Wading through life

… and to all a good night.

It’s a season of miracles, people. Ask God for them… and expect them.

My man AW Tozer delivered another stellar devotional today:

The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to restore the lost soul to intimate fellowship with God through the washing of regeneration. To accomplish this He first reveals Christ to the penitent heart (1 Cor. 12:3). He then goes on to illumine the newborn soul with brighter rays from the face of Christ (John 14:26; 16:13-15) and leads the willing heart into depths and heights of divine knowledge and communion. Remember, we know Christ only as the Spirit enables us and we have only as much of Him as the Holy Spirit imparts. God wants worshipers before workers; indeed the only acceptable workers are those who have learned the lost art of worship. It is inconceivable that a sovereign and holy God should be so hard up for workers that He would press into service anyone who had been empowered regardless of his moral qualifications. The very stones would praise Him if the need arose and a thousand legions of angels would leap to do His will. Gifts and power for service the Spirit surely desires to impart; but holiness and spiritual worship come first.

This is kind of the lesson our church body has been learning this past  year. We’ve longed to be His workers and there certainly are things we’re doing. But the Holy Spirit had some work to do within us to draw us deeper into Christ first. We’re learning the lost art of worship and we’re coming into intimate fellowship with our Creator and Lover.

There’s such a peace that comes when in communion with God in all His manifestations: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Right now, I could just tip back in my chair, breathe in deeply and fall asleep in His arms. All is well because the most magnificent being in the universe has His eyes set upon me.

From Braveheart, this is toward the end when Wallace is about to be betrayed again by Robert the Bruce, though Bruce wasn’t actually in on the betrayal this time. Hamish is trying to talk Wallace out of going to meet Bruce and the other nobles because he smells a trap.

William: Look at this. We’ve got to try. We can’t do this alone. Joining the nobles is the only hope for our people. You know what happens if we don’t take that chance?

Hamish: What?

William: Nothing. (walks back to his horse)

Hamish: I don’t want to be a martyr.

William: Nor I. I want to live. I want a home, and children, and peace.

Hamish: Do ya?

William: Aye, I do. I’ve asked God for these things. It’s all for nothing if you don’t have freedom.

Right there at the end was the part that really jumped out to me… the whole “I’ve asked God for these things…” part.

I’m no Wallace, but I connected with him in his desire for status quo “life”. He wanted the “good life” as much as the next guy… but the situation called for something different. The situation called for war, not rest.

Early in the movie, when he returns to his homeland for the first time as an adult and starts rebuilding his home in hopes of courting a love and starting a family, men of the town appealed to him to join a revolt against the English. He wasn’t interested, though. He saw what fighting did to his father (it killed him) and didn’t desire a premature death. He wanted love and security.

Many years and many bloody battles later, he still had that same desire. “I want to live. I want a home, and children, and peace… I’ve asked God for these things.” he says. But in his asking, God showed him something. He showed him “It’s all for nothing if you don’t have freedom.”

On an utterly minute scale, I guess that’s kinda where I’m at. I want all that stuff… but more than anything I want true freedom—in my life, in the life of my friends and family, in the state of Michigan. It’s not that these interests are necessarily mutually exclusive for everyone, but I think some are called to fight for one before they can experience the other. And in the case of Wallace and many other warrior poets, some are called to die for one so others can experience the other.

Yet, even though my inner man wants to pursue that freedom with all the barbaric tenacity displayed my Wallace and the Scots, and written of by Erwin McManus in The Barbarian Way, I find my outer man still much like the Wallace of early in the movie, perched atop an old thatched-roof house, preparing and hoping for “home, and children, and peace.”

It’s not that Wallace was wrong is doing so. It’s just that the times called for war. And that war found him soon enough.

I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

Neo, addressing the enemy in the last scene of The Matrix.

From the Indianapolis Star:

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.

Last week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”

“The Arctic is screaming.” Sound familiar? Romans 8:19-22:

“For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

Things are going to start getting really interesting, especially when God starts “reveal[ing] who His children really are.”