Grass

I hear many adults crying out for God to answer their prayers. I don't hear many children voice this same concern. Every evening during our family worship time, my children are overflowing with places where they have seen God today and stories of answered prayers. I struggle to come up with one. After some analysis and introspection, I think my prayers are too big. Certainly not too big for God to handle, but too big for me to see their end. Our recent camping trip to the Ochoco National Forest is case in point. I prayed that God would use the trip to grow our family and me ever closer to Him -- a good prayer, no doubt, but one that is hard to bring the answer into view on a daily basis. Cayla, my 10-year-old, prayed for God to show her a wild horse -- no less a miracle but certainly observable today. God answered both our prayers with a resounding "yes!" But it took me two weeks to begin to see the answer to my request. Cayla celebrates daily. This reality can be illustrated by yet another fun-filled Walker vacation. Three summers ago we all piled in the 15-passenger Ford E-350 and headed 3000 miles to Texas. Somewhere in Kansas I begin to face the impending truth that my sanity was slipping away. We were on one of those cruel straight-stretches where I could see out on the horizon the place we would be spending the night...3 nights from then. From my perspective of the road ahead I couldn't even tell that we were moving forward. I think once, it even looked like we were losing ground. Right then, from the back seat, Cayla's excitement filled the van as she proclaimed, "Wow! We are going so fast!" I quickly looked in the rearview mirror afraid that she too had lost her grip on sanity only to discover that she was looking out the side window at the blades of grass along the highway. Most of my prayers, as an adult, are horizon prayers. Most of Cayla's prayers, as a child, are blades of grass. Perhaps in our striving to draw near to God through conversation we could find the right tension between the horizon and the grass.

Economy

Economy – The arrangement or mode of operation for the private affairs of one’s household.

Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near…Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you… “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." – Taken from Isaiah 55

A four-year-old child stands near the check out stand where his father prepares to make a purchase. In awe, the child watches as Dad pulls out his old, leather wallet and reaches for the money. He understands nothing of balance sheets, currency exchange, or the gold reserve, but he has certainly seen the magic of that green paper. “Just last week,” he remembers to himself, “we came to the store without a bicycle, then Dad gave the nice lady some green stuff, and we sure enough went home with one!” Nearly entranced, the child notices that he has caught his father’s eye, and with a soothing voice, knowing smile, and reassuring hand to the back, his father hands him a crisp bill and whispers, “Son, how ‘bout you buy’n this one.” Oh! The smell of that leather, the warmth of Dad’s hand, the smile on the nice lady’s face, and the inexpressible joy of doing Dad stuff with Dad!

In the feast of worship, we have nothing to bring to the table. God provides it all. Our riches and our efforts have no purchasing power in the economy of God’s worship. But, just like the little boy’s dad, our heavenly Father allows us to participate in His economy. He provides for us the freedom and means to worship. We have only to receive the abundance of His joy and return it to Him in worship. Spirit & Truth worship is in God’s economy and God’s economy alone.

Now

Throughout the Bible, God is constantly telling stories: stories about how life began, stories about how life will end, and everything in between. Amidst the landscapes of these stories we establish our systematic theologies – what we believe about what. I would certainly argue for the validity of such endeavors. It is important to wrap our minds and lives around the reality of the Father creating, the Spirit sustaining, and the Son returning. I personally love to get lost in the amazing intricacies of God’s unfolding timeline. But, I hardly think understanding (or thinking we understand) the myriad of finite details within God’s historical plotline is His ultimate point. When the Lord does return, will it matter much that I guessed correctly or incorrectly His particular slant on eschatology? Perhaps, the point of such an exhaustive revelation of all the historically accurate and futuristically intriguing details is to reveal the God who holds the timeline in His hand. To reveal the God who seeks to interact with His creation in the present moment. Hebrews 3 pleads with us to enter into God’s rest daily, while it is called Today. In Psalm 90, the psalmist stands between a forgotten yesterday and a withering tomorrow crying, “Lord, teach us to live well today.” And in Micah 4 we see that God seeks to establish His Kingdom at the collision of attah (the duration of the moment) and olam (eternity –just outside the reach of the physical). All of history is laid out and played out that we might see the God who holds history in His hand and dwell with that eternal God in the duration of the moment. Study God’s revelation. Construct your systematic theologies. And with them purchase a glimpse of Almighty God in the fleeting breath that is the now.