of Eve was to bestow a home to mankind, but this was but the initial expression of what was meant to unfold.
Eden, then, provides the vital illustration of what was to become evident throughout the world - a realm where a living, renewing communion with God and His continual provision of oversight and care allowed humanity the scope to go outward in its engaging with a world needing, intentionally fashioned, to be shaped by what we were meant to bring upon it.
The fall cripples us in this calling.
With our becoming tethered to the ruin of sin, we see the likes of Cain, offering 'sacrifices' (both of his own rebellious devising and in the blood of his brother), building cities, and creating a lineage, but it is all beneath a 'mark' of the stain of murder and rebellion - a killing of the true, good nature of what had been intended in our poesessing such calling, hence, the march for ourselves is not only a rout, a flight from God, but an avalanche towards the flood and to the anarchy of babel.
The marvel is that God chooses to remain with us in spite of such ruin, urging us to leave the cave of our depravity to once again hear and see Him and thereby begin the return to all that was intended - and with such calling, comes both an ending of ourselves but a renewal of His intentions amongst us.
The Lord is the true ruler of monstrous force and impenetrable darkness.
"Can you draw Leviathan with a hook?" (41:1) or "Pierce Behemoth?" (40:24), the Lord asked Job. Such creatures embody a fierce, untethered strength, and yet the Lord can make and direct such force with but a word.
In this, we begin to see the purposes at work, that will, at His appearing, triumph both in humanity and then in all creation to bring about the original purpose of their existence - a realm "weighted" with the beauty of His nature.
This is the 'vision' which needs to comprehensively clothe and inspire us at this time.
Ours is a time of closure, when men are truly ruled by fear and respond in panic. Ours, indeed, is a day of Plato's cave, where the many choose the spectres upon the cavern walls to the raw beauty and fierceness of the world beyond those flickering illusions. Ours is certainly a moment when men are placing confidence in the 'arm' of their own invention to remedy or at least calm their fretful terrors over disease and death, to shield them from any and all threat, but where they shelter will prove to be a house of cards.
The Lord draws us, like Job, to see the magnitude of what He places in His work, to allow us to see His greatness and entire need of Him, for it is with Him alone that we become able to face what lies before us - it is with Him alone that we must address this moment, for all other devices will become as dust in the wind.
The Eden of His care is ours. The "wilderness" of His purposes is to be worked from that reservoir of abundance that is delivered in the flesh and life of Jesus Christ. Let us hold to that, so we may indeed encounter the powers of this day, not in ourselves, but in the strength He makes perfect in our weakness.
No comments:
Post a Comment