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 Friday, October 11th. 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 29th post in Serendipitous Intersections: Only from our badness, our passage to beatitude, and the vision-- which is itself based on the April 29th readings in "My Utmost for His Highest" [Chambers], "Diary of an Old Soul" [MacDonald], and reading #120 in "365 Daily Readings from George MacDonald", [MacDonald, edited by C.S. Lewis].)
Let's read 1 John 3:1-3 (read).
We don't yet know...! We don't know but we press on, believing that we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. So, there is an assurance, there is a reason, and there is a means. The assurance is that we will be like Him. The means by which we press forward is faith. And the reason we will be like Him is, mysteriously, that "we will see Him as He is." I can only understand this to mean that we may perceive the pure life and quality of God only if we correspond in nature to Him-- according to the image of God created in us and redeemed in Christ. Those who will not be like Him will never "see Him as He is." As Hebrews says, "Without holiness, no one will see the Lord."
It can be hard for us to believe that we--yes, we ourselves--will be in such a state or condition so as to gaze upon the pure holiness of the Lord, and live! But this is God's promise, a promise He fulfills in His grace, a promise we embrace by faith, believing with all our hearts that it is so, and, consequently, we strive forward expectantly towards its fulfillment... and the expectation actually operates in our lives to bring us concretely closer to the real condition in which "we will see Him as He is": "All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure." [NIV] This is the wondrous interaction of grace, faith and sanctification.
Oswald Chambers comments on this passage, saying, "When we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy." [OC] We do not know what we shall be--that's our uncertainty, and it is a joyful uncertainty because it is full of expectancy that, whatever we will be, it will be wonderful because of God's incomparable supreme love. So we remain forever loyal to him [OC]. George MacDonald anticipates this un-picturable moment of meeting: "Then shall my heart behold thee everywhere./The vision rises of a speechless thing,/A perfectness of bliss beyond compare!" [Mc] It is to this we press in faith.
And it is hard to imagine that far, far back, near the very beginning of the story, of our story, there is a tragedy called the Fall. How could such a glorious reality arise from such devastating disaster? There can only be one answer: GOD. Only God could conceive in Himself such an all-encompassing, elemental transmutation of Reality. And the only reason He could both conceive and realize is it Love. And only His love could make our disastrous guilt into the felix culpa, the "fortunate guilt" as the theologians and Christian thinkers have called it down the centuries. Let's state it clearly: the guilt possesses no redeeming qualities in itself, but all its "fortune", its "blessedness," lies in the adamant aim of God to subject reality to His redeeming power. And in that way the guilt is a "happy" and "fortunate" one, because IF GOD IS FOR US, WHO CAN BE AGAINST US? Not even our original guilt can be against us anymore. It all becomes, intrinsically and fully, the one story of His grace and, as George MacDonald anticipated, we see Him in all of it.
We have to admit that is only from our badness that our passage to blessedness began - that is our story! And because "we will see Him as He is", we will see Him everywhere [Mc]--yes, even in that; we will see Him in the whole story, from the very beginning, and we will see Him in every conceivable element and aspect of His glorified, transfigured reality forever and ever.
