"When I stand before Him face to face one
day soon, when I meet His eyes for the first time, will I experience a memory
in that gaze? Will there be familiarity? Will the intimacy that I have known with
Him in this life of earth resound with real substance through the corridors of
Eternity? Will I know Him?"
~from Deep Unto Deep, Dana Chandler
~from Deep Unto Deep, Dana Chandler
I have always
thought that seeing You face to face will be like coming home after a long,
long time, after a lifetime in fact... This passage made me think deeper and
think back... Back more than a year ago when I had these insights on weddings
and engagements and shared them to a few girlfriends who would have not minded
getting a multi-frame text message about random thoughts:
(This is of
course not the original text message since this is heavily rephrased and
paraphrased due to naturally imperfect memory and elaborated to lengthy
proportions due to the natural effects of staying up late.)
This life is not
merely a thing to be endured until we go on to the next. It's not as if we hold
our breath, going all cyanotic up to our hair-ends, just waiting to release it
when we finally meet Him. But sometimes, we act that way. Maybe it's just me but, some of us
Christians, think of
Heaven as a reward after a long life’s work. Now, I do not dare say it isn't
the gem-walled-golden-streets-gates-of-pearl paradise it's said to be in the
Bible. But that's missing the point. The reward is not Heaven. It's just where
He lives.
I would rather liken this life to a
sweetly lengthened engagement. A time of anticipation and longing when the
bride-to-be knows she is “Taken” but
has yet to be with her bridegroom.
The season of getting to know the passions, the desires, the life-breath of the
One she loves. Of drawing closer and closer to His heart, straining to feel His
heartbeat, yearning and waiting... A season of courtship.
This is a time
when I, the bride-to-be in this story, get busy preparing for that day when He
comes to claim me. Until then, I get absorbed in the dailyness of life, in
cultivating the dreams He put in my heart, in doing the things I believe He
would be pleased with, in making myself worthy of Him (!). Yes, I do not need
to earn His favor because it is already mine ever since I said "Yes"
to His grace. But sometimes, I can't help but try to show myself off. I try to
prove, mainly to myself, that I am called.
That I am His. Trying to prove that I
am worthy to be called His.
If you’re
wondering what it is exactly that I do, I’m talking about working for His love. I never went through the
going to church for appearances’ sake phase, but I had this long season when I
strived to satisfy my longing for Him by doing the work I believe he has
prepared for me to do. Sort of like, being my own wedding planner. There’s nothing wrong with being involved in
the details of one’s wedding but when the bride-to-be exhausts herself too much
that she just wants it to be over and done with so she can rest after the wedding, then there’s a problem.
Like
any other unmarried woman who dream (or even spare a thought, for those who
wouldn’t admit it) of their own wedding, I never imagine myself as a marathon
runner or a reluctant jogger dressed in sweats who made it just in time to
sprint down the aisle. I always thought I would walk (no, not step-close-step,
just walk) gracefully and maybe a tad nervously to my bridegroom. Now where did
the marathon runner come from? That disheveled and huffing state is sometimes
(okay, most times) how I imagine myself while going through Life as I know it.
I exhaust myself, vehemently denying it, up to
the point when I need to hang on to flimsy threads of the Passion I know He gave me. To my limited logic, I believe He will enable me and empower me
because He wants it done. That last
statement sounds dangerously close to what an employee would say about a boss
so I know I’m in big trouble at this point. And then I catch myself desperately
(but still trying to hide it) holding on to what little joy I have left. The
wedding is starting to look like a hazy light at the end of a tunnel instead of
the picture-perfect sunset-at-the-beach it’s supposed to be.
It is also at
this point when I slack off; when I realize I care too much and do too much.
The logical progression of this line of thinking is that I am not appreciated enough
so I better just stop trying too hard and show some indifference. Even with my
shallow understanding, I know He is not pleased with this attitude so like a
petulant child, I gulp the bitterness in and go back to work with indignant
pride. On the outside, nobody would know that inside I have my chin two notches
higher, my lower lip thrust out, and my eyes… sad and a little angry. I have lost
my Joy. And needless to say, working without joy kills the Passion too.
I
don’t give up without a fight so I try a last-ditch effort to give myself a second wind, by foolishly
trying to remind myself (obviously, I
try to help myself too much) that I love
what I’m doing, so I am joyful. And
the pitch becomes, I have to do this
because He has called me to do this
so I’m doing this for Him. Nothing explicitly wrong with that entire argument,
except that there are too many words
between “I love” and “Him”.
I do love Him! I still come into His
embrace. But only long enough to be comforted. I do not linger to wait for Him
to whisper those things I profess to seek. Great and unsearchable things I do
not know. The greatest of which is the simplest of all: that I have forsaken my
first love. I did not at first want to admit it. Because I would never forsake
my First Love. But I did.
I come to Him as if on an obligatory
visit, pausing only long enough to make sure I have my daily dose of His
anointing (in my own measuring cup). I would then wriggle out of His embrace to
do my Life Work, maybe no longer disheartened but not with a burning
heart.
Like those hardworking and persevering
people in Ephesus and those lukewarm people in Laodicea, I have loosened from
Your grasp. My heart was no longer captured by You.
With these tender musings, practical wisdom
graciously dawns on me, I realize that I
should have realized that if I spend all my time and energy on preparing
for the fabulous wedding I’ve always wanted, where did the courtship go? Wherever it
went, along with it went away the excitement and anticipation.
It is at this
point that I realize that the wedding after all is not that important. It is going to happen in the grand scheme
of things and I must be involved in it somehow. But, I might barely make it to
my own wedding if I kept on planning and
preparing for it. When I should be preparing for Him. I know He wants me to be involved, He wants to share with me
the joys of His heart and give me the royal privilege of walking in His name.
However, He yearns that I work with Him not for Him. There is indeed a
fine line between these two and for me to daily commit myself to working with
and not for Him, my heart has to be captured again. I have to be captivated by
His beautiful Love once again.
So after all
these realizations have been pondered and marveled upon, what do I do?
I go back to preparing for my wedding.
I do what I have
to do, still. I do not stop working. But this time, as you and You know I will
say, I have my Joy back. Not because I looked for it and found it but because He
fills me with it every time I stay a little longer in His embrace. I feel it
bloom in my heart every time I linger for a few more sweet seconds in His
grasp.
And I can go on
minding all the details of my wedding preparation, knowing that in the end it will all fade into the background as I
walk down that personally-designed garden aisle, my eyes fixed on Him who waits
to finally claim me as His bride. With a faithful hope in my heart that He
knows me, that He has known me. And yes, I know Him.
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