The Bride of Christ, and Life Compared to a Snowglobe

THIS WEEK I have a few different really cool things to tell you about. I like to read at least one chapter of the New Testament per day, and lately I've been trying to read in Isaiah and the Psalms more, too. This week I finished through the end of John again, and I wondered what I should do now. Should I read a chapter a day through the rest of the New Testament? I did that not too long ago. Maybe something different would be beneficial. I remembered a suggestion I had seen or heard somewhere: I could make note cards on every chapter of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and maybe later on I could do cards on others. I decided to do this, and I prayed I could find some note cards somewhere.
I found five note cards in a closet in the kitchen, and I have since used them up on the first four chapters of the book of Matthew. I wrote down what was happening every few verses, and I took note of all the references to other places. It is so cool. If you read this blog alot you might know I really enjoy the book of Isaiah because I've seen a few particularly exciting prophecies in there which I have observed to have come true in Jesus' life. Looking in these references, even in the first four chapters of Matthew, I saw prophecies in Isaiah as well as in Hosea, Micah, and Jeremiah, places I don't look into nearly as often. I particularly like Micah 5:2 "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the thousands of Judah, Yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting." This is referenced in Matthew 2:5-6. It's amazing that Jesus was born exactly where it was predicted He would be born - in a prophecy that was made hundreds of years beforehand! It's also amazing that God tends to choose such little and low things to bring about greatness. He picked little Bethlehem for God-in-Man to enter the world. He chose fishermen for several of His disciples. He chose the sick and demon-possessed as those whose lives, having been transformed by Him, would spread the news of His great love and mercy. God has been healing people since long before He walked the earth in Jesus.
Besides the prophecies, I also observed commandments which Jesus quoted in defense against the evil one's attempts to tempt Him for 40 days in Matthew 4:1-11. These were found in Deuteronomy 6 and 8. Jesus gives us an example in how to resist the evil one. We're supposed to cling to what God says in His Word, what He has shown us to be true and what He has promised to do. He wants us to obey His commandments, and the best way to do that is to know them AND to make sure we understand them. If we cling to Him and don't get deceived nor confused, the evil one is like "I can't trick this kid," and he does not succeed.
I hope and pray that I may get a big stack of note cards to use. Taking notes is fun and it helps me to look more deeply into God's Word.
Okay, so another cool thing happened. Last week I was blogging pretty late and I finished around 11 o'clock. You remember I was talking about Revelation 21 and the Bride of Christ imagery and the fact that God promises to take away all the pain one day when He gathers all His faithful children to His kingdom. That same evening my sweetiful cousin Rina was dreaming a very important dream. Please go to this URL before you continue reading, or you probably won't understand what I 'm so excited about. http://zee-em-sea.blogspot.com/ . Look under "The Wedding."
I tried earlier this week to explain verbally what the big deal was, but I'm afraid I might not have been completely successful. I'll try harder. I am amazed because in the same evening that I was typing about the Bride of Christ, which is the body of the redeemed brought into God's kingdom to worship and serve Him forever, Rinabean was dreaming about the same thing. She dreamed about this bride who was ruining her own happy time by wandering around outside, and who blamed her husband for not coming and getting her. But the groom came and held her and assured her he had never left, and she realized that it was her own fault, and that he loved her anyway. His love for her and her love for him made her beautiful.
I think God is showing both of us this important idea at the same time, so we can help each other understand it. God wants to be first in our hearts - everyone's hearts! - on the Throne of your Heart, as I've heard it before. He wants to hold us each tightly and bring us close to Him, and He will cast away all of our griefs and fill us up so full of joy that we will not ever have to worry about anything, because now we don't have to deal with things dying and breaking. With God it's all permanent. He wants us to seek what is permanent.
He knows everything about us, and He knows we do really dumb things. To quote my dear Rinabean, "And Jesus doesn't not demand perfection from us. He knows every part of us and still He loves us. He never wants us to sin, but He knew that it would be inevitable - that's why He offered Himself as a sacrifice for us. He loved the world that much (John 3:16)...and not to condemn the world, but so that you could be saved (John 3:17)."
Just to hold us in His arms and assure us, just to make us His again and teach us and comfort us, He came to us through tribulation and pain and death. He did it to pull us out of the pit we were unknowingly getting ourselves stuck into, so that anybody who will trust Him can be with Him forver.
In that same passage from last week, Revelation 21:1-5, the writer reports what God said once the old was all torn down and the New Jerusalem was prepared. "Behold, I am making all things new." In redeeming all His children and in sanctifying us, He is making all things new. In his book "The Applause of Heaven" Max Lucado discusses the fact that many things which were delightful to him once have now grown old and have begun to die, and he can't do anything to change it. It's so amazing that we can be sure that God is going to restore - not the things we fondly remember now - but "He will restore the vigor. He will restore the energy. He will restore the hope. He will restore the soul." He is not about to gather up all the things in the world that are fading and restore them to youth, but He is about to take us to a place where everything is new and fresh and eternal and doesn't get old. Lucado writes, "When you see how this world grows stooped and weary and then read of a home where everything is made new, tell me, doesn't that make you want to go home?" The violence and tedious treacherousness of the world makes me sure that I do not want to stay here forever, and yes, when I'm all done here it will be good to go home.
One night this week I was sitting on my bed about to go to sleep, and I was unexpectedly struck by shock at how fast it is all going to go away. I listened to my brother's radio playing in his room and the air blowing in the air conditioner, and I looked around at the walls and ceilings, and I could not shake the awareness that this is not going to last very long. I am at the end of my junior year in high school, and I know things won't stay quite like this for very long. I almost cried. I thanked God for reminding me of the brevity and soon I was trying to sleep, imagining that I was really forty and that I was visiting my old bed that I had when I was sixteen, one of many nights that I always wish I could come back to. I woke up sixteen.
It's true, we don't belong here. We're going somewhere else. And it's true that what seems new and young now is going to get old. Sometimes I wish I could stay here looking out my window at the trees and birds and spiders and plumbagos and never leave. Sometimes I wish I always had another year left in high school. I wish I was nine and ten with Rina forming clubs that would last one day and playing games that would last for weeks. I wish I could stay here in the months of my first date with Will, and Prom, and my parents' twentieth anniversary. But every day I'm leaving, and God's taking us each somewhere else, somewhere amazing, just not right here and right now anymore.
That's good. Can't stay here forever. But it really sets me straight and makes me realize again that what matters most lasts longest. We're to use our time here to grow closer to God and to advance His kingdom, and then when we're done we can be closer to Him han ever, and we can actually sit forver in His kingdom where everything is always new.
Okay, so last night I was again sitting on my bed before sleeping, preparing to say my prayer for the night, and I picked up this snowglobe that Will got me from Seaworld. It's a very pretty thing with a killer whale perched on a green wave, and shattery-looking glass on the base, and blue-green iradescent sparkles which dance beautifully in the water. So I turned it over and put my eyes very close to the top to watch the sparles fall.
"Is life like a snowglobe?" I asked Jesus right then. He made me understand a few things. He knows I love metaphors. When everything in the world is recent and young and fresh, then the sparkles are newly falling. It's beautiful, and you don't really want it to stop. I thanked God for giving me a good memory for preserving things, as I watched the sparkles descend away from me. As things get older and wrinkle and move aside, then the sparkles have settled. Still pretty, but not as twinkling and sweet. I observed that with God the wonder doesn't have to fade. I get to shake up the snowglobe every day because His mercies are new every morning. He is consistently and persistently amazing. God and all the things God does are never replaced and they never change, get they are always new becuase they never decay. It's eternal.
I'm glad that at the end of my life, having watched a million happy sparkles dance down through the water, I don't have to set the snowglobe down while I see all the sparkles settled and faded on the ground. When I'm all the way done here, I can turn them over one last time and watch how God will spin them forever. Sparkles don't settle in Heaven. The wonder will then never have to fade away.