The Mind of Christ, the Gardener

 Let both of them grow together until the harvest;

 --- From Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

So God knows our thoughts. He knows the future. Our response is to focus, to avoid the immediate and the carnal, and to wait. Patience is a great spiritual value. It puts us in control of our own destinies, to some degree. It puts God in control. It allows us to see the magic that is invisible to us.

The sinful being sees only what he or she sees. He concentrates on his feelings, and emotions.

The spiritual being sees beyond that. She observes the invisible. She builds patience, and love, and learns to sacrifice.

Our "Me Generation" does not get that. Everything is always couched in the framework of "I have to be who I really am." "I have to take care of myself first."

But life, and the world, isn't a commercial flight with a change in cabin pressure, where you put your mask on first. No . . . it is a crisis already in place, and it has provided those of us with strength, already masked. That's what it means to "equip" us. We are okay - - - but others are needy . . . NOW!

And the paradox is, to see the urgent needs, we have to be patient. Because when we're patient, we're no longer thinking about ourselves. When we're patient we know that there is more, beyond this life. When we're patient, and spirit-lead, we can endure anything . . . for we have tasted of God's Kingdom.

A gardener must be patient. The vegetables are literally calling out for water, when they need it. You can see it as they lose their color slightly. You can see the weeds growing up around them. The need is apparent, and urgent. Yet the gardener is not panicking. The process itself is long, lasting months, and enduring all kinds of conditions. You water a little. You pull weeds. You're out in the middle of the garden. You train yourself to notice little things. You develop an affinity for the health of your expected produce.

That's the difference.

Some people help the poor by talking about it. They make us all feel guilty because we're not doing more. They try to get you to vote for people that can talk about it in the most eloquent ways. They make it all sound so urgent, which it is. But their solution is still, to talk about it.

Like a gardener, we just need to go out into the field. Develop the eyes that see faint signs of despair. Do what we can. We're too busy actually helping, to think about immediate, selfish needs, of our own.

Patience, the eyes of God, little acts of love and kindness. These are the marks of the person that is growing into the mind of Christ.

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

 - - - From Romans 8:12-25

We do not know what the Kingdom of God will look like. We can imagine it. There are descriptions of it. I think the best description of it is that it's just life, forever. Humanity longs for a fountain of youth, so that we can live forever. It's continuing on, like we do today, but forever, and ever, and ever. That's the Kingdom of Heaven. And somehow we intuitively know that it must be real. We can't create life out of unlife. We don't understand this. Yet someone did. That person is God, and we trust that He has a way to make life last forever.

But we can't see it. We haven't seen it. Not with our waking, conscious, eyes. True, some people in history have had visions of it. But there were no bystanders to confirm what they saw. Nobody had a camera ready to record it. But just as we can't see the future . . . but without doubt, it is there; and just as we can't see the thoughts of others . . . but know that they have them. So it is with the Kingdom of God.

I have experienced life. I understand that. Yet I can't see life. The energizing force of life is invisible to us.

What a wonderful concept! If God has activated that life force, in anybody . . . isn't it something to marvel at? We live, at the pleasure of someone else! And He loved us enough to bring us into being!

And if we think about that for a little bit, we understand why it was so important to the Apostle, Paul, to get our thoughts and actions away from the physical, the mortal . . . away from these present, immediate, worldly, fleshly needs. Away from our drives, and cravings . . . away from the things we do more out of instinct, like an animal, (have you ever seen a dog go after a bone tossed in his direction?), and towards the things we must wait for . . . the things that require thought, and rest, and prayer.

The things that require patience! You cannot hope for what we cannot see, what takes so long for us to have . . . without learning patience!!

And then just like that we are no longer driven by our . . . well . . . drives. We are now activated by the spirit of God, the Power of God. It is less about us. We are in awe of life . . . whatever it is . . . and we want to sustain it. We are passionate about seeing what it becomes . . . we can't wait to see the possibilities inherent in any life that grows.

We love life. We should love seeing it, and witnessing it, however it appears, and whatever it does.

Even if it requires a lifetime of patience.

God Only Knows

 . . . you discern my thoughts from afar.

    - from Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23

Not only does God know the future (more accurately, He occupies eternal NOW, and therefore the past, present, and future are the same to Him), but He can read our minds.

Somehow, God is able to know this about every one of us 8 Billion people. And He knows the thoughts of the people that came before us, and that will follow. He knows all of it, all at once.

Only God knows if the unborn child is thinking anything. He knows if the person in a coma feels, and has emotions. Does an unborn child feel? Does he fear? Does he cry? Does he laugh, or smile? God only knows.

Does the nonagenarian whose memory is all but gone, remember still, but quietly? Does she know . . . but just can't express it? Does she enjoy any moment of any day? Does she have hopes for the future, and regrets? God only knows.

But it's good that somebody knows. And part of the joy of being glorified some day, with Christ; in new bodies, with new minds, with full knowledge and full awareness . . . is that we will know, too.

This is why God wanted us to focus on the young (orphans), the aged (widows), and the alien (friendless). Because somewhere deep within the heart of every child of God is a longing, an unfulfilled hope. It's in there somewhere, even if we can't see it. Like the future that we cannot see; it is real. And it doesn't hurt us at all, if we look for opportunities to spark that hope, and calm that fear, that God sees, but we don't.

There is One Lord - The Proof

Who has announced from of old the things to come? Let them tell us what is yet to be.

- from Isaiah 44:6-8

God reveals Himself to us throughout the Old Testament. It is instructive to us.

He is the Giver of life, and the Judge that declared us mortal.

He is a friend in the Garden, but a Supreme being that we can't look upon without dying.

He is a great military commander, and a gentle Father.

But He doesn't reveal all of this to us, all at once! Like children coming up through kindergarten, then primary school, then middle, high school, college . . . 

You don't begin by reading the entire Bible. Before that you have to be able to recognize entire phrases, and their meaning within a context. And before that, you have to be able to recognize entire words at a glance. And before that, you learn to sound them out . . . but must know the various rules of English pronunciation.

Before that, you have to know the sounds that letters make. You have to distinguish between vowels and consonants, without even being able to explain the difference.

And before that, you have to know your ABCs!

We are like children to God, and He teaches us new material, when we're ready.

At the right time, He declared Himself the Ancient of Days, the Lord of all time. I like to think of Him as being able to sort of float overhead, above our timeline, being able to see the beginning and the end at the same time, like we can look at a timeline before us and see the whole thing at once. Or, the same way we can open the beginning of a book, and the end, and read them one after the other.

When God declares Himself "the First and the Last," he is making a case not to even consider other Gods. 

As in a prior blog a few weeks ago, there is a predictive power of God, since He is above all time, He knows how the story is going to end. He says: "Can any other God, or being, prophecy what is to come in the future . . . and be right?" So that's the evidence. Has God predicted future events, and has He been right?

Well, that's another topic entirely, of course. That's probably an entire 13-week course. The question has caused many people to lose faith, because God's promises do not pan out sometimes, in quite the way they expected. 

But for now we leave it at that. Our ultimate proof that God is God, is that He knows all time, from beginning to end, and when it suits Him, He gives us a prophecy of what is to come. I think that the only real reason He would ever do this, is to encourage us. Not to scare us. Not to impress us. But to give us perspective and confidence.

And when you get right down to it . . . why wouldn't the Creator of everything have these unique powers?