Until the Day Breaks

The eyes of the Lord are ever upon those who fear Him and from the righteous He does not remove His gaze (Ps. 34:15; Job 36:7). Even now His eyes are set upon me, searching and knowing me to the deepest parts. My sitting and my rising, my thoughts and my words and the path of my feet…behold He knows it all completely. How easy it is for me—and for each of us—to keep these truths about His searching of us, this understanding of His knowing us utterly, as far away from our hearts as possible, only ascribing to a general assertion of God’s omniscience…of His fearsome knowing of all. And if we venture even a little further into the truth that He actually searches us out individually and knows us each profoundly on a day to day and moment to moment basis, if we allow our hearts to sink into this reality even a trace, we begin to tremble and quake and feel ourselves reeling in eagerness to run the other way. Even subconsciously, how my heart and yours flees from the vulnerability of a set gaze upon us—and more specifically, a gaze of perfection in which the One who sees us knows us to the very core utterly and deeply and totally. To us, searching eyes always mean rejection and a pure, steady gaze always means exposure and failure revealed.

Oh but Jesus. I consider once again the Eyes that search me out. I remember the One to whom this gaze belongs? It is the same One that the enemy and even the subtle atmosphere of my own heart continually accuses of being unkind, stingy and distant, though He in fact has proved Himself thunderously to be the kindest, the most extravagant, and the nearest of all. Once again, the lights appear in the hidden pockets of my darkened heart and I see where I have been yet been assuming lies of Him, swallowing accusations about Him as though they were a pill I needed to take and not rather the poison that they truly are to my inner man.

He has searched me and He knows me (Ps. 139:1). And I pose the question to my yet still-so-skeptical and doubtful heart. What if the Eyes that search me and know all are also the Eyes of greatest kindness—a kindness so holy and so other-than that it belongs to no man on earth except Him? And what if in His searching me out and His knowing of me unreservedly, when my evaluations of this season or that circumstance are only poor marks, He finds treasures that I never find and never see, rejoicing over heart-movements that I do not even perceive? What if the One who searches me out does not tally the score the way I do and His search does not culminate with the pointing out of all the ways I am missing the mark but rather with Him pulling from His treasury all the riches He found in me of small and even unperceived responses to Him, tiny choices of love that I wrote off as too fragile and broken to be of any worth? And of course, I find the answer to this “what if” to be a resounding “YES!” every time. For the “what if” comes only from my tightfisted faith and never from His thunderous proclaiming and unyielding demonstrating of a kindness unsearchable and a gentleness beyond the scope of comprehension. In His life and in His death and all throughout the story of redeeming love, He has told me a myriad of times.

Yesterday, as we sang Psalm 139 together in the prayer room, I wept under these Eyes of kindness so deep. My heart burned beneath the fire of a tenderness so unyielding. And once again I came under the washing waters of the truth that the One who searches me out and knows me most intimately, is also the One who takes greatest joy in me—even in the seasons I might dismiss. His perfect knowledge of me joins arms with His deep love for me and rather than evaluating me upon my shortcomings and failures, He searches me out in the deepest places—as though for hidden treasure—that He might find every small trace of love for Him working in me. And He finds what He is looking for. For the One who knows all things discerns more deeply and profoundly than any other—including myself—just how much I truly love Him (John 21:17).

We were made for a story and the human heart longs and yearns to play a deep and lasting role in a grand epic tale. Each of us not only wants to hear the story, we not only want to know the story; we want to participate in it and to give our lives with heart and soul to our own unique part of its narrative. And long for this we must. For we indeed have a role to play and part to perform in the greatest narrative of all time—the story that began in a garden so long ago, pinnacled with a Jewish Man crucified upon a cross, and will culminate with the revelation to all of Jesus in His glory and the establishing of His holy Kingdom to the ends of the earth.

So what role do we play in our day and in our time, what part have we to enact in this great story soon to culminate? Jesus described a day that He would be taken from us, the Bridegroom would be taken away and in His delay the friends of the Bridegroom would mourn for Him…would long and ache and groan for His return (Matt. 9:15). Here we are, in the thick of that great delay, with the signs of the times pounding upon our door and the churning of the nations along with the surging of evil seduction raging all around. And in the wake of so great an evil and so trembling a timeframe, the fiery eyes of the enthroned Bridegroom search for the light of burning mourning within the hearts of His friends…within the lives of His bride. He will not return within a vacuum. He will not return without that groan. Though He will come as a thief to those who are of the night, to the sons of the light and of the day He will come as an answer to their own sober groan (1 Thess. 5:4-10). He will return in direct response to their swelling and consuming cry of “Come Lord Jesus.”(Rev. 22:17)

For all those who truly love Jesus, it is a time to mourn. Why? As simply put as He Himself put it, because He is not here (Matt. 9:15). Because He has been taken from us. We are not to live as though things are alright, as though we are satisfied in His absence. And when our hearts deceive us and the world holds sway over our affections in such a way that such a disruptive burning ceases in its sting, then it is time that we must question with sobriety the trueness of our love for Him. We must stir up and strengthen that which remains. We must beseech Him to remove our blinders that dull us so deeply so as to settle us in to friendship with a world that is at enmity with God. We must behold and set our gaze upon His glory, His beauty, His power and His Kingdom, until our affections for Christ burn bright once again and our ache for Him overtakes our apathy.

He will not return without such a groan. Our role to play in this day and in this hour is certain. And it will cost us everything to really carry out. We must be friends of the Bridegroom. We must be those that eagerly await His appearing and live in perpetual longing for that Day that is our blessed hope and our great consolation. We must tear our hearts in a humility that recognizes our own lack of love for Him, our own distance from such groaning. We must set aside our ambitions for our own lives, our hopes that our hinging upon our own pleasure rather than on Christ Himself and we must throw ourselves with abandonment into lives that are consumed solely with Jesus and His return.

It is time to mourn. It is time to fast. It is time to groan. It is time to truly love Jesus.

What God has spoken about Himself in the face of the Christ-Child, the Baby in the manger, is true of Him from all eternity past, true of Him throughout His life in the First Coming, true of Him as He sits now at the right hand of the Father, ever interceding, and will remain true of Him when He splits the skies at His soon Appearing. The Baby in the manger has much to speak to lowly hearts, much to convey to hungry souls and any who will heed so tiny a voice.

As I crouch beside the shepherds and peer in to the cave, heart pounding in the weight of what the angels from on high have just proclaimed, I find Him there with wordless words, speaking so many things to me. He says, “You thought I was too far and too distant, too aloof and too indifferent to be known. You thought that you were too weak or too broken to be received by Me. But behold, I am here in this dingy cave—I the One who created all things—I am here so close to you in this cold night, with only these poor ones as my company. You thought I was unapproachable, oh but you were mistaken greatly. See how I have come to you in the form of a weak and vulnerable baby? Shall you fear a baby or think him to not want you in his presence? No! You shall embrace him before his arms are strong enough to embrace you in return. You shall hold him fast to you in love without the smallest inkling of rejection. Babies do not reject another and who would not rush into the honor of holding so accessible a human frame? This is what I whisper to you about my nature from of old in the fragile vulnerability of my infancy. I am as approachable and embraceable as a newborn babe and My reception of you without rejection is as sure as a receiving infant in ones arms. Oh come near, come near to Me. Gaze upon this glory of God revealed in My face. Believe that I tell you mysteries that have been kept secret since the foundations of the world about My humility and meekness, My tenderness and mercy. Gaze upon Immanuel now with you and let your heart be assured of My unchanging love..My tenderness toward you…and My constant receiving of your love.”

And I, kneeling in the dust of this darkened cave, tears streaming down my face, am confronted by a God so tender and so merciful, so approachable and so near, that I can only gaze with trembling tears and let my heart be washed by wave after wave of so scandalous and glorious a Truth—that this One is God and this is what God is like. Sitting in the silence I stretch out my hand to His tiny frame and ponder how close He allows me to come, how He does not shun my presence or shield Himself from my love and worship of Him. Oh who am I to be so near to You and yet You would that I would come even nearer in heart and love. O Christ-Child so tender, You have so many things to tell me and so many truths to convince me of. I will wait here long on this Silent Night and let Your wordless speech pierce my heart over and over and over again.

“For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” II Corinthians 4:6