The Recluse 2


Isolation Lake

Image by .Bala via Flickr

I don’t want to talk to you.

But I’ll gladly listen to your words.

I don’t want you here.

But I’ll make you a fine dinner.

I prefer to be alone.

But I’ll willingly accompany you as you need.

I don’t want your help.

But I’ll happily wash your feet.

I don’t belong in your world.

But I recognize that you belong in mine.

I care about you.

But I can hardly abide your presence.

I want to go home.

But it is better for you if I remain.

In all things, everyone is far more important.

And this is why I remain apart.

 

By His Grace.

The Recluse


Log Cabin

Image by Dan around town via Flickr

Shadows

More friendly than the open terrain of humanity.

Night

More vibrant than the light of day.

Dawn

A time to retreat from the empty sidewalks.

Noon

A time of sleeping while the noise of rebellion screams loud.

Twilight

The time of awakening to the beauty the world never sees

Life

A magnificent place where, in the end, the recluse finds release.

 

recluse

early 13c., “person shut up from the world for purposes of religious meditation,” from O.Fr. reclus (fem. recluse), noun use of reclus (adj.) “shut up,” from L.L. reclusus, pp. of recludere “to shut up, enclose” (but in classical L. “to throw open”), from L. re-, intensive prefix + claudere “to shut”

Isaiah 53:2 An Ordinary Human Body, An Extraordinary God.


JESUS

Image by Daniel Y. Go via Flickr

Jesus, such a magnificent personage.  And isn’t it just like the world to look to authorities to vet the beautiful people in this world.  None compare to Him, yet very few come to admire Him for who He really is.

“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”

This place we live in is indeed a place of testing.  The heart of every man is tested every moment of life to see what he will do with this Jesus.  How blessed are we who know Him; that the Father has seen fit to open our eyes like this.  Let all God’s people in Christ Jesus give thanks for the fact that they are learning to worship the One whom God the Father has set above all.

By His Grace.

Matthew 12: 34


Bark of a Blue Oak.

Image via Wikipedia

The tree sat silent, the sound from a backyard argument pierced it’s bark.  The waves of sound vibrated the fibers of the bark so slightly that no scientific instrument could measure it.  And those fibers remain as the tree grows.  There will come a day when that tree falls from age.  Yet those fibers will have been altered forever.  Though they rot and become food for the forest behind the lot where that house had stood, 300 years from now God will know what was done.

The men will have forgotten.  The words will not be found echoing between two mountains forever.  The air will absorb their noise quickly.  But God remembers.  Their hearts overflowed with anger.  But those hearts are now silent.  The bark was moved.  But now that bark is dust.  The bugs on and in that piece of bark also experienced something from the noise of their argument, as well as the grass.  All will die and rot, yet God remembers.

Consider what is around you and consider how everything we do is witnessed.  Yet there is a witness beyond this world.  It is wise to consider what we allow our hearts to hold, lest it overflow from our tongues.

34You offspring of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil (wicked)? For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart the mouth speaks.

 

By His Grace.

“Look How Great I Am!”


So many men think they are something when they are actually nothing.  The Lord spoke to Job about this.  “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” 

Next time you think you’re something consider this:

When is the last time you took a stroll in deep space?

Genesis 11: 1-9


History (Australian television channel)

Image via Wikipedia

I have some time this morning to sit and relax a bit.  What, I wonder, should I do with this time?  I could watch TV.  Perhaps there’s a channel of learning.  Yea!  History channel…… That would be interesting.  Then I reflect on who makes the History Channel.  Well, perhaps I could find something better to do with my time.

This outcome of reflection has brought something to the surface in me.  I spent years, more like decades, learning about the world around me.  And I find something very curious, I’m not interested anymore in the things of this world.  A special lack of interest flares up at learning from those who do not openly announce the Son of God in their work.  I’m sick of allowing myself to become interested as a program unveils it’s information, only to find them preaching that I came from a monkey.

Perhaps I could watch that show, “How it’s made”.  But that becomes rather common place in a very short while.  Not that I don’t enjoy looking and learning about innovation.  Man’s ability to turn rock into some shiny and useful tool has always captivated me.  But what part of me is captivated.  That’s the question.  And I know the answer.  I could watch “Myth Busters”.  But everything of man is, in the end, a myth.  So what can they tell me that I don’t already know.

I think I’d rather sit in silence a while and consider the Lord and His ways with man and myself.  At least in this I accomplish something eternal.  Any other contemplation only leads to corruption of the eternal.

I was thinking of how the Tower of Babel went unfinished.  God looked down on the work of man and decided that He would rather they remain as they were until Jesus had appeared among us.  And I consider that since the Lord appeared in flesh, man has became rather adept at turning his world into a more sensual place.  Now that thought would be incomplete if I didn’t allow myself to consider the current explosion of sensuality.  By sensuality I mean the fulfilment of every possible lust man owns; from building houses which have become far more than a shelter from the elements to every possible convience.

It was not God’s desire that man should fend for himself like this.  If he had obeyed the Lord from the beginning, I’m convinced that the elements of this world would have become far more man friendly.  God desires to care for His creation.  But it is man’s continual rebellious ways that have resulted in a quite complex war with the world around him.

In the end of this thought comes something worth thinking about.  If it was God’s desire to provide for man from the beginning, why would His desire be any different now?  Even though I am part of this carnival of the works of man’s hands, I can still make a choice to trust the Lord to provide for me.  And why does He provide like this for a people who will certainly die in a couple years?  What benefit is there in this providing?

FAITH!

By His Grace.

Tower of Babel by Lucas van Valckenborch in 1594

Image via Wikipedia