Sunday, December 21, 2008

Immutability


"Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee we find no variableness nor shadow of turning.  We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety."

Even if you know what the word immutability means, how many people have ever really used it in a sentence?  I have a horrible vocabulary and I never was good at pulling words out on the fly to impress.  In fact, I still have a few words that I am constantly using in the wrong context...and I don't care.  The truth is though, that I've come to love this little (or not so little) word immutability lately.  

It means being incapable of change.  

Most importantly, it is a quality that is central to understanding God.  God is immutable.  He is incapable of changing.  His very nature prohibits itself from changing.  To change would imply that what the former state of God wasn't perfected in it's entirety and a need to change would be present.  He would either have to go from bad to better, from better to worse, mature to immature, or vice versa.  God is perfect.  He is what he has always been, what he wants to be, and what he can't help but being.  Of course we are talking about the core here...the very nature of God.  Even when Christ was born into the world, God didn't change his nature...Jesus was there from the beginning.

In a world and life that is wrought with change, some good and some bad, most people would say that it is hard.  Even if it is a change that needs to happen, it pulls us away from our comfort zone and isolates us with doubt.  We need to realize that change is not an inherently holy thing.  It is a result of fallen people needing to re-align themselves with their creator.  A man who walked closely with the Lord once said:

"In God no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape.  Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux.  Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle."

Don't we all search for an everlasting permanence in our lives?  Don't we forever seek the solid rock to make our home upon?  Don't we desire to settle the Promised Land and live amongst family that know us?  I'm convinced that even the hard core wanderers among us (and I've done some wandering of my own) deeply desire to put their roots down in the soil of permanence.  That is what the Lord offers us.  That is what he wants to redeem us to.  Each of us know inherently that life changes ultimately bring us to the final change...death.  The cyclical nature of change ends up bringing us to a point of finality and fear.  It's depressing if you think about it.  

Can we seek the immutability of God while still realizing that the Lord works his plan of redemption through the very process that he stands against?  He desires complete permanence for us in him, but to bring us there he needs us to change.  I hope we realize that God will never change to suit our needs or fill our brokenness...instead he invites us into his immutable umbrella like a hen gathering her chicks.  That is beautiful...and immutable.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

where words fail...

"Lord, how great is our dilemma!  In thy presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak.  Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say?  Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.  Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe."
-A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

This is not just a reflective prayer written down by a man who intimately knew God, but truth of a real dilemma that we are faced with as people.  The more we get to know the Lord and see his ways, the more we get faced with this situation.  The Bible is full of scripture that speaks to this very truth.  David in The Psalms, Jesus speaking of the hearts of his followers, and Paul talking about the supremacy of Christ in the book of Colossians as well as the work of the Holy Spirit in the children of God, all describe this.  Our prayer should be simply that God shows us himself in this way...and then we wait for him to reveal himself.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Healing

"As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, 'Have mercy on us, Son of David!'  When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, 'Do you believe that I am able to do this?' 'Yes, Lord,' they replied.  Then he touched their eyes and said, 'According to your faith will it be done to you'; and their sight was restored." -Matthew 9:27-30

I just returned from a trip to Mamelodi, South Africa.  I went down there with a group from Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was assigned to be a part of a medical team for the duration of the trip.  Mamelodi is a township outside of the city of Pretoria, created during Apartheid, and almost 100% black.  The makeshift city (full of squatters and people of abject poverty living alongside middle class families) has a staggering HIV/AIDS positive population.  We set up medical tents out in the lower class neighborhoods and invited all who needed it to come and receive the medical treatment that we could provide.  There was about 15-20 people on the medical team, including a handful of nurses and three doctors.  I have no prior medical experience.  My job was to work in the Triage tent, effectively being the first person to come in contact with those seeking care.  I had to figure out whether or not they needed to see a doctor, and if not then I had to let our "pharmacy" know what they needed to help alleviate some of the illnesses they came in with.  Every day 300+ people would show up to receive care, and the doctors/nurses could only personally see so many of them.  I got rather good at diagnosing the common cold, heat rash, women's health issues (don't ask), and arthritis in the elderly.  I prayed that the Lord would give me eyes to see into what was ailing them and to speak directly into whatever it was.  Many of the people simply needed someone to talk to.  Many of them were also beyond help, dying of AIDS, and in the advanced stages of cancer.  I personally witnessed dozens upon dozens of people get tested positive for HIV and have to be confronted of the new reality of their life.  I saw dozens of babies, many less than a year old, come in with lesions all over their bodies, already living near death with AIDS. 

All this to say, it hit me that we were "doing" relatively little:  Maybe a diagnosis here, some ibuprofen there, and a lesson on menopause to some wholly uneducated women all around.  For the most part, we had none of their prior medical histories, incomplete testing, and referrals that would probably never end up in a real doctor's office.  People were dying.  They needed a miracle.  The Lord showed up.  I saw it with my own eyes and was a witness to His healing.  These people had more faith that God would heal them more completely than a doctor could any day.  Many would come up to us, not believing in Jesus, and ask us to pray for them anyways.  I felt like I was living in the Book of Acts in the Bible.  I saw people walk that couldn't before.  I saw people see who couldn't before.  I saw people hear the name of Jesus for the first time in their lives.  

We live in a country that has been blessed (and it is a blessing) with wonderful health care, and the most gifted doctors in the world.  We can easily forget that many in the world don't have that.  We can easily forget that in those situations, prayer is powerful.  Prayer is essential.  Who is praying?  We know that in the Bible, Jesus would simply heal people on account of their faith.  i.e. they just believed that he could do it.