Month: February 2025

“Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them.”
Jeremiah 1:17

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God is not above employing coercion to get what he wants. When he told Isaiah, “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please,” he meant it. I pity the fool who thinks otherwise. And that goes for friend and foe alike.

The road to the Promised Land is littered with the carcasses of those who thought they had a better idea. If the Exodus teaches us anything, it’s that you don’t ever just say “no” to the Almighty. Even Job, one of God’s special favorites, learns this the hard way. “No purpose of yours can be thwarted,” Job stammers, the last of his self-righteousness dribbling from him like a guy with a swollen prostate.

Things get especially interesting, however, when the squeeze to comply comes from within. When God annexes you, he downloads a third-party program that infects your soul and overrides all your previous command authorizations. Jeremiah recounts it this way: The Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth.” Ezekiel has a strikingly similar experience: He said to me, “Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. Then he said to me, “Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.” You may like the menu options or you may not, but you’re going to eat what you’re served.

And that’s when the real trouble begins. Once the download is complete, once the Word and Spirit are embedded in your soul, you are not your own. You are God’s property and an instrument for his purposes. In Ezekiel’s case, the mandate came immediately after the scroll entrée. So I ate it, he recounts. He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them.” As if this command wasn’t forceful enough, God adds, “You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen.” Ezekiel has been called, culled, consecrated, and commanded. And when God plucks and programs you for his purposes, resistance is futile.

Although many have tried. King David gave it a shot: I will put a muzzle on my mouth while in the presence of the wicked, he vows. So I remained utterly silent, not even saying anything good. Apparently this doesn’t go so well. He quickly adds, But my anguish increased; my heart grew hot within me. While I meditated, the fire burned. Then I spoke with my tongue. Jeremiah reports a virtually identical experience: But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. The inner pressure becomes intolerable. I am weary of holding it in, confesses the prophet. Indeed, I cannot. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

This experience isn’t limited to the Old Testament boys. The death and resurrection of Jesus made Mount Sinai look like a backyard barbecue. The apostles are literally beside themselves as the newly unleashed Holy Ghost transforms them from uneducated oafs and pietistic prunes into God-smacked, radioactive oracles. When Peter and John are ordered to stop speaking of the risen Jesus, they reply, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Paul confesses the same thing. I am compelled to preach, he declares. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel. Let it flow or you’re gonna blow.

None of this makes much sense to those for whom God is a vague notion or faith is an add-on. How can you explain spiritual compulsion to the religiously content? Many years ago, I was a part of a small prayer meeting. After a series of tame, sapless prayers, I earnestly expressed to the group a dissatisfaction with our spiritual sleepiness and my desire for a consuming visitation. One of the participants, a visiting pastor, looked at me, incredulous, and exclaimed, “What do you want, to glow in the dark?” Most Christians wouldn’t be as blunt, but sometimes I wonder if they have ever experienced—or would even want to experience—hardcore spiritual annexation.

I myself am not sure what to make of all this. My default setting seems to be discontent, not in the sense that I’m dissatisfied with what I have so freely been given, but rather that I feel distressingly underutilized. God has poured more into me than I am pouring out, and the pressure behind the dam—whether it be impatience, ignorance, or disobedience—is at critical levels. I know that there are winters of discontent as we wait for God’s timing, but I’m getting tired of treading the pilgrim way in snowshoes.

What brings me a modicum of comfort is knowing that mine is not a singular malady. For 2000 years Christians have grappled with a God who chooses men and women to display his glory. And who is equal to such a task? asks Paul. To this end, he writes, I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me. And this is also my comfort—though a scant one. This inward pressure that is consuming me is a good thing. As Paul reassures us, it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. God is my problem.

Take heart, O agitated soul. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. Just don’t get in his way.

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Galatians 5:25

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The Holy Ghost is one crazy bird. Unpredictable, line smudging, doctrine shrugging, shape shifting—he’s the renegade of the Godhead, a scofflaw, the mind-bending wildfire of the divine concoction. Just when you think you’ve got him pegged he pulls a one-eighty on you, leaving you and your comfortable theology in the dust.

The Bird is God’s improvisation master. The Father slaps down the back beat; the Son builds the syncopated motif; and the Bird careens up and down the scale like he’s possessed. The Bird doesn’t have to play any one note at any one time or place. His only rule is that it makes music. The Father and Son trust him implicitly. They’ve been playing together for a long time and know how it goes. The Bird knows what the boys want; they want him to fly, because when he flies they fly with him.

And the Bird, he feels every beat of the Father’s heart like it was his own. And the Bird tunes his pipes to the Son’s harmonics which hold the ache and joy of the whole world in them. And the Bird lets himself be possessed by the Father and Son, and in that surrender he becomes them and they become him. And when they become each other the Bird is free, free from notation, free from even the music itself. And the Bird soars, wails, growls, screams, bubbles, rumbles, simmers, stabs, and caresses. And as the Bird twists and plummets and veers, heedless of all but the song, the Father and Son are caught up in his fathomless flight and rise with him, raptured into self-transcending glory.

This is the way it’s been from the before the beginning. The Father, the Son, and the Ghost. Theirs is the music of the spheres that folks used to hear a long time ago, the soundtrack of the universe. But then the theorists moved in and turned it into Tin Pan Alley, jingles by number. The explanations came. The how-to books were written and the floor was pasted with colored diagrams. And even to those who still wanted to dance it felt like calisthenics to the plunk of an out-of-tune piano.

But the Bird’s still crazy after all these years, baby. He’s still breaking the rules and making music with the YHWH Trio. They mostly play transitional venues now, but every once in a while they’ll do a surprise gig in the big houses. You can catch them if you watch for them. But the Bird is a free spirit so you’ll have to keep on your toes if you want to hear him play.

Just remember, if you happen to catch a gig, the Bird takes requests only from the Father and his right-hand man.

In the last days scoffers will come . . . They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”
2 Peter 3:3-4

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Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

So it seems.

But they again reset the doomsday clock. It’s now 89 seconds to midnight, one second closer than before. It’s the closest the clock has been to midnight in its 78-year history. The new clock time, we are told, signals that the world is on a course of unprecedented risk, and that continuing on the current path is a form of madness.

One second madder.

Yes, but we shall barrel on, white knuckled, our souls shrill with maniacal fervor. We can’t help ourselves. We pluck the plastic fruits from trees cultivated from that one whose first harvest inevitably led us here, to this broad avenue of the world

which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new

believing—because we must—that this is the everlasting kingdom, our hands clamped over our ears to silence the voice that cries

“All flesh is grass
And all its glory is like the flower of the field”

hoping against hope that tomorrow follows tomorrow without end and praying against the shadow that haunts us, that one day, perhaps soon,

tomorrow will never come.

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
Psalm 63:2

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Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest thinkers of thirteenth-century Europe. An Italian Dominican, he was the foremost figure in Scholastic philosophy and theology. His prodigious work championed both faith and reason. In terms of influence, he ranks with Augustine and Luther. Aquinas was a heavyweight of spiritual commitment and intellectual force.

But something happened that upended his life. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints relates the account:

On the feast of St. Nicholas [in 1273, Aquinas] was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.”

Aquinas discovers what many intelligent people discover about God: encounter obliterates analysis. Philosophy, theology, and doctrine—even if true—collapse in the face of divine presence. Job finds this out and exclaims, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” The Apostle Paul (another intellectual powerhouse) learns this for himself on the road to Damascus and later writes: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Paul dismisses  even the Mosaic law—of which he was an expert—as a mere shadow of the things to come. The reality, he now insists, is Christ. Everything else is chaff.

This is a lesson some of us are slow to learn. We can think of the gospel as a collection of bullet points to be made or that the power of the good news is in superior arguments or reasonable conclusions. But no one encounters God through debate or doctrine. The scriptures themselves are devoid of divine presence. As Jesus tells the Jewish leaders, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and These are the very scriptures that testify about me.” The presence of God shows everything else for what it is: just so much straw.

The only thing that Christians have to offer the world is our testimonies. It’s not sound arguments or the four spiritual laws but, as John tells us, what we have seen and heard. It’s fine for us to share what we believe, but the power is in sharing what we have actually experienced. The world needs our actual witness not our biblical hearsay.

This is, of course, exactly what God has always had in mind. “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord through Isaiah, “that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.” Upon his resurrection, Jesus reminds his disciples of all that has transpired, then tells them, “You are witnesses of these things.” And just before his ascension, he promises his assembled followers, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses.” Paul understands his whole ministry as a testimony, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. Paul is a witness because he himself has experienced reconciliation with God through Jesus, whom, by the way, Paul had previously been persecuting. Demonstration disarms dogma.

Whether or not others believe our testimony is a different matter. They have a testimony too. Their experiences are just as real and they are witnesses just as Christians are. The prophet Isaiah actually invites them to testify: All the nations gather together and the peoples assemble . . . Let them bring in their witnesses to prove they were right, so that others may hear and say, “It is true.” This is not about who has the strongest argument, but about who has seen and heard the truth.

Sometimes the testimony about Jesus is welcome, sometimes not. The world may distort the facts of the gospel in order to refute it (the straw man fallacy) and often may attempt to discredit or silence the testimony altogether. But those, like Aquinas, who have experienced the presence of the living God will be his witnesses, confirmed by the Holy Spirit, and vindicated upon the return of Christ. The rest of it, including our own lives, is but straw.

“I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
John 1:34

“Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they were created.”
Revelation 4:11

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Most people of a certain age remember Rube Goldberg’s drawings of delightfully convoluted mechanisms. Goldberg designed ridiculous contraptions to accomplish the simplest of tasks. His machines consist of a series of simple devices, each triggering the next, which eventually achieve a goal. Our delight is not in their efficiency but in their silliness. Goldberg’s machines are outlandish and unnecessary, but that’s the whole point. That’s why we like them.

The scientific mind has little sense of humor. Its mandate is to explain, and so it flounders without reasonable explanations. The scientist assumes that everything is necessary (cause/effect) and that the great task is to figure out why. It would be scientific blasphemy to admit flapdoodle into the system. For science there is no such thing as true impracticality or absurdity; there are only undiscovered justifications. Ironically, this rather pinched perspective has led scientists to create a number of their own Goldberg variations.

The evidence, however, overwhelmingly suggests that God is a Rube—or at least moonlights as one on his day off. Within the universe’s meticulous latticework of interdependence, there are countless cases of sheer creative excess. Of course, it would be impossible to point them all out, but divine frivolity could be organized into a few general categories.

Beauty is the greatest enigma. Science has tried to make it a utilitarian feature, but in most cases beauty is not a functional necessity. The physics of a sunset do not depend on whether or not we find the phenomenon pleasing. A world without Van Gogh or Beethoven would no doubt be a poorer place, but we would be hard pressed to explain in scientific terms exactly why. The profusion of flowers in a meadow may attract bees, but that’s not what makes them lovely. We may be able to describe certain features that make something beautiful to us (variation, symmetry, etc.) but explaining why those features appeal to us in the first place is another matter. Beauty is about beholding, not comprehending. The poet W. H. Auden acknowledges the frivolous nature of the beaux-arts when he confesses, Poetry makes nothing happen. Or to quote the slightly less polished Rolling Stones, I know it’s only rock and roll, but I like it. Utility is a transaction. Beauty is a bonus.

Another category is the just plain ostentatious. If beauty aims for proportion, ostentation goes for overkill. It’s the crazy aunt who wears too much lipstick and jewelry. There are so many examples of frivolity in the natural order it’s almost commonplace. There’s the peacock with his pimping tail and his spiky aquatic counterpart, the lionfish. There are the mesmerizing murmurations of starlings or the lyrebird of southeastern Australia that can mimic the sounds of all the other birds he hears around him—and the sounds of chainsaws and camera shutters too. And the mandrill with its prismatic proboscis. And the flamboyant cuttlefish whose morphing patterns would be at home in Times Square. Here’s to the showoffs of the world whose mantra is Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! When it comes to fashion, attitude is everything.

Sometimes the frivolous takes the form of the quirky. In these instances it seems that the creator is either doing some beta testing or he’s simply trying to use up extra parts. The electric eel is a good example. It’s like God put an 800-volt battery in a sock then threw it in the water to see what would happen. And no list of the peculiar would be complete without mentioning the platypus. There is absolutely no excuse for the platypus. Even God can’t explain this one, which means he’s not even going to try.

A subcategory of the quirky is the starkly alien. Whereas the quirky are odd combinations of otherwise familiar elements, the alien are so foreign to our sensibilities as to seem otherworldly. The tiny tardigrade is nearly invincible, able to survive extreme temperatures, extreme pressures, air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation—that would kill other forms of life. The earth’s oceans are home to some of the most alien creatures of all. The very intelligent octopus who has a central brain and smaller brains in each of its eight legs. The most otherworldly creature of all may be the jellyfish. What to make of such an exotic being? As Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Yes, indeed.

Perhaps the most astonishing frivolity of all, however, is the incomprehensible vastness of space. No one knows the extent of the physical universe, and what we do know defies meaningful context. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is about 100,000 lightyears across and contains at least 100 billion stars. The size of the entire universe is unknown, but the observable universe contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies. Some calculations suggest that there could be around 10,000 stars for every single grain of sand on earth. This has led some to insist that there must be other intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, that it would be the height of human arrogance to think that we are unique in such a vast place. But why not? The average house in America is 2,300 square feet. Does a family need that much space to survive? The entire population of the world—8.2 billion—could fit (with room enough for each person to spin around with their arms extended) in an area the size of the big island of Hawaii. Does this mean that the earth is too big for us?

What it does mean, as do all these other examples, is that we are surrounded by the frivolous acts of God. In fact, since necessity did not compel God to make anything at all, that he did so for the sheer delight of creating itself, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that everything that exists, from the amoeba to the angel, reflects the gaiety of God. Humankind matters, not because God had to make us, but precisely because he didn’t.

I, for one, am glad he did.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard
so that you also may have fellowship with us.
1 John 1:3

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The heavenly throne room is a crowded place. At the very center, of course, is God, who is so blindingly resplendent that John can only describe him as the one seated on the throne. Next to him is the risen Son, depicted as a Lamb looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne. Near the center of the throne hover the terrifying four living creatures with their strange personas, numerous eyes, and multiple wings. Circling these creatures are twenty-four elders whose main job, it seems, is to throw off their crowns and fall down in worship whenever God does something cool (which is a lot). Around them are a sea of angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. And surrounding all these is a great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, tribe, people and language. It’s a packed house for the ongoing premiere of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Kind.

The scriptures are emphatic that God’s desire is for a people. And although occasional superstars arise when the situation calls for it, it’s the team that matters. Redemption is about bringing the exiles home. As the psalmist notes, God sets the lonely in families. The singular becomes plural; the me becomes the we.

This is more than simple club membership. Jesus tells his anxious disciples, “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” The gift of the Holy Spirit to believers is not simply a seal of salvation or the presence of Christ in each redeemed heart, it is the antidote to existential loneliness. Unlike unbelievers who are fundamentally isolated as individual beings, all Christians share the very same Spirit. Paul writes, We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. The Holy Spirit realizes the purpose of Jesus “that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.” The kingdom of God is community.

Which is why it seems strange that prayer is often a lonely experience for me. I’m referring now to private times, of which Jesus speaks: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” I have found that when I am visiting the Holy of Holies—where I am bidden to come—that I can experience loneliness. How, I have wondered, can being in the very presence of God provoke a sense of detachment and even lack? Shouldn’t it be precisely the opposite? In God’s presence should I not experience utter completeness?

Only recently I have begun to understand the problem—or, rather, to understand my problem—which is, quite simply, a misunderstanding of the gospel. I was born (again) into a distinctly American gospel which champions a personal relationship with Christ. To be saved, I was told, all I need to do is ask Jesus into my life as my personal Lord and savior. He will download into my soul all that is necessary for salvation. And although I may find encouragement among other Christians, I do not need them to be saved. As far as my salvation goes, fellowship with the saints is optional. With the American gospel, each believer gets his own personal pan Jesus.

The late Harold Bloom, whom I have mentioned before, begins his study The American Religion with the following observation:

Freedom, in the context of the American Religion, means being alone with God or with Jesus, the American God or the American Christ. In social reality, this translates as solitude, at least in the inmost sense. The soul stands apart—free to be utterly alone with a God who is also quite separate and solitary.

This deep-seated assumption has been the source of my spiritual disquiet. I have been coming to the throne room expecting my personal relationship with God to be sufficient, only to discover how much I need the saints. I need the fellowship of believers to know God as I long to know him—to know him as he wants me to know him. Intimacy with God does not mean solitude; intimacy with God means a crowd.

And it’s not just our current Christian neighbors. My spiritual loneliness will not be completely healed until all the saints of history join together (that great multitude that no one can count) in one everlasting celebration. Our saintly forebears, too, await that great day. These were all commended for their faith, the book of Hebrews tells us, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made complete. We’re talking the mother of all reunions.

I’m learning that intimacy with God is not about solitude. Intimacy with God is a jubilant, jabbering, jam-packed, Jesus jamboree.

(I hope we get a few quiet times, though.)

Get wisdom; get insight; do not forget.
Proverbs 4:5

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I remember my name. I remember my address. I remember my kids’ birthdays. I remember my anniversary. I remember my phone number. I remember where I live. I remember to pay my bills. I remember to turn off the lights when I leave a room. I remember Elvis. I remember how to spell Mississippi. I even remember the Alamo.

Like everybody else, I can space things out, but those things are usually transient or trivial. Rarely do I forget the truly important stuff.

Except when I do. I can forget the most important things of all, and more often than I’d like to admit. Recently, the scriptures reminded me of something that I already knew very well—but had forgotten. (It’s funny how that works.) That triggered an avalanche of other spiritual realities that I tend to forget. Here are my top ten:

1 The battle is not against flesh and blood.

I keep thinking that if I could just call down fire on those idiots then everything would be fine, but firing on the wrong target accomplishes nothing except making me look like the idiot they think I am.

2 God does not judge by appearances.

I do it all the time. But as God told Samuel, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”There’s no Botox for the heart.

3 Everything comes down to God’s mercy.

Paul reminds the Romans: It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. Why do I always assume that the secret to bearing fruit is my spiritual zeal and work ethic? God is the I AM not IBM.

4 Truth is not consensus.

According to the proverb, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. As a general rule, the majority is probably wrong. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. There is truth and there is everything else.

5 Nothing is impossible for God.

For the one who believes, there is no such thing as a lost cause. Even a lost cause isn’t a lost cause. In fact, it’s never too late to pray, even if it’s too late. If he has to, God can change the past. Note to self: God is GOD.

6 God forgives.

Yes, I am a repetitious transgressor. Yes, I know better. Yes, I often choose unrighteousness for entertainment purposes. It is an inexcusable disdain for the sacrifice of Jesus and deserves death. But even more outrageous is this promise: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. All the time; every time.

7 All things work for good.

In the words of the Bob Marley song, Don’t worry about a thing. Every little thing is gonna be all right. Marley may have been stoned out of his mind most of the time, but he got that one right. God concurs. “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” The shiitake may hit the fan, but there’s a creamy risotto on its way.

8 God hears prayer.

David wrote the most earth-shattering lyric of all time: The Lord hears when I call to him. The fact that the holy God, the righteous creator of all things, who lives in unapproachable light, actually listens to us is mind-boggling. The Lord says so himself: “Call to me, and I will answer you.” He may not always go with my suggestions, but whether I’m worshipping or whining, he never ignores me.

9 The wicked will not triumph.

Sometimes it’s hard to watch the beautiful people and glitzy mobsters run roughshod over the righteous and the good. They mock the saints, pervert justice, and take all the best stuff for themselves—and with seeming impunity. When I tried to understand all this, confessed David, it troubled me deeply. But we are told plainly: Fret not yourself because of evildoers, and be not envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future; the lamp of the wicked will be put out. The lowly saints definitely have got the better deal.

10 Christians have the cheat code.

The rules of the game can seem stacked against the saints. The Revelation informs us that there will be a time when the team in the white hats (and robes) is actually going to lose. The Beast will be allowed to wage war on the saints and to conquer them. But here’s the thing: believers don’t play like the world plays. We cheat. The game designer is our Lord and has given us an unfair advantage. It’s simple. If God is for us, who can be against us? Nobody. The answer is nobody.

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds;
tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
Deuteronomy 11:18