That is how forgiveness works.
Like life, the past is something you can choose to give away instead of keep. To forgive is to give away a closely held past in the present moment. In a real sense, it is to walk into the past and release the poisonous link from the chain of your existence before it ever happened. And miraculously when you look down at the infected wound on your flank, it is healed. Just an old scar with the echo of something forgotten. The negative meaning, the pain, somehow unobtainable because you have finally chosen to let it go in the swift river. The injury and the wound set free to be spoken aloud with the tongues of angels in the mouths of man. “On every high hill, every mountaintop; and under ever spreading tree...I found idols.”
Your goals; which are places of highest vision on one end, and places of rest and leisure on the other, are scattered with idols. Where is God? He both grants and is your highest vision. He both grants and is your place of rest. And when the true God discovers evidence of false gods throughout your life, from top to bottom—complete destruction ensues. Or another way to say the same thing: when reality discovers itself falsified throughout your life—destruction results. I don’t have to be a prophet to tell you this. I have lived it. Money is not real. 401k’s are not real. Your success is not real. A degree is not real. What you know and think about is not real. Politics is not real. Laws are not real. Color is not real. Matter is not real. Your interpretation is not real. Your idea is not real. Your ego is not real. Your identity is not real. A thing is not real. The ark is not real. None of these are sacred. The ark is not sacred. God is. He speaks. We are to listen and obey. “I know what God said, but it doesn’t really make sense when you think about it...” Uzza never saw it coming. Too late. What was more sacred: God’s ark or God’s decree? The relationship with God, or with the ark, or with ourselves? The external, or the internal? What we think, or what we don’t think? What we know, or what we don’t? I love it when a sudden flip comes along. I think Jesus is the great inverter. He reaches into your mouth, which never shuts up—and into the throat of the universe—grabs your soul and pulls it up and turns everything inside out. And he says, “See, you’ve been looking at everything the wrong way.” Christ not only turns it opposite, he turns it inside out as well, “You think you’re looking through a hole, but the hole is actually looking through you.”
The flip for me this week was your interpretation of “…do not throw your pearls to pigs.” You said, “I don’t think we read that correctly. We always turn the focus onto the stupid pigs. But I think Jesus is saying it’s not the pigs that are stupid. It’s you.” FLIP! Why would you give pearls to a pig? Why would you give others what YOU want? Why would you give anyone else what YOU want? It’s what YOU want, not them. You’re the one that likes pearls, not them. It’s like giving your wife a new basketball and then being hurt that she doesn’t like it. Or like working all day cleaning the pool and getting the backyard ready for this great thing you're going to give your nephew and his teenage friends—and then no one ever even goes back there. And then you sit around nursing your hurt and trampled feelings while everybody does something else and has a great time. Maybe its because you wanted to be upset and martyred? Hmm? I like church. So should you. I like heaven. So should you. You should like this. Don’t you understand what I am giving you? Why don’t you like what I like? Why don't you like what I am giving you? Why is it I don’t know what others want? Maybe it’s because I never asked. Maybe I never asked—I just told. Maybe it’s because I never knocked—I just kicked in. Maybe it’s because I never sought—I already knew. And by the way, do I even know what I want? Or even better, do I even know who I am? How do I like to be approached, talked to, and treated? Mother bird why is your nest so high?
Does the wind whisper of forgiveness, whistle in forgetfulness, up there? I see your baby perched high on the nest-edge, buffeted by fear and courage. Do you turn to look? No, your beak is at its work of cracking, twisting, and tending. Here he is again, your child. No longer a baby. Again he stands at the edge of his crown of thorns. Again the waves of flight or fight or fall crest and converge; and flight, yes flight! Mother bird, it must be! Never done, only dreamed, finally victorious, He leaps over the last nestled horizon into first abyss of sky. Do you not turn then? No, but continue on. But I thought I saw you—in the space between one bird heartbeat and its next—yes, I thought I saw you pause over your stick and claw and worm and mouth. Bird eyes staring. Mother. Bird ears listening to the soaring wind. |
ADAM HANKINS"Mmmm...donuts." Archives
January 2021
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