Are you better now than before?
Are you better at the end than the beginning?
No? 
Then you are watered-down wine in a barely touched cup; forgotten on the table after the celebration and waiting to be pitched .  A weak consolation prize handed out to second, third, or fourth best. Thanks for just showing up!

The amazing thing is not that you can be diluted.  Rather it’s that you can be concentrated.
​

It is the easiest thing in the world to transform a mole hill into a mountain,
but somehow impossible to make a mountain budge one inch.
Why?

In the hush of night; in the wilderness of Zin I ask:
​What is life age-to-age? What is life age-during?

Is it knowing what to do? Is it having a valid plan for the future? Is it a clear grasp of good or bad, right or wrong, power, will, choice, transaction, and relationship? Is it understanding the Plan of Redemption? Understanding how to make it through? Understanding change and rigidity? Understanding that life flows just beneath the surface? Is it knowing the map says the promised land is just over there.

No.

It is obedience. Obedience to an infallible guide precisely outside my fallible understanding. It is the simple obedience to speak. To speak life. Is it really that hard to speak with tongues of flame? To yield my will to another’s, to His, is a life-giving force that opens not only the door barring my way; but every door beyond it; in the same moment winning the battle within and creating peace without. To speak from obedience to what my Father says in my heart is far greater than speaking from myself: rashly wielding my shepherd’s staff; my powerful, but limited understanding—my trusty gift from God.

The water flowed in Zin. I was right. But it wasn’t the joyous replenishment I wanted. The spring somehow throbbed bitterly from its crag. My friends, my strangers, and my children drank quietly from their cups. “Your welcome!” shouted I, leaving them to their empty skins and jars.
That night I watched the unnamed waters as I pulled up stakes to leave. The waters ebbed with my contempt as they drained into the desert, carrying with them the promised land.

What is life age-during?

I travelled far that night through Zin.  Yet no matter how far, the thinning line of those distant waters shown red in the fire of my God.


“...because I spake not from myself, but the Father who sent me, He did give me a command, what I may say, and what I may speak, and I have known that His command is life age-during; what therefore, I speak, according to the Father hath said to me, so I speak.”

I just had a great meditation this morning on a question a friend asked related to why Peter wrapped his garments around himself before he jumped in the water as he swam to Jesus at the end of John. Because, as she said, “Everything in the Bible is there for a reason.  Every word.” And she’s right. John included that detail for a reason. 
It is the last chapter.  Peter has denied Jesus. In his rejection, he now pulls empty nets out of the water, fishing in the darkness.  Then Jesus arrives at dawn and  asks him to cast his nets one more time.  And they fill and fill and fill.  Now, let’s see where this goes:

Jesus watches Peter. As he watches you. He speaks to Peter. As he speaks to you. Then he watches Peter gather his garments and jump in the water and swim to shore. What an act of love!  Of devotion! What a beautiful act of desiring only Jesus!
But then why doesn’t the scene on shore begin with a soggy hug and the joyous tears of a restored relationship?

Because of that garment.

The scene on shore begins as it must: Jesus teaches Peter.  He tells Peter to go help bring the fish to shore. He then sits around a fire and teaches Peter about love. Because it is critical. It is everything. Because Jesus sees that Peter still has not learned what love is. And he must. He must . He must! Or it is all for naught!  
“But, you know I love you!  Right?” says Peter. 

“Right?!”

​But then the teacher:
“See, Peter, you think love is like wanting; like desire; or devotion. But to ‘want’ me—to ‘want’ anything—to ‘want’…means you don’t have it. It is to ‘want’ for something—to be lacking. So it is something you must get. You must grab. Like, ‘I love breakfast.’ Which is, ‘I want breakfast. I am wanting…breakfast.’  It is a desire for something you are lacking.  But like the tree of life, I am the opposite of desire. I exist outside of wanting.  I am fulfillment.
See, you already have me. You have always had me. 
Out there, in the darkness, facing the unknown, I spoke and you listened. You responded. And when you responded, I revealed abundance. You went to fish, right? You went for a purpose, right?  Well, I showed you ultimate fulfillment of your purpose—of meaning.  And remember, Peter, it happened  precisely when you trusted a voice from the unknown. 
And then, when I revealed what lies beneath what you can see, I watched. I watched your response. And what did you do? As soon as you knew it was me, you "thought" you knew what to do. You turned from that purpose; you turned from the responsibility that emerged as a result of your miraculous power to extract meaning.  You turned from it and gathered your garments, and wanted me because you thought that was love. You thought that was what I ‘wanted.’  
But wanting me is not loving me. I am teaching you the answer to ‘Do you love me?’ because you don't know.  The answer is: ‘feed my sheep.’   Like the line I came from—David’s line--the line of the shepherd boy who knew that to fulfill his purpose, his father’s will, was the same as loving his father; and in that kind of loving is where meaning is found; is where strength is found; is where victory is found; is where dancing with joy is found; is where everything is found--as he was; so I am; and so you must be; like the boy with the heart of God.   Loving me, immature spirit, is not getting me. It is not getting what you want and going where you want and gathering you garments, and then sitting at my feet; while the purpose and meaning I showed you sinks in the water for others to bear. If you love me…fulfill your purpose!  I will show you abundant meaning and purpose if you listen. If you follow, mature spirit, if you will be lead, then I will reveal a miracle of meaning with which to offset the suffering and insufficiencies of the world.  If you listen, if you respond, I will show you how to save the world—how to love me. And it absolutely exists outside of what you want." 
Are you swimming towards Jesus while responsibilities that were revealed to you; that you know are full of life and life-giving;  are left sinking behind? Put the garments back down. Go. Grab the nets, full to bursting with life.  Help bring them to shore. And let’s eat breakfast.

There is a strange overlay of patterns with Jesus’ view of those casting out demons in His name (in Matt. 7 and Mark 9), with the Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4.  There is an arbitrariness with which the Lord views their sacrifice. He does not say exactly why one is accepted and one is not—but He can smell the difference.  
Why are you angry? Why are you angry when your sacrifices in life are not accepted and your brothers’ are?  “Lord, Lord! Didn’t we…blah, blah, blah.”
“If you are good, will you not be accepted?”
“But if you are not good, then the idea of sin and sin-offering will be a creature that crouches at your door and desires to own you. But you can rule it.”
It does not matter whether I think the fruit of my labour is acceptable, it matters what God smells when it burns —when what I bring is exposed to judgment of heat and fire.
Oddly, frighteningly, the most important part of my action is not the result that I see, but the result that I don’t see—not the fruit that I produce, but how it tastes when it is consumed. I may cast out demons in Jesus’ name and still be just as  possessed—by “I”, by “My”, by my desires.  My sacrifice may be burnt on the alter, and the essence of my heart detected and rejected.

“Where does your amazing strength come from to defeat the enemy?”
Samson replies, “Alright, alright. You keep nagging me and I keep telling little lies about myself, but here is the real truth.  My strength lies in my hair.”


    NO! WRONG! Samson’ strength was a gift from God.  The hair was a gift—a symbol—gifted; given—but still just a material thing. Anything that is given comes from a source.  Where the gift comes from—who the gift comes from—the “relationship” to the source—is what infuses it with power.  And the source is what replenishes the gift with the power to defeat the enemy—as long as you remain mindful of—have a relationship with— the source.  It is just the same with any relationship.  The “gift of strength” does not reside in the thing itself. It is a terrible mistake to confuse symbols for the actual treasures—abstractions for the actual gifts, for power. To confuse this, is to disconnect, to shear, to “let a hand touch your head.”  And when this disastrous mistake occurs; the symbol is gone, and with it, the gift.  Delilah did not trick Samson.  Samson was the one playing tricks. And like all tricksters, he relied on distraction, confusion, and lack of attention.  Samson tricked himself.  Samson betrayed God, and in doing so, betrayed himself. He became blind. Only when he grew the strength of character to talk to the Lord again and ask one last chance to change—to make things right—did he reveal his understanding of  who his real enemy was. Samson is the one who had to go—to die. It is the last place anyone wants to look—it is dark, deep, lonely.  It was in the filth, in the dust, in the dirt, at the bottom, in the belly of the beast, that he found what he needed most. When Samson finally discovered who was the true enemy, the true betrayer, he knew what to do.  “And in his death he defeated more enemies than when ‘he’ was alive.”
    I remember feeling like Dorothy waking up at the end of Oz, in her bed with her family surrounding her, for the first time with joy in her heart.  The great lesson of “The Wizard of Oz” is not that the source of power resides in the ruby slippers (Dorothy had those on right from the start).  The great lesson is that the power to get home springs from one’s deep understanding and admission after defeating the enemies within, that “there’s no place like home.”

“Help me to understand.”
There is nothing else. The path of the ego is the path to the lowest place. Ends there. But it is also where humility Begins—must begin.  Humility, if it is ever to be found,  is found in the abyss—where profound things always are. And then, down there in the dirt, an amazing thing happens: the eyes begin to lift.  The journey starts to climb upward. It is the place of “levavi oculos.”  It is elevation. It is the place of revealed truth, rather than argued truth.

What more do I need?

Jesus—the mode of being that redeems—is all the sign I need. All the miracle I need. Am I not amazed at this life? Do I see only my tiny years, or do I see the eternal moment of right now?  Do I simultaneously look one way and say, “My time on this earth is too short!” and look another and say, “I have plenty of time;” never able to live right now—the ONE AND ONLY place where life actually happens; refusing, rejecting, ignorant—waiting for some other time, some other life?  
Jesus says,”Do you want me to exceed your expectations? What do you expect?” 
Faith happens in the absence—on the other side; in the letting go—of my wants. My wants are marred by smallness; tarnished by fear; pushed and pulled by the external.  In their absence, ONLY by their removal, can I finally see the one who says, “Ask me anything? And as long as you do it my name—the name of redemption—in the name of that which exists outside of what you know—it is done.”
It’s like, “The unknown can either be trusted or feared.  I am asking you to trust.”