Mirrors can bring light in dark places
(Still from `The Mummy`)

Today’s Verse of the Day (Twitter ‘@votd votd’) reminded me of the incredible truth that, although God is jealous for His glory and His name (Ex 20:5; Ex 34:14; Deut 4:24; Deut 5:9; Deut 6:15; Josh 24:19; Eze 39:25), He delights in sharing His glory with us, which He does by working His will through us. We are told to act in His name (John 14:13-14), and in doing so become His agents.

The glory of the Lord is reflected by us, as a mirror reflects the light; the mirror has no right to boast in its light-generating capacity, for it has none, ‘though it can be praised for its smoothness and its reflectivity. It only works in the sight of the light – a mirror in a dark room has no value, be it never so perfect; when reflection of light is your sole function, you really need light!

Further, being the smoothest, clearest, cleanest, purest reflector possible will show the Source of Light most clearly. When a mirror has imperfections, those imperfections not only show up in light, they also distort the image being reflected.

Finally, when the mirror is reflecting something that is out of sight (so that the mirror is the only way you can see it), the value of the mirror is radically increased. For us as mirrors, reflecting the Image without distortion is vital. Our perfection lies in our truest reflection of the Light. Our value as transmittors of the One Light is inestimable.

Our praise lies not in being gods, but in being God’s.

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Just been thinking about the verse of the day – you can see it by twittering “@votd votd” – Psa 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (ESV)

Getting into mischief

- and thinking about how often I am my own trouble. I’m an expert at causing all sorts of issues for myself, mostly because I ignore what is right in my quest for almost anything else. And yet, at the end of the day, when I realize how I’ve messed up yet again; when I’ve managed to prove to myself yet again that I can rocket off the straight and narrow path at a moment’s notice; when I recognize that I’m drowning – I am deeply grateful there is help at hand.

The danger, of course, is that we can take this help for granted. How are YOU doing?

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I’m perfect.

Oops – that was pride slipping in there. Maybe I’m not quite perfect.

In which case, I’ve also just told a lie. (Gack!)

Oh, like you’ve never fibbed before. (Uh-oh, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say. I’m getting in deep here.)

OK, I’m not perfect. There. I’ve admitted it. (Phew! That wasn’t too hard.)

So I can’t be all that bad. (Arggh! Pride again! It just snuck up on me!)

If I had been made perfect, I’m wondering what the implications would be…

1. Being perfect, I would never sin – never hurt anybody, always do the right thing.
2. Therefore being perfect, I would have no personal understanding of what sin is.
3. Therefore being perfect, I would never have a sense of wrong-doing.
4. Therefore being perfect, I would never be aware of my separation from God.
5. Therefore being perfect, I would never understand the power of sin.
6. Therefore being perfect, I may experience sympathy, but would never experience empathy; and any compassion would be academic and patronizing.
7. Being made perfect would have removed my free will, because I would be able to do nothing but perfect things.
8. Therefore being perfect, I would never have the chance to fail. I would never have the opportunity to succeed despite myself.
9. Therefore being perfect, I would never be stretched. I would never grow.
10. Therefore (also from #8) being perfect, when God told me to do something and I did it, there would be no just reward because there was no chance I’d do the job badly or fail to do it at all.
11. Therefore being perfect, I would never experience humiliation, shame or contrition; but I would also never experience forgiveness, rebirth, reward, praise and grace.
12. Being perfect, God’s righteous perfection wouldn’t astound me, terrify me or shatter my complacency because – hey lookee! Me too!
13. In fact, being perfect, I would be self-contained, so I would have no reason to reach for God.

On the other hand:

1. Since I’m not perfect, eternal damnation is not my guaranteed end.
2. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection took compassion on me.
3. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection chose to redeem me.
4. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection perfected me.
5. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection adopted me.
6. Since I’m not perfect, Perfection uses me (yes – Because, not Despite).
7. Since I am far, far from perfection, I have a great many chances to blow it completely… Ah, but when I get it right the angels go nuts and God Himself says, “Well done!”

And that last is really where I’m headed here. Amongst other reasons, I was made imperfect in order that God could give me a piece of His action – a task that He wanted completed. And each time I fulfill a task in obedience to His design, I – Mr. Imperfect – get the pat on the back from the Everlasting King of Glory.

And that, I think, is a pretty good trade-off.

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I have a theory.

I think that, somewhere deep in everybody’s mind, there is what I’ll call a “God spot” – a core place where we recognize the existence of God in such a way that it impacts our conscience. It may be nearly hidden, or perhaps completely covered over by years of neglect – but it’s there. If we were to visit it, this is the spot that reminds us that there is someone bigger than ourselves – Someone who created the universe, the earth and all life upon it. And once we consider that, we are faced with the idea that there may be more to life than getting what we want, and also with the idea that we may be responsible to someone higher than ourselves.

This clearly runs contrary to our perceived best interests: if I admit that there is a God (our logic goes), He might want me to live differently from the way I am living now; do things differently; think different thoughts; be more generous, more selfless, more loving. And if it isn’t something I already want to do, it must be something that I don’t want to do, so I won’t reap the benefits I want out of it.

So it’s obviously in my best interests to (1) deny the existence of God (the atheist position) or (2) to say there’s no way to understand Him even if He exists (the agnostic position).

Then (3) there are others who will agree that there is a God – perhaps they even attend a worship service every week – but although they outwardly acknowledge what the core spot is saying, they still don’t want to get too committed to it. They live such comfortable lives. So safe. So conforming.

For the record, I’m a ‘3’.

In all three cases we establish a boundary around our God spot. Once inside the boundary we run the risk of thinking about that dangerous concept. So thoughts are not allowed past that boundary – the boundary is far enough away from the core that we can go up to the boundary without thinking about it, but any further and the thoughts might begin. So the boundary is a bit like CSI police tape, and when the conversation moves toward our boundary, we get very uncomfortable without even being quite sure why.

Different people have different distances from the boundary to the core spot, and there may even be a few who have no discernable boundary at all. When these people start talking, they may be quite careless about the effect they have on the rest of us – indeed, from their point of view these I-have-no-boundary people may be quite intentional about crossing our boundary. We boundary people on the other hand would call it invasive.

Just being made to feel uncomfortable by another person – let alone having that other person be invasive – is where the stress starts. We resent someone who makes us feel uncomfortable, and in fact we may choose to externalize the boundary – by avoiding the person entirely, if possible.

Once in a great while we come across those rare, extraordinary people who have looked their core spot ‘in the face’ and accepted its implications. These people have changed their values, their priorities, their very lives in order to align themselves with the core spot. It requires a sacrifice of immense proportions. We may feel that they are ‘saints’ (in the sense of someone living for a higher purpose than self) – and admire them immensely (provided they don’t saint all over us). Or we may call them crazy, or zealots, or troublemakers. Their behavior is extreme and abnormal, and to the rest of us perhaps irrational – and we don’t trust irrational people, do we? They’re – well – irrational.

They can also inspire far beyond any book or movie.

I suppose that in the past century Mother Teresa would fall into the ‘saint’ category – as would the Brands, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, Watchman Nee, Jim Elliot and a too-small host of others. They poured out their lives unstintingly in service to God (Phil 2:17; 2 Tim 4:6) and sometimes died early. And the results they left behind were far, far greater than could possibly have been achieved had they lived for themselves alone.

I wonder if it isn’t a truism to say that, as we look back on life, there are many things we chose to do that we now wish we had not – but of those things we did because God told us to do them, there have been no regrets despite difficulties?

There is a passage that I come back to over and again:

So here’s Paul with Silas – ordered by the magistrates to be stripped; beaten (illegally in Paul’s case – see Acts 22:25); put in prison; jailed in an inside cell for extra security and put in stocks (apparently also illegal for Paul – Acts 22:29). What would be your reaction to being stripped – Shame? Or beaten unjustly – anger? How about being jailed? Horror? Fear?

Paul and Silas have a different reaction: they’re having a karaoke worship night. It’s midnight; it’s crowded; people are listening, and they’re keeping time by clapping (OK, I made that last bit up).

Why? Because our boys have looked at that core spot in their minds and determined to follow through.

When you agree to see God – truly see Him – for who He really is, you have to see how small and unimportant you are. And that can be terrifying, which is another reason to build a boundary around that core spot. The will of God is suddenly far more important than yours. In fact, the will of God is suddenly far more important than you!

If we make a jump in our thinking, however, and switch to God’s side, then we have aligned ourselves to Him and our will becomes the same as His – vastly important and overwhelmingly powerful. That’s not a bad tradeoff.

When you do as God tells you, then completing the plan, including resolving any difficulties encountered, becomes the responsibility of the One who created the universe.

In one sense it’s very freeing. When you see yourself – truly see yourself – as a servant (Paul says ‘slave’) of God (Rom 1:1; Rom 6:22; Titus 1:1) and His people (1 Cor 9:19), then everything else falls away and your job is simply to trust and obey.

(BTW: James¹, Peter² and Jude³ also introduce themselves as servants or bondmen of God.)

It may be freeing, and it may be simple, but jumping off that cliff is possibly the hardest thing anyone can do. Yet when Paul and Silas go through all these horrors, they don’t say what I’d be saying: “Hey! I’m serving you, here, God. How about putting me up at the Hyatt instead of this cell? I’m getting ready to quit here. May I remind you that I’m an apostle? A big-wig in your organization? And also that I’m your only guy in Asia Minor? Do you want this work done or not?”

No, this is a “perfect love casts out fear” time (1 Jn 4:18). This is a time when Paul and Silas are perfectly comfortable in their consciences – they’ve obeyed God and that’s what got them here. They’re equally comfortable with their lives – if they die, they’ve run the race and they’ll go on to a better place.

Of course, there’s physical discomfort right now, but they’ve had worse. Paul says:

At the end of Paul’s life, did he have any regrets about following the dictates of his God spot? Clearly not. There were times when he longed to go to his reward (2 Tim 4:6-8), but he wanted to continue for the sake of those he would be leaving behind:

So … how large is the boundary around your God spot? Yeah, mine too. But I’m working on it.

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1

Tempted recently? Yeah, me too. Doesn’t matter what we’re tempted about – stealing, gossiping, lust, cheating on a test, cheating on your taxes, cheating on your spouse – it always seems to start the same way, doesn’t it? ‘Go ahead,’ this voice says. ‘Everybody does it. You’re a schmuck for holding back. What’s the harm? You’re not hurting anybody. It’s just a little thing really – so ordinary. It’s easy – nobody will know. Who’s going to find out? You deserve it. They deserve it.’

I mean, there’s a list of these encouragements … you know them by heart … they apply to everybody … and THEY DON’T EVER CHANGE. Ever. You could add a couple more that I’ve left off, but it’s a standing list.

So why do we have such a hard time with them? Why haven’t we figured out how to get past them and move on? Why haven’t they become so old that they are as hackneyed in reality as they sound on paper?

Why haven’t we gotten to the point where we just say, ‘Shut up!’ to the little voice that says them all the time?

A good salesman works hard at selling his product. He creates a desire in the customer – he sells the ‘sizzle’ – in order to get to the end result, the commit. He invests hard in the first to bring off the second. And make no mistake about it: the Tempter is a very, very good salesman.

Society has moved from a rigid ‘Thou-shalt-not’ set of values to a permissive one, and while I think that we prefer (for the most part) to not be living in the Victorian Age, I also think it’s true that we tend to be very easy on ourselves. Good at forgiving ourselves any little indiscretion. Skillful at justifying ourselves.

2

So we do it. Whatever ‘it’ was. But, this was a one-two whammy – a sucker-punch. We were set up. All the time he was saying that litany of things, and moving us to the ‘sale’, he was anticipating the payoff. Commit the sin, the crime, the indiscretion and then it’s no more ‘yeah, go on – do it’. Now you hear him scream – ‘Look what you did!!!! You’re in for it now! Don’t you feel rotten? How could you have <insert sin here> like that?’ Oh, the glee in that voice. He stands before the throne of God and points the finger at … you. His primary role as the Accuser is in full play now. You are condemned by your own actions – what could be more wonderful to him?

3

Well, there is one thing more wonderful: Thing is, it’s not just a one-two. There’s a three as well. And the saddest part of all is that we do the third part to ourselves (talk about being set up!). Because – especially if this is the second or third or ‘nth’ time we’ve done this – if it’s a habit, for instance – we say to ourselves, ‘I can’t believe I’ve done that again! What a worm! I can’t bring this to God – I’ve already done that and asked for forgiveness – I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven again. And anyway, I’m too ashamed to bring it in front of Him – to admit it – to confess it – to ask again for forgiveness.’

And this is the Accuser’s coup de grace – the cherry on the top. He didn’t work the sizzle for this – just the accusing bit would have been enough – this is a freebie that we hand him: We deny full and free access to God to ourself. This is neither God’s doing, nor that of the Father of Lies – it’s all us!

Here’s what one small book near the back of the Bible has to say about forgiveness:

Here are some essential facts that we must keep in mind when we reach this point:

1. God is big. Very, very, very big. Infinite. Don’t put Him in that box you’ve built for Him, ‘cause there’s no way He’ll fit. If you could put the entire universe into the box – you still couldn’t fit God in.
2. God hates sin. Very, very, very much. Yes He does – no denying it. We’d be dead if the message stopped here, but we can only fully live if we understand this. You see: until you ‘get’ that He hates sin, you’ll never ‘get’ what His love cost Him – so you’ll never ‘get’ the fullness of His love.
3. Standing in front of God, we are a Nothing. A small, infinitesimal zero. Less than a dust bunny by comparison. Slave to our own ego.
4. So here we are: nobodies – slaves in the worst meaning of the word (the way Paul used the word – bound by the habits and chains of our own perversions) – and sinners, standing guilty in front of an infinitely good God who hates sin.
5. Gulp.
6. And yet God loves us. Very, very, very much. Infinite love from an infinite Being. Love that works out a way to get dust-bunnies washed clean of their own filth. A love that does insane things – like sending His only Son to be killed by a bunch of slaves so that those very slaves themselves might not just live, but be adopted . Now let’s be honest – that’s insane.

So what does all this mean? God understands the bit about temptation; He understands about sin; He even understands about repeated, devastating, perverted, habitual sin. He’s seen it all. He’s seen you do it.

And He still loves you more than you love yourself. Like I said – insane.

4

In the face of all this love blazing down from Heaven … we need to understand this little point:

For as long as we decide that our sin is too big for God to forgive;

for as long as we decide that God is too small to forgive our sin;

for as long as we are so sublimely arrogant as to believe that we make the choice about coming or not coming to God –

we will stay disconnected from God; sin will be our master, and we will remain blind.

And the Accuser will win a much more permanent prize.

The point is not all the sin.

The point isn’t that we should stop sinning (we can’t).

The point isn’t even that we should at least try to stop sinning (we should).

The point is that there is something far better than sin that we can spend our time – our lives – thinking about.

The Glory of His Grace is so overwhelming, and His love is so all-consuming that when we think about it in its proper perspective we have no time for petty things like self-esteem, self-worth or worry about sin.

Listen: you are eternal; you are immortal; you should reflect His transcendent beauty; you are a prince or princess, the child of Almighty God … and you’re wasting your time thinking about sin?

Get over it. You’re far, far, far too valuable to be focused on that junk.

Get in front of God and unload that guilt. While I’m certainly not encouraging more sin (shades of Romans 6:1!), I will point out the mathematically obvious – that the person who commits a thousand sins in a thousand days and confesses each one immediately is a far cleaner and more useful person to God than the one who commits one sin and can’t confess it for a thousand days.

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God’s plan is always the best – but it feels as if sometimes we’ve got to get pushed through a fence before we’re on the right track.

Abram was called by God into a new direction (Gen 12:1-4). At 75 – at a time when most of us are long settled down into retirement – he was called from a comfortable path living in his father’s house to a completely new land. By the end of his life, Abram would agree that God’s plan for him was great (Gen 24:1). But in order to get there, Abram had to get pushed through a fence to get to the other side.

Jacob was a momma’s boy – preferred to cook and stay with the tents rather than go out to hunt (Gen 25:28-29). He conned his brother Esau out of the birthright, then stole Esau’s blessing (Gen 27). He ran away and walked a very different path from the one he started out on, but he had to get pushed through the fence to get to the real blessing.

Joseph was daddy’s favorite and knew it. He had a good life, although he was a spoiled show-off who ratted on his brothers at every possible opportunity (Gen 37:2-3) – so much so that they hated him to the point of deciding to murder him. Through the fence, his path had him sold into slavery down in Egypt, where in one step he moved from being an imprisoned slave to the top man in the country. When he got to the end of his life he thought God’s plan was great (Gen 50:20). But what a fence he was pushed through!

Moses was brought up like a prince (Ex 2:10) – the best education, the best food, the best of everything. His path took a sudden turn at 40 when he killed a man and ran away (Ex 2:12-15); then another swerve when he encountered God in the wilderness (Ex 3). At the end of his life he would say that God’s plan was the best, but it was a strange path to get there – through the fence.

Rahab was on a foul path – she started out as a prostitute in a terrible culture, and was desperate to leave it – when she risked everything to help the Israelite spies (Josh 2:1-6). She didn’t have to be pushed through a fence – she ran at it full speed, head first! Her old path should have led to her death as a citizen of Jericho (Josh 6:21), or death for being a prostitute; instead, her new path led her to redemption, marriage, wealth and inclusion into the blood-line that resulted in the birth of David and ultimately the Messiah (Matt 1:5).

Ruth thought she was on a pretty good path, marrying a man from Israel – until he died, along with his brother and his father. Then she could have stayed safe with her own people, but instead traveled back to Israel with her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:16), both of them hopeless widows … and on the other side of that fence married Rahab’s son Boaz.

Ruth’s great-grandson David was a shepherd who started on a quiet life in the fields until God pushed him through some fences – the fight with Goliath (1 Sam 17:50); the subsequent flight from an increasingly insane Saul (starts at 1 Sam 18:8) – until Saul’s death and events subsequent to that redirected his path into the palace.

Over in the New Testament, James and John had a fairly steady life as fishermen; then, like the other disciples, they met Jesus and everything changed. Pushed through the fence (of leaving their livelihood – Matt 4:21-22), they began following Jesus round the country and eventually across the world.

Paul had a wonderful path ahead of him as a highly-educated Pharisee who was also a Roman citizen; brilliant connections and prospects. Then he was pushed through the fence on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3ff). He traveled throughout the Mediterranean basin; founded church after church; wrote a third of the New Testament. He was also beaten, stoned, imprisoned, shipwrecked, left for dead, hated, opposed at every turn. He would say that it was a great path to be on (Acts 20:24).

Time and again, when God gets hold of people in the Bible, they encounter this pattern to their lives: they start out walking along one path, then they encounter God and suddenly there’s a right-turn into and straight through a fence and onto a new and improved path – one that they would never have considered (or even thought possible) before that encounter. And not just in the Bible – God works that way today as well. Moving toward the fence is probably the scariest thing in life, but upon breaking through you find the fence was really there to pen you in; you’ve broken out of the boundary that was containing you. That’s the thing – there’s a great life that God wants to give us over there, far better than the one we’ve got right now – and usually (perhaps ALWAYS) He has to force us to take the gift. Sort of “Break us to make us” kind of thing.

Oh, that we could all know that Divine push straight through the fence.

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