The Dark before the Dawn of the Now

            I am constantly blown away by you, Lord; the God who never sleeps, who never stops working. Sometimes you appear angry and you frighten me. At points, long points, you go silent. Most of the time your values are different than ours, for we are unable to see as you see, stained by Sin. But you are always working. You are always writing your Great Story called Love.

             You narrowed the world of men down to one nation of people and began to reveal yourself to them. You gave them tidbits of revelation of who you are, how we once knew you and loved you for it, as our Father. You did new things within this group of people. And even they, your chosen people, rebelled. They distrusted and acted in faithlessness. They acted, go figure, like humans who wanted to be god, in control of themselves, trusting only what they could see or feel or explain. They rejected your interference for they wanted to be like all the other nations, because they were afraid. They put up a fight, but you, Father, did not stop. Your plan went forward.

A Story whose language we could not understand was still being written as we made uninspired decisions in the darkness. The world went on. We had families, worked tiring jobs, lived and died, all in the darkness. Some died in faith with worship for you on their lips, with hope that something phenomenal was going to happen, or at the very least, that you were there, somewhere. Others died cursing you. Still others died indifferent to you. But the plan went forward.

As only the one, true, living God can do, you continued to write into individual souls for the sake of every soul. You subjugated your chosen remnant into the hands of various oppressors. You then rescued them…always. You did things no one had ever imagined possible, like striking an army dumb, stopping the sun in the sky, speaking from a mountain. You helped them take a portion of the earth and said it was their land.

 

Your people made decisions outside of your will. They chose to have a king. You did not want a king, but priests, for you were their King. But you loved your people. And so you adopted their decision into your plan and redeemed it.

            You gave them the law and said that this would separate your chosen people from the rest of the peoples of the earth. The law was not salvation. You chose them first with no reason as to why other than so that they may be the hope for all nations. The grace of you Father was salvation.

The Father chose them first.

They were already saved.

The law was simply a blessing for those who were in relationship with you, Father.

 

Prophets were raised up and shouted forth promises that this God would not abandon his people, even when it felt like he had. He would discipline them but he would not reject them. Why? Because his fate was their fate. Because his arm was bleeding next to theirs. Because his love was greater than any force of this world and every force that opposed him. He did not care. He would be with his creation and nothing could stop him…nothing.

His chosen people split. They divided into North and South because mankind is broken.

Prophets prophesied that a Messiah would come, that a Savior would arise from the line of David and he would save his people. He would be the king of all the earth and reign forever.

 

Time passed. The present became the past became legend. God continued to work out his invisible plan among and through weak and unfaithful humans. The earth groaned for liberation.

The Jews did not understand the Story completely. And so in the places where there was not full revelation they supplemented with their own ideas. This caused fights.

Our own ideas of what we do not understand still cause fights today, stupid fights.

Jews and Christians are brothers.

You were undeterred, Father. Books of history were written by Jewish men and women, books which told of their invisible God’s goodness to his people and books which foretold of greater wonders to come. And time went on. History continued. You remained faithful.

 

            ‘All peoples on earth will be blessed through you…You shall have no God before me…Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength…I will say to those called not my people, ‘You are my people…’’

You continued resurrecting souls from the darkness. The Story continued to be written through men and they had no conceivable idea what living words they were uttering. Maybe some had a guess, but it was like an artist painting a tree unable to see the vastness of the forest which surrounded it. They could only see the tree. Their paintings were only of trees. But you always knew it to be a forest. You knew what you were doing.

You smiled as time passed and the moment of fullest redemption, of total revelation approached…The time was drawing near.

And then it all got silent…It became nervously quiet…and dark.

A bloodthirsty and ambitious man named Alexander established a unified culture with a common language within the once divided Mediterranean nations. But he died ‘prematurely’.

 

The glory which is Rome took over and erected a stable government and an economic society overstretching an even wider region.

Jews were forced to leave their homeland.

They were sent to live throughout this empire. And along with their possessions, they took a hopeful spirit. They took the faith that their God was still on their side and that soon, very soon, he would send the Messiah. And because Jews lived in every part of this vast empire, synagogues were built.

These synagogues would later prove very beneficial for a man named Paul and a new message from God, the next chapter, which he proclaimed to all people.

For the first time, people were united in culture and language, government and economy, and the Jewish race was leavened through it all, like yeast through bread. And they held a very atypical but firm belief that there was one, true God. You had not spoken a word, but they did not pre-suppose that you had stopped working, that you had forsaken them.

And then, when the time was fully right, when the stars aligned and the mountains sat in hope and the world was primed, saturated and ready, a state of the universe which only the Author of the Great Story could ever have discerned, you stepped in…

            Out of blackest darkness and from the quiet of the earth, a single strand of light pierced the sky and a single note of music resounded in the deep. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned!

            The Great Story took another unimaginable new turn!

A new chapter began from the stillness of the night as a light shot out from beneath the ground and the cries of a pregnant woman were heard.

A child was born.

An angel spoke.

Shepherds witnessed.

Philosophers understood and brought gifts.

An Author blew his readers away…

And to our faces we fell.

Your remnant, chosen from among all nations, was culled down to the form of one single, solitary child. Of course it would be a child. It had to be! And in a twist of fate not even Evil could have guessed, you wrote yourself into the story, into time and space, into the world of men.

It was the plan of the now, though no one knew it. No one could have ever known it would be so drastic. Only you knew. The last trick up your sleeve, the final sacrifice the Father would require, the most vulnerable revelation any God could have made, the chapter you had always known was yours alone to be written, in blood.

You spoke again.

And Jesus was born.

In the Great Story of God with us, you fully, finally and most unbelievably, were with us.

            For you so loved the world that you gave your only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

You showed up…the living God, the Creator, showed up…as one of us.

The invisible God…made yourself visible.
You allowed yourself to be seen in human form.

You came down.

You put yourself on our level—a broken and disgusting level.

Our brother came down as one of us…all for love.

You came down all, and eternally, for love.