Monday I mentioned Mikayla, severely autistic and unable to talk, but who
can communicate things like yes, no, sleep, come and go with limited sign
language. Mikayla was playing with her iPad when her younger sister started
playing with the iTouch. Signing to her mother, Mikayla said, “I want two.” meaning she wanted both
devices, not just one. Unable to convince her mother to let her have them both,
Mikayla came close to me and picked up my hand. Then taking my index finger she
decisively pointed it at her mother and then again signed, “two”. There was no doubt that Mikayla thought of me as her
advocate and that my finger had the power of persuasion over her mother. I
think there is a little of Mikayla in all of us. As believers we’re confident
that Jesus is our advocate, but we just can’t help but pick up His finger and
point it at whatever it is we think we just have to have. “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high.” (Job
16:19 NIV)
2 comments:
Gail;
-----So as God gives the individual free-will to both desire things and to do things desired, we all stitch at least some of our own will into His tapestry. No one but Jesus does the Father’s will perfectly; some of our desires are flawed. Aren’t faulty stitches made from imperfect desires destructive to the majestic beauty of His tapestry? Is it only a temporal tapestry into which we are allowed to stitch? Or do some of our stitches pass through the temporal and join His eternal and perfect tapestry? I Cor 3:13-15 indicates the latter, “...each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” The universe will perish and pass away (Ps 102:25-26; II Pet 3:10; Rev 20:11). I believe it is a container for all that is imperfect, and like a trash can it is created for the collection of all that is perishable for a final disposal. The fallacious portion of our wills and their results are stitched into the fabric of its time and space and will come to naught. So I believe we stitch into a temporal tapestry, also being His.
-----But even in it is stitched the majestic beauty of God’s perfect and eternal tapestry, because it is the means God determined beforehand for uniting all things in Christ Jesus for the triumph of banishing flaw and evil from His presence in the place of His beloved. Only those who join His will by desiring righteousness (which involves believing the Truth) escape the pitching of this trashcan for the banishment of its collected evil. And that escape is not by their wills being perfect, because they can not make them so. It is only by His perception of their perfection, by His seeing our desire to align our will with His. In this is Christ’s advocacy.
-----Our imperfect understanding can not weed out the misalignments of our wills with His. When I was a janitor I learned a principle that yet effects my thinking: you can not clean a surface with water dirtier than that surface. Although we can not perfectly align our own will, we yet must proceed by free-will. So our misperceptions will tarnish our prayers, but the more intense is our desire for His perfection the more the “Thy will be done” of our prayers will be done.
-----Information, memory, and logic comprise intelligence. But all the intelligence in the world is insufficient for the grooming of our wills. That grooming requires humility - accepting what is discovered when it’s found to be other than what was thought (or prayed.) Only by our humble participation in stitching God’s tapestry can our wills be washing in His pure water. And only those stitches made from washed desires will show up in His eternal tapestry.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
As usual, well put.
Grace and Peace.
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