Yesterday was a good day. I saw God. Not as a physical manifastation, but in Spirit. It has been so long since I've felt God with me, truly with me and delighted to be with me. In that moment, God was fully realized. I have it wrong. There is never a time God is not with me, first of all. Second, He always is delighted when I approach Him. It is I who thinks God is disappointed and thus tolerates my approach. I understood yesterday. The Lord is always estatic for His children to come home. The Lord runs toward the prodigals. His love has no limit. There is no condition. It is free and freely given to those who accept it. And yesterday was the first time in a while when I remembered that, accepted it and felt again the strong love of God.
Why do we hide from the loving arms of God? Why do I? I think at some level it is a shame issue, at another level, a pride issue. I am too ashamed to present myself to God. I see my inadequacies dripping off me like sludge. I am daily Adam, fig leaf in place, aware of my nakedness and outside of God's design. Where are you, my son? Part of me is so calloused to the sludge and slime, it feels like an extension of my skin. That unnatural state makes me miserable. I start to question the fairness of my misery. How cruel of life to deal me this horrible hand. What kind of God allows such torment? Then I hear a whisper. I feel a hope arise within me. Is it freedom delivered? Seek and you shall find what you're looking for. Our received knowledge from the proverbial fruit gave us sight to the things of the world and simultaneously blinded us to the Spiritual things of God. We lose our vision of God's presence, His provision. His offering of mercy and righteousness.
And then something remarkable happens. The Lord, only through grace, reveals Himself in lovingkindness. We are exposed by God's brightness. We see our sin, we see the Lord, Jesus, and then it happens... We see there is no scorn on His face. He is delighted for He knows we see Him as He is, God delivered for us as payment for the sludge. And then we notice it. The filth is no more, for the darkness cannot be in the Light. We are naked before our redeemer, fully cleansed, unashamed and one with Him, closer than skin. And there is no other place on Earth as good as there in the warmth of His rays.
All that happened yesterday. Today... I here the whisper again. And it is the sweetest of sounds.
