Tuesday, November 20, 2007
'God's Presence,' by Philip Yancey
The following reminds me that I have nothing to complain about, and everything to be thankful for -- especially real dwelling places of the Holy Spirit like Dahnmaya. Most of us are absolute babies at faith.
It also reminds me why the least among us shall be first:
The less there is of us within us, the more there can be of God within us. If we can manage to empty ourselves of ourselves -- or, if circumstances empty ourselves of ourselves -- then God can wash in, and then back out and into and onto others.
--ER
In the ... Last Supper conversation in which Jesus bequeathed his peace, he also promised a far greater gift: the presence of God, who would live not in some faraway heaven but inside us, in our very souls. He promised us the Holy Spirit, and the title he chose, the Counselor (or Comforter), itself indicates one of the Spirit's main roles. The sense of God's presence may come and go. Yet the believer can have confidence that God is already present, living inside, and need not be summoned from afar.
I have seen evidence of God's presence in the most unexpected places. During our trip to Nepal, a physical therapist gave my wife and me a tour of the Green Pastures Hospital, which specializes in leprosy rehabilitation. As we walked along an outdoor corridor, I noticed in a courtyard one of the ugliest human beings I have ever seen. Her hands were bandaged in gauze, she had deformed stumps where most people have feet, and her face showed the worst ravages of that cruel disease. Her nose had shrunken away so that, looking at her, I could see into her sinus cavity. Her eyes, mottled and covered with callus, let in no light; she was totally blind. Scars covered patches of skin on her arms.
We toured a unit of the hospital and returned along the same corridor. In the meantime this creature had crawled across the courtyard to the very edge of the walkway, pulling herself along the ground by planting her elbows and dragging her body like a wounded animal. I'm shamed to say my first thought was She's a beggar and she wants money. My wife, who has worked among the down-and-out, had a much more holy reaction. Without hesitation she bent down to the woman and put her arm around her. The old woman rested her head against Janet's shoulder and began singing a song in Nepali, a tune that we all instantly recognized: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
"Dahnmaya is one of our most devoted church members," the physical therapist later told us. "Most of our patients are Hindus, but we have a little Christian chapel here, and Dahnmaya comes every time the door opens. She's a prayer warrior. She loves to greet and welcome every visitor who comes to Green Pastures, and no dount she heard us talking as we walked along the corridor."
A few months later we heard that Dahnmaya had died. Close to my desk I keep a photo that I snapped just as she was singing to Janet. Whenever I feel polluted by the beauty-obsessed celebrity culture I live in -- a culture in which people pay exorbitant sums to shorten their noses or plump up their breasts to achieve some impossible ideal of beauty while nine thousand people die each day from AIDS for lack of treatment and hospitals like Green Pastures scrape by on charity crumbs -- I pull out that photo. I see two beautiful women: my wife, smiling sweetly, wearing a brightly colored Nepali outfit she had bought the day before, holding in her arms an old crone who would flunk any beauty test ever devised except the one that matters most. Out of that deformed, hollow shell of a body, the light of God's presence shines out. The Holy Spirit found a home.
-- from Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006): 273-274.
It also reminds me why the least among us shall be first:
The less there is of us within us, the more there can be of God within us. If we can manage to empty ourselves of ourselves -- or, if circumstances empty ourselves of ourselves -- then God can wash in, and then back out and into and onto others.
--ER
In the ... Last Supper conversation in which Jesus bequeathed his peace, he also promised a far greater gift: the presence of God, who would live not in some faraway heaven but inside us, in our very souls. He promised us the Holy Spirit, and the title he chose, the Counselor (or Comforter), itself indicates one of the Spirit's main roles. The sense of God's presence may come and go. Yet the believer can have confidence that God is already present, living inside, and need not be summoned from afar.
I have seen evidence of God's presence in the most unexpected places. During our trip to Nepal, a physical therapist gave my wife and me a tour of the Green Pastures Hospital, which specializes in leprosy rehabilitation. As we walked along an outdoor corridor, I noticed in a courtyard one of the ugliest human beings I have ever seen. Her hands were bandaged in gauze, she had deformed stumps where most people have feet, and her face showed the worst ravages of that cruel disease. Her nose had shrunken away so that, looking at her, I could see into her sinus cavity. Her eyes, mottled and covered with callus, let in no light; she was totally blind. Scars covered patches of skin on her arms.
We toured a unit of the hospital and returned along the same corridor. In the meantime this creature had crawled across the courtyard to the very edge of the walkway, pulling herself along the ground by planting her elbows and dragging her body like a wounded animal. I'm shamed to say my first thought was She's a beggar and she wants money. My wife, who has worked among the down-and-out, had a much more holy reaction. Without hesitation she bent down to the woman and put her arm around her. The old woman rested her head against Janet's shoulder and began singing a song in Nepali, a tune that we all instantly recognized: "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
"Dahnmaya is one of our most devoted church members," the physical therapist later told us. "Most of our patients are Hindus, but we have a little Christian chapel here, and Dahnmaya comes every time the door opens. She's a prayer warrior. She loves to greet and welcome every visitor who comes to Green Pastures, and no dount she heard us talking as we walked along the corridor."
A few months later we heard that Dahnmaya had died. Close to my desk I keep a photo that I snapped just as she was singing to Janet. Whenever I feel polluted by the beauty-obsessed celebrity culture I live in -- a culture in which people pay exorbitant sums to shorten their noses or plump up their breasts to achieve some impossible ideal of beauty while nine thousand people die each day from AIDS for lack of treatment and hospitals like Green Pastures scrape by on charity crumbs -- I pull out that photo. I see two beautiful women: my wife, smiling sweetly, wearing a brightly colored Nepali outfit she had bought the day before, holding in her arms an old crone who would flunk any beauty test ever devised except the one that matters most. Out of that deformed, hollow shell of a body, the light of God's presence shines out. The Holy Spirit found a home.
-- from Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006): 273-274.
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ER: "The less there is of us within us, the more there can be of God within us. If we can manage to empty ourselves of ourselves -- or, if circumstances empty ourselves of ourselves -- then God can wash in, and then back out and into and onto others."
Interesting.
Makes us all sound like groady ole Mason jars that need to be boiled out in order for God fill us with his current crop of "Holy Spirit".
But are we not "made in the image of God"? At least in the image of Elohim?
Genesis 1:26-27
"Then God (Elohim) said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God (Elohim) created man in his own image, in the image of God (Elohim) he created him; male and female he created them."
Elohim: God,Gods The plural form of EL in Hebrew meaning the Strong
One. Elohim appears 2,570 in the Tanakh.
Christian fundimentalist like to parse this to mean that Elohim doesn't mean Gods plural but that this form represents the Godhead and thus it is refering to the Trinity.
So we are not only made like Gods' image but in the image of a God that has an image that is male and female. But I digressed a bit there.
Secondly, Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is in us, and we are to seek it there. That sounds more like we are supposed to look inside and recognize what God has made of us and us for and to be saved from ignorance of what we are and can be.
The Mason jar model is an inert Christian who lets God do all the work, or at least is a submissive model. God's kind of like a fruit farmer.
The "seeking what God has put there model", Let's call it the Crucible Model is a more active model and requires the individial to act and believe. God's kind of like a teacher.
Interesting.
Makes us all sound like groady ole Mason jars that need to be boiled out in order for God fill us with his current crop of "Holy Spirit".
But are we not "made in the image of God"? At least in the image of Elohim?
Genesis 1:26-27
"Then God (Elohim) said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God (Elohim) created man in his own image, in the image of God (Elohim) he created him; male and female he created them."
Elohim: God,Gods The plural form of EL in Hebrew meaning the Strong
One. Elohim appears 2,570 in the Tanakh.
Christian fundimentalist like to parse this to mean that Elohim doesn't mean Gods plural but that this form represents the Godhead and thus it is refering to the Trinity.
So we are not only made like Gods' image but in the image of a God that has an image that is male and female. But I digressed a bit there.
Secondly, Jesus says the Kingdom of heaven is in us, and we are to seek it there. That sounds more like we are supposed to look inside and recognize what God has made of us and us for and to be saved from ignorance of what we are and can be.
The Mason jar model is an inert Christian who lets God do all the work, or at least is a submissive model. God's kind of like a fruit farmer.
The "seeking what God has put there model", Let's call it the Crucible Model is a more active model and requires the individial to act and believe. God's kind of like a teacher.
Drlobo, I agree, pretty much. But no, I don't mean an inert mason jar-type of emptiness. Not a state of being empty. But an active conscious emptying of oneself, made in teh image of God or no, for the sake of others. Rather than a Mason jar model, I mean the Jesus Christ model. He most certainly was not inert, nor empty in the same way an empty jar is. His example is as one who gave of himself, to the bitter end. What goes on "inside" -- for lack of a better term -- one who "empties" himself in the way I mean is not a vacuum, but a ... I don't know what. Think of something that is good, and that produces something that is good that gets used up and needs to be replenished.
ER, That was a great post. I am with you more than drlobojo. As for the emptying of ourselves, that should happen daily as we will never completely die to self until we leave this earth. Next, we need to refill the emptiness of self with the Lord Jesus Christ. I think the scripture that talks about the house that was swept clean, unless we bring in (Jesus) will become more unclean than before. You and I do agree on some things!
Mom2 said: "Die to self..."
Then, self is bad? It must die to make room for God to be there?
Let me try the dichotomy again.
Model one: God reaching inside of you cleans you out, then comes from the outside and fills you up.
Model two: God activates himself in yourself from the inside and uses that to push out all that is not real.
If God is not in each individual's self, then a lot of scripture is unexplainable. Starting with Genesis chapter one.
ER I saw your quandry.
I have always enjoyed these little epiphanal stories by ministers et. al. as they brush by God's presence and notice it. In this case he even photographed it for a reference point.
Two lines I thought most interesting were: "...my wife, ... wearing a brightly colored Nepali outfit she had bought the day before,..."
And this one: "Out of that deformed, hollow shell of a body, the light of God's presence shines out. The Holy Spirit found a home."
Then, self is bad? It must die to make room for God to be there?
Let me try the dichotomy again.
Model one: God reaching inside of you cleans you out, then comes from the outside and fills you up.
Model two: God activates himself in yourself from the inside and uses that to push out all that is not real.
If God is not in each individual's self, then a lot of scripture is unexplainable. Starting with Genesis chapter one.
ER I saw your quandry.
I have always enjoyed these little epiphanal stories by ministers et. al. as they brush by God's presence and notice it. In this case he even photographed it for a reference point.
Two lines I thought most interesting were: "...my wife, ... wearing a brightly colored Nepali outfit she had bought the day before,..."
And this one: "Out of that deformed, hollow shell of a body, the light of God's presence shines out. The Holy Spirit found a home."
Thank you, ER. That was both convicting and encouraging (which is what the best testimonies always should do).
Would that I had even a speck of this woman's faith. Would that I had her courage. Would that I could stop typing that "I".
Would that I had even a speck of this woman's faith. Would that I had her courage. Would that I could stop typing that "I".
ER said: "...I am not the heathern the strict constructionists of Scripture want to believe."
Hum....
Hum....
I reject all spiritual dichotomies.
I am not saying that either we, or God, evacuates ourselves, either good or bad, so that God then has a vessel with which to work!
I am saying that we willingly SPEND, USE and GIVE OF our blessed selves, so that God can then refill us with MORE OF our blessed selves, who are totally and inexplicably tangled up with GOD, who, while omni-everything, chooses, when dealing with us, to meet us where we ARE -- so that we can SPEND, USE and GIVE OF more of ourselves, to the advancement of GOD's kingdom, which cannot advance withOUT ourselves.
Ha. Diagram that sentence. Might make it easier.
I've said NOTHING about "good" or "bad."
Addendum: Due to self means die to self in favor of all others. That's all. And that's a lot. It very well might mean suicide, as in the suicide of Jesus hisself by letting his Godness -- if he be God almighty -- be led to the Cross. And if he be not, he still has left the ultimate example.
I am not saying that either we, or God, evacuates ourselves, either good or bad, so that God then has a vessel with which to work!
I am saying that we willingly SPEND, USE and GIVE OF our blessed selves, so that God can then refill us with MORE OF our blessed selves, who are totally and inexplicably tangled up with GOD, who, while omni-everything, chooses, when dealing with us, to meet us where we ARE -- so that we can SPEND, USE and GIVE OF more of ourselves, to the advancement of GOD's kingdom, which cannot advance withOUT ourselves.
Ha. Diagram that sentence. Might make it easier.
I've said NOTHING about "good" or "bad."
Addendum: Due to self means die to self in favor of all others. That's all. And that's a lot. It very well might mean suicide, as in the suicide of Jesus hisself by letting his Godness -- if he be God almighty -- be led to the Cross. And if he be not, he still has left the ultimate example.
Just for the record ER. There are two kinds of people in the world; those who see everything in dichotomies and those that don't.
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