tears

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:3

He can't wipe away every tear in heaven because there won't be any tears in heaven. but He will wipe them off anyway, as if they were still there. One wipe for every single one. This means He will never stop gently holding my face...

walking

Abraham knew Jesus

According to Johannes Calvin, all through the Old Testament Jesus was known. How mind-boggling but - when you think about it - utterly obvious is this! The impacts of this revelation on my view of the living God are huge. But let me explain...

The evidence for the gospel to have been there from creation (and, according to Calvin, creation being "the theatre of the gospel") lies in the fact that God doesn't have a plan B. Often, the story of salvation is presented thus: in the Old Testament, the people of Israel had the law and were saved by works; in the New Testament, people are saved by faith. But doesn't Galatians 3:11 say,

"it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"

Not even Abraham did anything to earn God's favour - Romans 4:3:

“Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

There was grace in the OT, too - grace that looked forward to the incarnation of Jesus. Yet, Jesus as part of the Trinity, has always been there. He has many names in the Old Testament. He is the Word of God, the Voice of God, the Angel of God, the Presence, etc (see also John 1 for evidence). So, as early as Genesis 3:8 we can see Jesus come and meet with the fallen humans -

"And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." (see Matthew 26:36-43 for beautiful parallel)

Another instance is Genesis 15, when it says

"And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”"

Abraham here actually trusts the SON - He is indeed the Mediator even as early as this in salvation history!

Genesis 16 speaks of the angel of the Lord coming to speak to Hagar. 'Angel' in Hebrew actually means 'messenger' - and can well be used of Christ. A good indication of the angel being Christ is when he accepts worship - whereas the angels = spiritual beings (like in Revelation) do not.

The implications of Exodus 3, and God=Jesus speaking from the burning bush, are massive.

"God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” ...‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’"

If Jesus says of Himself that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it really is God incarnate who later died for us!!

In John 1:18, facts are pretty clear -

"No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known."

No one has seen God, not even Moses, of whom it is said in Exodus 33 -

"Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend."

Face to Face. Even though a little later he can't see the face of God? (But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”) It must be Jesus, showing the Father, sitting on the Arc of the Covenant. 

Now imagine - Jesus sits there and sees the priest make their offering of animals year in year out - all the while knowing that finally, He Himself will be offered as a blood sacrifice to terminate this process. 

This makes me shiver in awe. Abraham is actually my brother... these people are indeed my "cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) because they knew Jesus! 

rest

Boldness in Regard to Heaven

I read an article recently that left me stunned. Beiden C. Lane manages to put into breathtakingly beautiful words a side of God that we all too often step away from - He loves us with a passion, and longs to be loved back in the same way: "Israel's God longs to be deeply desired by God's people—a God taking joy in aggressive lovers."

See Hosea 2:14-20, for instance:

¹⁴ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
^{(...) 16} “And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ ¹⁷ For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. (...) I will make you lie down in safety. ¹⁹ And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. ²⁰ I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord."

And from this place of deeply knowing the God who is our bridegroom and husband, we can call out to Him with an intimacy and fervour that is lacking otherwise. Just like Jesus himself -

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence." Hebrews 5:7

Lane states that "boldness in prayer (...) exhibits a robust faith." This boldness is what we need in the face of suffering, when we don't know which way to go because we are stuck and swamped over by grief and desperation. Then, like the prophets and many of God's men and women in the Bible, we can argue with God - not a distant and removed God, but with a God who takes any attack on His Holy Ones personally:

"There is a shockingly profound access to God's inner life that is revealed in the stories growing out of this tradition of prayer rooted in prophetic insight. As the following examples suggest, God is so vulnerable to the pleas of God's children as to need to be protected from divine graciousness. God so agonizes over behaving justly toward God's people as to open the divine will to their scrutiny. God so exults in God's law as to rejoice even when the people quote it against God. These metaphors offer an imaginative reconnaisance of the divine interiority. They disclose a God rich in pathos."

We can remind God of His promises in our prayers, and hold Him accountable towards them when we find ourselves oppressed!

"Hutzpa [= 'arguing with God'] in prayer can result only from a prolonged and painful look on unrelieved suffering. Yet, there is a comfortable triumphalism that too often has characterized the common prayer of enculturated Christianity. It knows very little of a costly sharing in the sufferings of Christ. It lacks that passionate longing and impatience for the reign of God that frequently marks the churches of the oppressed. Secure in its own distance from suffering, it finds unnecessary any agonized appeal for God's promised redemption. It rests content with a reign half-realized, a resurrection not yet complete. Its God, therefore, can remain one-dimensional, immovable, unembroiled in pathos."

This arguing does not have to be well-phrased, deeply thought-through, and fully understandable. When we really face suffering, and long for God's reign in it, we can call out to Him as the one closest to our hearts and minds.

"The language of prayer discussed here is a limit-language, spoken from the edge of the abyss. Incapable of the secure certainty of prose, it mumbles half-words— lapses into a grief eased only by story. The theologian is here displaced by the poet. Perhaps that must always be the case when ordinary language succumbs to the enormity of existence."

And so, we can eventually enter into a relationship with Him that John Donne describes in a - for some - outrageous poem. May we all know Him so intimately, and depend on Him so fully!

"Batter my heart, three-personed God.
Take me to You, imprison me, for I,

Except You enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me."

(quotes from "Hutzpa K'lapei Shamaya: A Christian Response to the Jewish Tradition of Arguing with God" by Beiden C. Lane)