Train of Thought
The Week December 17-23, 2012 

Sunday morning, cold and gray outside. A perfect day for resting in the Lord and delighting in the stark beauty of this glorious time of the year.

But we were suddenly reminded that the world doesn’t always work the way we expect. A commotion of baying and bawling charged into my hearing, and only when I looked outside did I put the sound together with the reality.

Through our front yard, down our driveway, across the cul de sac, into the field across the way, and through neighbors’ fences to an unseen field just this side of Catoctin Mountain, a pack of fox hounds raced in full voice in pursuit of their prey. I counted at least twenty in the initial surge, and these were followed shortly thereafter by another dozen or so.

A woman with a radio drove through the cul de sac, talking frantically with someone on the other end. Then, about 200 yards away, through a neighbor’s hay fields, here came the “hunters” on horseback, leisurely following their errant pack, whistling and calling and trying to regroup the misguided hounds.

Southwest of us, just a few miles as the crow flies, near St. Louis and Middleburg, is fox hunting country. Something had gone wrong – a Lord’s Day violation for the well-heeled gone awry. Sin is like that, yeah it is. It seems harmless enough, but the next thing you know, the fox is way out of bounds and neighbors’ yards and fields are trampled and trespassed as leisurely as if it were no big deal.

A world gone comically awry.

Comical, but in Newtown, CT, the world went awry in a much more serious way, and people intuitively sought the Lord for comfort and consolation.

Something in us – the image of God, to be specific – knows where to go when life gets brutally and horribly out of whack. Reporters across the cultural spectrum decried the “evil” that savaged that quiet village, and everyone agreed. Sin is everywhere, and all sin is evil – not just the “evils” that descend on quiet communities from time to time. Unless we begin to hate all evil, hating “evil” such as happened in Newtown won’t cause it to abate. Hating evil begins in our own relationship with the Lord, and the sins which so easily beset us all; but if we will not seek the Lord in prayer, we will not hate sin, as He commands.

How effective are the ministries of our churches? I couldn’t help but think about this as all those grieving, seeking people crowded into Newtown’s churches over the weekend. Why aren’t they crowding there always? Are our ministries all in vain, until some horrible tragedy drives us to seek the Lord? We’ve tried entertaining our neighbors into our churches. Perhaps they’re looking for something rather more transcendent?

Christ came to redeem the world, not to destroy it. His saving work is powerful to make all things new, even the far reaches of the vast creation. Do we long for that newness, beginning in our own lives? Do we earnestly desire for our neighbors to know that newness? Christ reaches to the depths of our souls to transform and equip us, so that we might grow in righteousness, live in love for our neighbors, and hate all evil and every lying and deceitful speculation and practice.

But we need to seek the Lord on His terms, according to His Word, and for the purposes and progress of His Kingdom. He has given us His Spirit to indwell us, His Word and promises to guide us, and even His angels to escort and defend us in our journey of spiritual maturity. His is the Kingdom, and He commands us to seek it by loving what is good, doing what is good, and declaring the Good News of Shiloh’s reign to every stricken, searching, suffering soul.

The Mayan apocalypse did not occur, in case you’re wondering. And I think all the fox hounds have by now been retrieved. Other news items, besides Newtown, have begun to appear again on my USAToday app. The world is returning to normal.

But normal is not what God intends. Normal is sin, evil, rebellion, sadness, horror, self-indulgence, deceit, lies, disappointment, disillusionment, despair, and the fear of death. Normal is not what we seek.

The Kingdom of God is what we seek, and the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ is the way to attain it. At Christmas we celebrate Shiloh’s arrival to bring in that Kingdom to earth, as He Himself declared (Matt. 4.17). But do we see Him, not just in our crèches and Christmas cards, but, with the eye of the heart (Eph. 1.15-23), reigning in glory, putting His enemies under His feet, rescuing the weary, sustaining the faithful, and bringing God’s glory to light in all the things He has made?

The world will continue its wayward course until we who see Jesus as He is make it our primary business to love and serve Him, and to make Him known through our everyday words and deeds.

Unseen Things

There is an organ in the human soul –
of no material substance, to be sure,
but which pervades and occupies heart, mind,
and conscience, and their role and nurture serves –
which moderates a person’s interface
with immaterial things and functions like
an eye on things unseen. This organ has
the wonderful capacity to bring
to mind all sorts of elsewhere things – past joys,
remembered places, loved ones, savored foods,
and more – and hold them there, where they can be
considered carefully and cherished with
delight. Imagination is the name
of this unique endowment. How it works
is anybody’s guess, but there it is.

We take for granted this amazing gift,
so frequent is our recourse to its powers.
Who ever pauses to inquire about
the whereabouts within the brain of all
those images and memories, the hopes
and dreams and happy expectations of
whatever we envision or desire?
They’re simply there, that’s all, but where “there” is,
in what deep synapse-tangled region of
the brain it lodges – if, indeed, at all –
nobody knows. And this is just as well.

Like metaphor, imagination works
from the familiar to the unknown, the seen
to the unseen. The mind is rather like
a painter’s canvas, and the tools we bring
from everywhere within the soul – our thoughts,
affections, memories, hopes, and dreams – perform
the work of paints and brushes in the hands
of the imagination. Thus this gift
maintains a studio of creative power
to decorate the galleries of the soul.

Like every other good and perfect gift,
it is susceptible to man’s abuse:
We channel it to vain or vivid ends,
or tremble as it summons unknown fears.
In flights of fancy it runs wild and free
to places we can hope, but never know.
It lures us into daydreams and distracts
us from more pressing duties and concerns.
The freer and more frequent our resort
to its alluring powers, the more the lives
we actually live seem trivial and banal.
Despite its tempting, teasing, taunting ways,
we conjure and consult it just the same.

But do not fault the Giver or the gift.
Imagination has its place with us,
‘though we unprofitable stewards be.
For there are precious promises to know;
a vast but unseen realm invites our view
where Beauty, breathless Beauty sits enthroned,
and strums imagination’s truest chords.