The New Bereans

“…And I will beautify my beautiful house.”  -Isaiah 60:7b

We are weak, we are hurting, and we need revival like a sea-fairer needs vitamin C.  Straight paths seem jagged, Christians are disheartened, demystified, and becoming disassociated.  We are all able to see the problems around us, and the winds of change in our own nation daunt us at the prospect of having to face them.  Do we plant our feet and set our shoulder against this torrent with a stern set of face?  Or do we raise a sail, and ride those winds where the Lord decides to move them?

I have had numerable conversations this past year or two with many believers who share a concern about our state as Christians.  One needs not to look very far on the “Christian” blogosphere to find this same sense of dissatisfaction.  There are entire websites set up to make us more aware of the Idolatry occurring in American/European churches.  I am beginning to fear that my heart is being hardened by these truths, more than it is being broken.

Isaiah 60:7 began to cut through the caul (Hosea 13:8 k.j.v.) around my heart this morning however.  The house is the Lord’s and His house is beautiful to Him, so it is up to Him to make it more beautiful still.  For His house is not in any lasting disrepair.  Like Don Quixote’ he sees the beautiful woman of his heart, and he dares to dream the impossible dream. To us this house seems a shambles, but to Don Quixote’ it was a castle, resplendent with glory and hope, a place of queens and knights vigils.  This house may have many in it who are only there physically, or in name, but He sees His true church, His beautiful house and within it the bride of His heart.  And he will make it more beautiful still.

Satan intends all the current days evil for bad, but God intends it all for good, the state of our nations are in His hands, He alone is sovereign over all these things, he has allowed it, and not a single one of us can make better what he would stretch His arm out to construct.  He alone is the master architect; we are but pallbearers when we attempt to build for God what he has not sanctioned, carrying our coffins of hope, where inside rests only death.

So we ought to set a sail, and not our feet, for if He has allowed it, should we rail against it?  He may be trying to show us something on the wind, and I have suspicions as to what those things are, but suffice it to say that we need to move within the shelter of His sovereign design rather than out in the acid rain of Satan’s Hegelian Dialectic.

Oh Lord, make your house more beautiful, we long for your construction, your designs, your handiwork.  Make us a people on a hill once again.