Well this is our two hundredth blog and how wonderful and surprising this "SONSHINE" endeavor has been since it was launched by Joian in March of 2007. From the beginning Joian and I never looked for a crowd of viewers as this blog was from it's conception a work of love toward our families and "bring whom else you might Lord and allow us to, in return bring You glory in all that we share." In this God has truly blessed us, as in the place of numbers, He has given us an unbelievable core of participants that we originally never thought of sharing our blog with. Because of our desire to allow Him to lead at SONSHINE, I humbly believe God has showed up here and showed off. I am constantly amazed at the growing depth of revelation of Christ Jesus displayed in the writings but even more so in the comments. I can only think of how Christ loves to share the hidden and most beautiful parts of Himself in the bedchamber of His betrothed. With that I can only pray the revelation of His love would only grow here at SONSHINE and He would continue to bring to our company those with single eye and an open heart made for only Him.In our last blog the comments section took on a life and direction of it's own as the Holy Spirit revealed something wonderful that I believe is key to understanding how we will not only survive but flourish as tribulation enfolds the earth in the last days of the age. Andrea wrote a comment that moved us all, as His anointing made soft our hearts. Allow me to quote her comment:
"Who dare think there should be "greater works" still to come except a man be emptied to be filled with the full vision of Christ's indwelling glory." It seems like just this week God is opening my eyes to another layer of self that must go. Self consciousness it seems in its most "innocent" forms is such a relationship killer in every sense. How it hinders Gods Spirit from working in us or from using us at all like I haven't fathomed. The other night I was sitting on the concrete floor of a jail cell holding a girl who shot a man 16 times for forcing sex with her, as we both cried and sang Amazing Grace together, sitting there so close it occurred to me that perhaps I should have had a breath mint and I leaned away from her just a little... instantly she stiffened in my arms... I believe she felt the change, one moment my focus had been my Jesus and the next myself. My Jesus would never lean away for any reason. I'd never realized before how useless I am when I am self conscious.. conscious of anything at all outside of Christ.
As I read Andrea's moving illustration of how self consciousness robs us and our neighbor of God's blessings, there were a couple of things that came to mind that I had shared or read before. Truly, as with our sister's account these have to do with the "economics of a son" which is the theme of this current series of blogs.
The first has to do with a centuries old "Fenelon maxim" that very few would understand and most would even scoff at. Oh my, I have been ridiculed more than once when sharing this, which has only made me appreciate it all the more. It seems only someone, that has experienced the times where the Holy Spirit carried us effortlessly and unconsciously on His wings, might understand the great truth here. The seventeenth century Christian mystic François Fénelon wrote:
"Reason should not undertake to comprehend the last destructions; they are ordained expressly to destroy our reason."
These old mystics like Boehme, Law, Guyon and Fenelon truly understood the difference between the soul and the spirit and they consistantly taught of the soul's resignation and abandonment to God. Over the years, I myself have often shared how the soul must learn to be silent and do nothing. Our soul must forget itself, and plunge into perfect submission to the Spirit.
So it happens that Eliyah recently talked me into reading Jane Leade's book on New Jerusalem and I have thourally been enjoying the wonderful wisdom of this, another Christian Mystic of centuries past. Addressing the subject of our reasoning Leade poetically writes:
" ............. taking all care to abstain from the leaven of imaginations which may stop the stream of revelation in its purity.
This is a metaphorical way of saying that in order to enter into the fullness of all that God is holding out to us in this hour, we must lose our headlife. That is, we simply must come to the place where we no longer walk by the sun of reason, the moon of the senses or by the stars of imagination. Every thought must be brought into captivity to Christ as every high thing which exalts itself against the knowledge of Christ is pulled down that we might walk only according to faith."
And because I promised a "couple of things that came to mind" and since you probably know how I am, I'll give you the fourth thing. This to me is one of the most beautiful of all simple renditions of loosing one's self in Christ. I would like to have a dollar for each time I have quoted this beauty.
"In the inner wine cellar I drank of my Beloved, and, when I went abroad
Through all this valley I no longer knew anything,
And lost the herd which I was following.
I no longer tend the herd
Nor have I any other work
Now that my every act is love."
San Juan de la Cruz
With San Jaun's words, speaking to the "act of love" I feel led to close with an amazing story I read on Elaine Cook's site not long ago. I believe it is a wonderful account of possibly how God's sons carrying "an unreasonable love" will flourish and stand strong in the midst of tribulation. I have to believe this will touch your heart deeply as it did mine.
Wild Bill
The Power of Love
When the war in Europe ended, I entered Germany
with the occupying troops. I was part of a
group assigned to a concentration camp near
Wuppertal, charged with getting medical help to
the newly liberated prisoners, many of them
Jews from Holland, France, and eastern Europe.
This was the most shattering experience I had yet
had. I had been exposed to sudden death and injury,
but to see the effects of slow starvation; to
walk through barracks where thousands of men
had died a little bit at a time over a period of
years, was a new kind of horror. For many it was
an irreversible process: we lost scores each day
in spite of all the medicine and food we could
rush to them.
Now I needed my new insight, indeed. When
the ugliness became too great to handle, I did
what I had learned to do. I went from one end to
the other of that barbed wire enclosure looking
into men’s faces until I saw looking back at me,
the face of Christ.
And that’s how I came to know Wild Bill
Cody. That wasn’t his real name. His real name
was seven unpronounceable syllables in Polish,
but he had long drooping handlebar mustaches
like pictures of the old western hero, so the
American soldiers called him Wild Bill. He was
one of the inmates of the concentration camp, but
obviously he hadn’t been there long: his posture
was erect, his eyes bright, his energy indefatigable.
Since he was fluent in English, French,
German, Russian, as well as Polish, he became a
kind of unofficial camp translator.
We came to him with all sorts of problems;
the paperwork alone was staggering in attempting
to relocate people whose families, even
whole hometowns, might have disappeared. But
though Wild Bill worked 15 and 16 hours a day,
he showed no signs of weariness. While the rest
of us were drooping with fatigue, he seemed to
gain strength.
“We have time for this old fellow,” he’d say.
“He’s been waiting to see us all day.” His compassion
for his fellow-prisoners glowed on his
face, and it was to this glow that I came when
my own spirits were low.
So I was astonished to learn when Wild Bill’s
own papers came before us one day, that he had
been in Wuppertal since 1939! For six years he
had lived on the same starvation diet, slept in the
same airless and disease-ridden barracks as everyone
else, but without the least physical or mental
deterioration.
Perhaps even more amazing, every group in the
camp looked to him as a friend. He was the one
to whom quarrels between inmates were brought
for arbitration. Only after I’d been at Wuppertal
a number of weeks did I realize what a rarity this
was in a compound where the different nationalities
of prisoners hated each other almost as much
as they did the Germans.
As for the Germans, feelings against them ran
so high that in some of the camps liberated earlier,
former prisoners had seized guns, run into
the nearest village and simply shot the first Germans
they saw. Part of our instructions were to
prevent this kind of thing and again, Wild Bill
was our greatest asset, reasoning with the different
groups, counseling forgiveness.
“It’s not easy for some of them to forgive,” I
commented to him one day as we sat over mugs
of tea in the processing center. “So many of them
have lost members of their families.”
Wild Bill leaned back on the upright chair and
sipped at his drink. “We lived in the Jewish section
of Warsaw,” he began slowly, the first words I had
heard him speak about himself, “my wife,
our two daughters, and our three little boys.
When the Germans reached our street they lined
everyone against a wall and opened up with machine
guns. I begged to be allowed to die with
my family, but because I spoke German, they put
me in a work group.”
He paused, perhaps seeing again his wife and
children. “I had to decide right then,” he continued,
“whether to let myself hate the soldiers who
had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I
was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often
what hate could do to people’s minds and bodies.
Hate had just killed the six people who mattered
most to me in the world. I decided then that I
would spend the rest of my life – whether it was
a few days or many years – loving every person I
came in contact with.”
Loving every person….this was the power
that had kept a man well in the face of every
privation! We need to keep this in mind.
Surely this is the way and can we not help but weep upon such a testimony of "an unresonable love."
John
(to be continued)
