White Funeral

Of course, we can shut out the flies and the pollen and the cackle of crows. And if a clean and quiet house is what's most important to us, perhaps that is what we should do. But if we do, we also shut out so much of the warmth, so much of the fragrance, so many of the sweet songs that may be calling us.The flies are all obvious, but what besides the flies is coming through those windows?What is God saying to us there?" Ken Gire from Windows of the Soul

Yesterday, we were on the closed window side of this question. Today, we are on the open window side. The open window does indeed reveal many good things beyond it. For you, it was the affirmation that you are indeed being led by God in all these things. I still stand in awe of that assurance when I pause to think about it, more so all the time.

When we sat at the fountain last night, and later on the bench under an arbor in the park, I found my peace; but it remained tenuous. Over and over, I lapsed back into fear, not that our faith was given to a false voice speaking in our hearts, but that I would not have the courage to go through the full cup set before us. I lacked confidence in myself. You were the rock. You were the bull that would drive onward toward the gate put before us, forging ahead without wavering. You wouldn't force me to accept the cup, but you wouldn't waver in your own confidence that God would protect us now and later. This is a part of your design, and your witness, and it sustained me more than you know.

Now I am in the place I saw yesterday. I sit in that comfy chair and stare out that open window, I think on these things that I read. They are about the white funeral--a burial of the old life.

"There must be a white funeral, a death that has only one resurrection - a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can upset such a life, it is one with God for one purpose, to be a witness to Him...Have you come to your last days really? You have come to them often in sentiment, but have you come to them really?...We skirt the cemetery and all the time refuse to go to death...Have you had your white funeral? Is there a place to which the memory goes back with a chastened and extraordinarily grateful remembrance--'Yes, it was then, at that white funeral, that I made an agreement with God."

That cemetery. The question of whether I'd gone to that baptism into death in sentiment only, or if it had been real. This question still haunted me. I said the other day that I feared an amputation was necessary, and it was; but it was already accomplished. I learned it had happened last year, but I guess phantom pain made me wonder if the limb was still there, still sick. The amputation needed to happen, but it was already done. What a surprising relief.

All this is what was outside the window for me. I believed I'd had my white funeral, but I didn't know it for a certainty. So He told you to take me to view the grave. He told you to take me to a place where those dead bones that should not live nevertheless could live if they ever would. Was it risky? On the closed window side, it looked like it could be. On the open window side, we know they are dust.

He is so efficient, isn't He? Look what He accomplished in just one evening of living after months of grooming our faith:
You were affirmed as the head of me.
I was affirmed as one who walked in submission and did not follow my own agenda.
You were affirmed as one who hears and obeys the voice of God, and
I was affirmed as having indeed come through my white funeral not just in sentiment, but in truth. I think you have this gift alongside me, but I would not speak for you in it. I only say it seems like it to me.

Funny, this makes me remember the dream I had the other night. Remember the one with the white cat? I sat on a couch, and I heard a baby cry. The man in the room said, "Probably my cat bit the baby." This white cat leapt to the back of the couch near where I'd stretched out my arm. Suddenly, it bit the knuckles of my right hand; bit them hard. "See, he bites," said the man. But at the same moment I was feeling the pain of the bite, I felt the man tickling my thigh. Both sensations were so contradictory and sharp that I woke immediately with the thought bursting in my mind, "Which of these two sensations would you choose to give your attention? The pleasurable feeling or the painful one?" The cat was white pain, and the funeral was white death; but simultaneously a thing of laughter and joy was occuring. Much depended on how I chose to perceive the moment.

I started July first still skirting that cemetery of uncertainty. Was I really dead where I needed to be?

I start July second knowing what I needed to know to avoid guilt and self-condemnation, no matter where He may tell me to go. He was a friend of "publicans and sinners" and thus received the condemnation of the respectable. Yet He did not walk in shame or doubt about the places He chose to go. Neither now will I.

What a powerful place to be. What a vast savannah is beyond this open window for us now, my love.