I have another blog, a private one, called Serendipitous Intersections, which features one post every day of the year. The gist of the blog is, it's a melding of three other 365-day "devotionals", one the famous work of Oswald Chambers and two others containing the work of George MacDonald. What I do is, I juxtapose the daily readings, usually in excerpt form but sometimes in whole, from the three sources and then add a heading of my own intended to unite them in a single concept or angle.
Here in Armenia to teach a two-week course, I lead the morning devotions. I decided to use some of my blog posts as material for my "meditations". I specifically took those posts in which the excerpts from Oswald Chambers include a direct Scripture citation. Here is one I shared on Thursday, October 10th. First I will give the title from my "Serendipitous Intersections" blog (which I did not include in my talk to the students and staff). In the meditation, parts taken from Chambers or MacDonald, whether in direct quote or paraphrase, will be in bold font with "[Mc]" afterwards for MacDonald and "[OC]" for Oswald Chambers.
(Based on my April 3rd post in Serendipitous Intersections: Sanctifying need, transfiguring response: to know the things that belong to our peace-- which is itself based on the April 3rd readings in "My Utmost for His Highest" [Chambers], "Diary of an Old Soul" [MacDonald], and reading #94 in "365 Daily Readings from George MacDonald", [MacDonald, edited by C.S. Lewis].)
Let's read Luke 19: 41-44 (read). "If only you had known...!" "Jesus had entered Jerusalem but a strange god was there" [OC], a god who ruled the heart of the people, a god who would not see and wouldn't let the people see when their Redeemer and eternal King had come into their city. Jesus wept. "If only you had known the things that belong to your peace...." It's an unusual phrase--the sense is, if only you had realized what it truly is that corresponds to, makes for, pertains to your true blessedness. If they had known, they would have greeted, invited, begged Jesus to come in, to stay forever, to take up His own kingdom! If they had known, then they'd also have known that they themselves possessed nothing but this one thing: the capacity to ask, to say to Christ just as Christ Himself was so soon to say to His Father: "Not our will but Yours be done!'
Even in our poverty "the making of any request brings us near" to the Father [Mc]. Christ says, "Ask and it will be given to you, that your joy might be full." The apostle James tells us that we do not have because we do not ask. To ask is to come near, to receive the Giver. A favorite author of mine writes: Anything large enough for a wish to light upon, is large enough to hang a prayer upon: the thought of Him to whom that prayer goes will purify and correct the desire. [Mc]
Asking "belongs to your peace"!
When we we have faith to ask, and faith to receive, then God will give us both the easy and the hard in life [OC], as He did in the life of His Own holy Son. Christ stood one day before the grave of Lazarus and He prayed, "Father, I know you always hear me..." and the Father did indeed hear His Son that day and answer, to the stunned astonishment and joy of everybody there. But on a different day Christ asked, "Let this cup pass from me, if it is possible", and the Father said: No. No, for the sake of the whole world's salvation, it is not possible. But in every situation the Son accepted the Father's answer-- be it "yes" or "no" -- as the one that was perfect and, ultimately, to His Own perfect joy and exultation in the Father's glory.
But over Jerusalem, Jesus weeps: "If only you had known what belongs to your peace!"
Do we know? Do we ask? Are we ready to receive? Whatever it may be, at the Father's perfect hand? If so, then, as Hebrews 12 tells us, let us cast aside whatever gets in our way, along with the sins that bog us down, and let's run with endurance the course God has marked out for us--with our eyes glued on Jesus, Who brought our faith into existence with His Own life and Who will work it out to its ultimate, sparkling perfection in us. "For the joy that lay before Him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." [NIV] Let your need of Him bring you close; let His response to you have its way, in every part of your life.
