Birthright

It's like coming to know Christ again...for the first time. Tonight I was struck with a drop of the feeling He had...the sorrow He had over sin. Yea, not even a drop of His feeling...He knew so much more agony than I'll ever begin to know. When I slightly tell a mis-truth...or spew anger in subtle ways...or whine about my lot...all rubbish next to The Glorious One. We, I, make sin out to be this big list of do's and don't's. Really, it's a life. It's a lifestyle. It's so much less about the doing, and so much more about the heart. The DOING isn't the issue. It's the heart.

I KNOW all this. I've said it a million times before. I've heard it preached a million more. Yet there are occasions when I see the veracity of it as plain as the yellow paint on the walls of my bedroom. The veil is lifted, even if for only a moment.

One of those moments was tonight. I went and saw the movie Avatar. Don't think this is a plug to go see the movie...but somehow He had my heart in just the right spot as I walked into that theater. Watchin these humans grow from the hardheaded, killing machines to green tree huggers....it was so much more. They saw that the balance of life isn't about ONE person's happiness. It isn't about one person or country's agenda. The balance of life requires us to walk in His ways. If we are believers, we are tree huggers.

I feel like I can't type this quick enough. I can't get it out quick enough...the veil is lowering.

I once read Pereleandra; I felt the same way. In Avatar, in Pereleandra, we see Eden before the fall. The rightness of it all is breathtaking, more than magnificent. The look and feel and rhythm of the world before the fall...it was God-ordered. It was a RIGHTEOUS earth. Yet just that ONE SEED of that apple...I can see it falling from Eve's fingers...hitting the ground and spreading like a stain, a wildfire across the earth, leaving us with ashes. And dead.

How does one, born to live in Eden, live in the aftermath of destruction? I suppose today we could ask our brothers and sisters in Haiti. They, more than any others on earth perhaps, know what a poignant aftermath is like. Maybe our Rwandan brothers and sisters or the Sudanese, those beautiful plum-black people, luminous-glowing-in-the-sun people, maybe they could speak of rising in the aftermath. While we are not created to dwell in such conditions, it remains our birth right to be the people of that glorious world. While trees no longer speak to each other as perhaps they once did...and the animals no longer live in harmony...we must live as if they are but asleep, to be awakened and brought to life again at His coming, where the Lion dwells with the Lamb.

So tonight, as I drove home from the theater, I wept. I wept for my dirty little, nobody sin. I wept for the sin of you. I wept for the sin of our fathers. And I wept for the sin to come. For until He comes and wipes us clean once again, that stain remains. And we must fight every day to keep it at bay, to live out of our birthright.

Maybe you could call me a crackpot. But somehow in the midst of all this, I see the light. Tonight, I am out of Plato's cave and looking at the Person next to The Fire itself. Tomorrow I might be back in the cave. But for tonight, I weep for us. And I rejoice, that all will not be forever.


Oh Glorious Father, The StoryMaker. The Beginner of Life. How Kind and Compassionate You are to have Mercy and shower Grace on such as we. Dead, living in a destructive world, You Speak The Life into us. Breathe New Life Father, as never before, Breathe Life into dead souls Father. Bring many to know You...Your Ways. Open eyes to see. Oh that the dead may become alive.

I love You as never before. With all my heart.