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Touchpoint
Friday, December 4, 2015
First Week of Advent
Isaiah 29:23-24
When Jacob’s children see the work of God’s hands in their midst … those who err in spirit shall acquire understanding, and those who find fault shall receive instruction.
I marched around the old barn singing with the others. We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross. I suppose we marched around the building seven times or so. Somewhere around the third time something happened inside me, and I began to believe what I was singing.
I saw the work of God’s hands in my midst. That’s what I felt then, that’s what I think now. I was the clay and God was the potter, and for once I wasn’t holding him back.
So thirty-nine years later I celebrate Advent with all my might. The touching lasts but a moment, but the results remain for a lifetime.
I have heard many stories of this touch from others, too. One of my favorites is in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. But God’s touch also comes to a farmer while he’s fixing fence. It comes to a young boy at church camp around a campfire. It comes, occasionally, in church.
And the result, always, is humility. Rich Mullins’ words: We are not as strong as we think we are.
God does not take our personalities apart, nor does he whitewash the experiences of childhood, which continue to both bless and break us. What he does is set simultaneously our foundation, beyond who we are and how we’ve lived, and our future, with all its hope and beauty and love.
This touch tells me once, now and forever, that I am loved. And there is nothing I can do to change that.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, every rung goes higher, higher. Rise, shine, give God your glory. Children, do you want your freedom? Soldiers of the cross. We will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. We can wait for the Lord. We can be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord.
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