Meditations from Zion

Many people like to talk about the “promises of God,” like the various covenants God made with his chosen people from rainbows (not destroying the earth by flood after the time of Noah) to multiplication (the many children and heirs of Abraham). But then, through King David and the prophets, the ultimate promise begin to take shape.

Ephesians 3:4, 6
In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, . . . This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

This singular promise is about relationship to God, the creator and sovereign head of the Earth. This promise is mystical and eternal. The revelation of this mystery has been a slow unfolding.

God began the process with a small group of people in Israel. Although the initial oracle was fairly simplistic (as in only ten commandments), the message grew into a rather unwieldy collection of laws and interpretations that bogged down the initial intent: Love God: Love Others. Eventually, through hardships, exiles, and even silence, another small group of people of Israel grew hungry for truth and looked for the promised solution: the Messiah who would reopen the door to God.

Hidden within the Messiah solution was a greater mystery: everyone would have now have access to God.

There is something about the idea of “everyone” that is not always palatable. If everyone can have it or do it, there is nothing special about it anymore. And what about the bad people, won’t they abuse it? And what about the ugly people or the smelly people or the people of different color or shape or ability?

It would be like a board of directors of a bank: they have the combination codes for the vault. They are the keepers of the depository and they can decide when to open the vault and when to close it. That is, until some guy comes along and says he’s the one who made the vault in the first place. He’s changing the code to make it easier to open. Sure enough, those directors start freaking out when some real low-lifes from town start opening the vault and taking what appears to be more than their fair share. These new folks are so cavalier about the door, they don’t even bother to close it sometimes. The leave the door ajar. Good grief, anyone could get in there and take everything. The directors keep closing the door and changing the access codes. But then, along comes one of the old directors, some called him Paul and some called him Saul, he starts passing out the universal code, even to people from out of town. The most amazing thing happened, instead of a run on the bank, a lot of people didn’t believe the door could be opened, so they didn’t bother to look.

The mystery is that the vault is never empty. There is always enough in the vault.

It’s the law of plenty.

Most of us think, including me, “if I give it all away, there won’t be enough for me.” [I Kings 17:7-15]