Worship without but within words…

From some years ago…

Sleeping… waken… open eyes… beautiful… lights dancing, but small lights. Seemingly in random motion, yet not… as I rest, relax, cease striving, I see pattern, beauty, praise. This is life itself… rather, Life Himself. Truth, beauty, goodness, love, peace, joy, music, praise, thanks… worship. Somehow, I have wakened inside worship.  How amazing.

“Lord?” I whisper, reverently, sacredly… awed.

And there is caress, a tender hug and enfolding… no words… direct impression of idea… He unspeaks… “Hush… be… I AM… you… be.” Can’t really translate the impression into words. That is as close as I can come. I was simply to exist in Him, and hush. So I did.

And then… I was inside of Someone with no boundaries or limits. Strange, to be inside One Who has no “outside”. But then He spoke, He uttered, and I flowed with that tide, that current from within Him to “other”, to “beyond” Him… He had spoken The Word.

And now, with infinite others, I was inside that Other… Holy Other… spoken forth from the First, from the Prime Mover… still dancing lights, all the same, identical pattern, Life Himself. Truth, beauty, goodness, love, peace, joy, music, praise, thanks… worship. No different, yet different, for now all this worship and praise had an Object, a Focus, the Other, the Prime Mover.

And This One, This Holy One, spoken forth from the Object of His Love, now spoke forth His Own First Word… it was, “Father”, as He wholly and entirely adored the Prime Mover. And again there was movement, the lights, we, flowed from Him, outwards, back to the Father. Amazing.

And then, between them, forevermore, remained that “word” that “bridge” the relationship between Them. And it grew, expanded, encompassing all and everything, in its own light, as This Too became Alive and Whole in and of Himself… the Relationship Between Them, as the Prime Mover spoke again… the word “Son.”

There was nothing to say, nothing to do, nothing to think, but to flow with this Life, this Love, these Words… There was no awareness of anything beyond the moment… the “I”… the “Now”… the “Here”… and Here, was, distinctly, worship.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oh, sweet irony. I do not wish to speak. I am yet There… and when I “hush”, when I now “relax” and allow Him to draw me into Him with “no distance”, “no apartness”, then my mind stops thinking, there is no more I/Thou, and I am there! Such… no, no words. The sweetness, the joy and light of that, is so immediate, so poignant, that it pierces the heart and soul. Seems strange to say… joy so great it is nearly painful in its intensity. A moment more… then work… then obedience…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

There are some who pray, who have discovered God in Silence. I never understood before. Trappists, Carthusians… My Jesuit father frequently said, if God did not command his obedience and service as a Jesuit, or if the Order ever chose to release him (as he had a request before them to do for years)… he sought to join a Carthusian monastery he knew. I asked why, and he said, “They are forever silent. They live ever in His immediate presence, and hear only Him. God grants me that only when I contemplate… but then commands me to teach. So I obey. But someday, if He grants my wish and reward, I shall be a Carthusian.”

I did not understand. I do now.

The Music! The Harmonies of the Silence! Would that I never again spoke or uttered a sound. The irony. It seems I very much am “my father’s child”. Now, that finally I desire no speech… now I am properly prepared to craft words. Now, it is time… to teach. Though all I would seek is solitude and silence.

 

Truth with Grace

This day, Gentle Reader, I’m going to do something a bit radical, a bit different. This will be a precipitous plummet from the unspeakably, incomprehensibly,  sublimely, divine… into the unbelievably mundane and concrete.

“The Word of God”

Just that phrase… alone… In the beginning was the Word… Then God said, “Let there be light…” Upholds all things by the word of His power…

So many… so many references to words. And what are we? What are we doing here? What are we called, expected, commanded to do here? What is our nature, our potency, our purpose?

There was a day, shortly after my own ordination, where somehow God came to me in that “fullness of majesty” form. I was set to trembling, not with fear… oh, it’s so hard to find a “right word” for this. But sometimes, He can come so clothed… so robed in His power and might…. that my “insides” just tremble, like when a booming bass drum passes me at a parade. An Isaiah 6 moment, I call these…

Look there… Look at Isaiah 6 for a moment… just up to the words, “here am I, send me!”

Binding, loosing… blessing, cursing… into the mouth, out of the mouth from the heart come words… over and over, Jesus and scripture proclaim the power intertwined with words spoken into the universe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Power, faith, will, time and space are all woven into our use of words.

You could spend a month, even a year, even more… pondering such things and still not fully plumb their depths.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Ordained to the Gospel Ministry”… that’s what the paper said. And suddenly, terribly, all this struck me with the force of a tidal wave. How could I DO this? How could I DARE this? How could I so presume? Minister, servant, messanger… of, to, and for the Word of God… Jesus. I was frozen, deer trapped in headlights paralyzed. I daren’t move, daren’t speak.

How could I ever dare to speak? Had my lips been cleansed? Perhaps so… but… but… I sully them so easily. My heart is frail and fallen, so my words.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Been there? Know these moments? I was struck with the ridiculous notion that now that I was fully equipped, empowered, and commissioned to do precisely what I’d been prepared for since childhood… only now, in this moment, did I feel fully the sense of my own inadequacy to do so.

On my own, from my own head, from my own heart… the words that came would often be those best left unspoken. And yet… my role in Kingdom was to be a “voice in the wilderness”, a voice available for Jesus to speak grace into the moments and connections of my relationships, the universe He crafts around my own timeline.

Been there?

I know you have, in some way, to some extent, some time or other. The Book of James, if nothing else, readily brings such questions to mind.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, there’s all that sublime and cosmic.

There’s the challenge brought by James the Apostle.

There’s (at least) my own sense of utter incapacity to surmount his challenge.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here’s the unspeakably mundane and simple…

If you, like I, struggle with “taming the tongue” and refraining from ever wounding another with words… try this…

Try to speak only what Jesus said, or WOULD say in public.

Can we not bear with that 24/7? Well perhaps try for one morning, or afternoon, at work. Or one session at Church. Or one hour at home over dinner.

One hour too long? (It has been for me!)

OK, try a half an hour, or ten minutes at a time. Try it for one phone call at a time.

Simple resolution: I will not speak words that Jesus did not, or would not speak publicly.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You have no idea how challenging this simple resolution is… or the extent to which it will constantly pull you into His mind, as you devote to Him your voice.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Do I succeed all the time!? LOL! Heaven’s no! I have my days, weeks, hours… my frailties, faults, and failures aplenty, yes. But the effort itself is pleasing to Him and draws more grace to your heart than otherwise. AND, this is a transforming exercise that takes this wildly ethereal and brings it nitty-gritty concrete and within our grasp.

Pray for me, Gentle Reader! So a work in progress. Grace to thee — The Little Monk

 

Man Push or God Pull — Pick One

This Advent morning I’ve wakened in the early predawn hours with what I can only describe as a tremendous sense of joy and gratitude.

I often rise on Sundays and pray for ministers who today will lend their voices to the Lord, that He touch hearts, minds, and souls of His beloved children.  I will, in fact, have that privilege today as I serve in place of a friend who is a bit under the weather at the moment.

I have this overwhelming sense of this “Good News” I come to bring. To “lift Jesus up, that HE draw all men to Himself”. I need not draw or push them, they need not work or beg or force that to happen. Christians, with such frequency, tragedy, and futility try to “climb to the mountaintop of God”, or “purify themselves to warrant His grace”, and so on and so on. My heart breaks in the presence of such misunderstanding.

I have a friend who once lamented: “On my best days my highest thoughts of God are yet so poor as to be slanderous. He receives my thoughts of Him as a loving parent receives the rough crayon pictures drawn by their little boy.”

And that’s TRUE, Gentle Reader. I cannot gainsay that. It’s like setting a matchflame alongside the inferno of the Sun, and imagining that to be anything but pathetic. Yes, I agree.

But here’s this incredible thing… this ebullient joy I’m filled with this morning, that I almost feel as if welling up inside me…

Because GOD HIMSELF knows all that… Because He Himself yearns for our intimacy and closeness… HE has done ALL the “heavy lifting”:

• He pulls… we need not push.
• He lifts… we need not climb
• He embraces… we need not thrash about to cling
• He offers… we need not beg
• He reveals… we need not dig

All He requires of us is trust and faith. The amazing thing about our matchflame, is that He Himself sucks it into the center of His heart, and melds us there… our limited little selves, utterly united with Him, and all that that means.

All that that means, though, is vastly more than our little selves can encompass, comprehend, understand, or express. Nonetheless, we certainly CAN “experience it”. We can live through it, know it, know that it is real, and be nourished by and grown from it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Today many of us will go off to worship, to praise, to fellowship with God and one another. All our words, all our songs, all our expressions of love and adoration, will… assuredly… fall pitifully short of doing justice to the glory that is Him.

But watch this… “Ecce!”… “Behold!”… “Look at this!”

KNOWING that, God has done this incredible thing that it is very easy to lose sight of. WE DON’T WORSHIP of our own selves. We cannot. We cannot create “good” apart from Him. It is He Himself, within us, in His Infinite Self who is the Holy Spirit, who is responding to Him with worship in the first place. We merely “ride along on His coat tails” anyway.

So… do you want to praise, pray, worship Him “worthily” (whatever that truly means)? Then “hush”, listen and ride along with the wordless Holy Spirit as HE worships the Father this day. When you feel your heart soar or flutter at an unexpected moment… go with it… don’t look about or read the bulletin to “quit being distracted”. Should tears come unbidden or silence come to your lips during the music, don’t shake yourself, wipe your eyes, and clear your throat for fear of embarrassment before neighbors. Should the sermon prompt in you the need to affirm some incredible truth, and you feel moved to go to the front and share that affirmation in words before a witness, don’t staunch that grace for fear of what the deacons will think. You’re not there for them, you’re there for Him, and He is here for all His family.

This is a wondrous day, Gentle Reader… Beloved Brethren. He came to declare “Jubilee” and fulfill all the requirements of the Law because we cannot and could not. Go forth this day and Celebrate that… with all the joy in your heart!

Grace to thee — The Little Monk

 

A Really Nifty Tool

For teachers/preachers and students of Scripture who enjoy finding new ways to access its richness…

“Back in the day” (slightly before the invention of fire, according to my grandkids)… my training taught me to analyze a New Testament passage thus:

1. Identify the text passage in a cohesive way
2. Identify the key verse, and (as far as possible) the key Word or Words that give meaning and significance to the passage as it speaks on this occasion.
3. Go to the Greek and identify those key words.
4. Use Young’s and/or Strong’s to find each and every use of those words in the New Testament.
5. Categorize those verses into clusters according to their connotations or “flavors”, their shades of meaning.
6. Prayerfully consider, and determine which category or flavor is right for the verse under study, and how the verse speaks into the meaning of the passage.

AFTER getting a sense of what God means by the text guided by the Holy Spirit and Scripture alone, first… THEN we may choose to consult commentaries or other expert systems on their opinions of interpretation.

There are many who go straight from English text (perhaps in several translations and versions), directly to commentaries… without involving any Greek. Dealing with a language so alien even in alphabet to our typical schooling, can be a bit 0ff-putting even for the most diligent student.

It takes considerable time, using paper, pen, and textbooks… to create the lists of every verse using a particular word in all its forms, and categorizing those meanings. I’ll not say it is “wasted” time, by any means, for different nuances of the word of God are flowing through the mind in the process. But there’s no denying that it is incredibly time-consuming.

I’ve been delighted to see the development of such wonderful tools for biblical scholars as have developed on the Internet. I have gravitated strongly towards Bible Gateway (at http://www.biblegateway.com) for its breadth of versions, flexibility of search, and tools and aids ready to hand. But earlier this year I was absolutely flabbergasted to find that with only a few clicks, I could do my word studies to my heart’s content… nearly a dream come true! When one can search out all the shades and nuances of a word in minutes rather than hours, it becomes vastly more joyful to spend that time in prayer and meditation over what the Lord is SAYING there, rather than slavishly scribing lists to sort and categorize. The secret lies in combining Bible Gateway with Teknia.com.

Finding that others are as delighted as I to find this process, I want to set it out here, in hope that it may bless you as well.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

1.  Look up your text in whatever versions you like (let’s say we are interested in John 10:14-18), and when you settle on your critical verse or passage…

 

2.  Pull up “Mounce Interlinear New Testament” in the “Full Chapter” mode on the page (don’t put it up as parallel, or this won’t work).

 

3.  Go to the “critical word” in the Greek, and Left-Click on it (which should highlight that Greek word throughout the chapter). (In this example, the Greek word “entole” (“command”) in verse 18.)

 

4.  Now, scroll your screen up and look carefully at the right hand side of the page, the sidebar there… You’ll see the click-able link that says, “See everywhere entolē appears in the New Testament via teknia.com.”

 

5. Teknia (clicking on the link) will give you statistics on the word, its forms, and  will list out all the uses of the word, in all its forms, with every verse (in full) and links to the passages.

 

6. Below the statistics will be a list of every instance of the word (in this case, all 67 instances of the Greek word “entole”) in the New Testament. AND… it will be the full verse, not the fragment seen in Young’s or Strong’s!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So that’s all there is to it. I have no idea if this will be as terrific of news for you as it was for me, but I use this process all the time, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. Back in the day, I had to be “very motivated” to invest the time and detailed focus it takes to do this kind of painstaking comparison. Now, all my excuses are gone, and I can pursue even the fleeting wonder about flavor and context of the words chosen by Jesus in a given setting.

May this be helpful to you in your studies! Grace to thee! — The Little Monk