dramatic tension, the conflict of good and evil, and the final assessment of the story's moral being a thing that says more about the receiver than it does about the giver of the story, that is if the story has been told well. And finally, a good story will touch us because it mirrors life, right?
We as a family know a little about the larger story we have been given to walk. Currently, it is tied up in the events that relate to this new home. I mentioned it even when we first became acquainted with the house. I said it somehow made me look at things Biblical, words related to the house of Judah and the house of Joseph and their relationship.
My eldest and I talked about this during a discussion of the nature of Bible-reading. He took a Biblical literature class this fall and learned how the Bible's words are beauty. But he did not so much learn how its words are life. (How do I give you a sample of this truth, my son?)
He learned how this book is history, poetry, and a creed for soul and body health, but he did not so much learn how it is new every morning and serves as a meeting ground between two beings (the self and God) who exist on radically different planes. (And how do I give you a sample of that, my son?)
So here is a bit about this house and its people; a bit about this world and its people; a bit about that elusive word and its impact, and that should be enough for today.
When we were visiting the house in those days before we took possession of it, we noticed the cardinal windchimes on the porch. Cardinals, particularly those found in winter (as I've blogged before) have long been a sign of intimacy between God and me, so this gave us a good feeling about the place. Why even now there hangs in the pantry a calendar with a picture of a cardinal in winter to accompany my birthday month, January--so many little intimate signs connect me to God in that bird.
But a bad thing happened. One day--and it was a day when our hopes for keeping this house hit their first obstacle--we came home from school to find the windchime gone. A mystery as to who put it up and now, a mystery as to who took it away. And timing that could carry a bad omen.
"What do you think that means?" said my middle son, Elijah.And that's the rub, isn't it?
"There is therefore now no condemnation," says the Good Book. If we are blind or of limited vision, we see only the dark. But if we have trained our eyes to see what is real, we see only light, no matter what the circumstances.
Can I tell you, my sons, about a part of that Book, the one you are only just beginning to see as a gateway to things beyond time and space? An obscure little prophet lived and spoke of these things. We live them again, but don't realize we, too, are characters in the same story he tells.
So how do we read it, infusing it into the stream of today's lives?
I read this in Amos 5:
18 Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
For what good is the day of the Lord to you?
It will be darkness, and not light.
I look at how the Christian bookstores sell mountains of books from the "Left Behind" series to people whose parents even years ago wore t-shirts that proudly asserted: "When the Rapture comes, this t-shirt will be empty!" But Amos cries, "Foul!" Does anyone tell us about his words?
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion,
And a bear met him!
Or as though he went into the house,
Leaned his hand on the wall,
And a serpent bit him!
I think of how the weariness of this type of living affects us even now: just when you think you're going to "catch a break," worse calamity falls upon you. So one strong in the Lord faces the question: do you see the larger story well enough to accept that its foretelling through you is infinitely important? Will you, for that reason of having eyes that see, cooperate with the hardship? For this fulfills the meaning of the commission we receive to "get behind the afflictions of Christ."
20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light?
Is it not very dark, with no brightness in it?
21 "I hate, I despise your feast days,
And I do not savor your sacred assemblies.
22 Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.
23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs,
For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.
And I have already shared enough even in my last few blogs about my feelings regarding the decline of the "sacred assemblies."
So now what to do?
24 But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.
I stand amazed that we miss these words. But if we miss these, then no wonder we miss the ones that precede them: the ones about that house of Joseph. (I notice them because of our own house's part in the story-telling around Joseph and Judah.) We should read them with intensity, and they should be what inspire us. But no, we prefer to manifest our blatant self-preservation instinct instead of realizing that we have been called to fling out the blanket of God's grace over a cold shivering people.
For Amos also says:
14 Seek good and not evil,
That you may live;
So the Lord God of hosts will be with you,
As you have spoken.
15 Hate evil, love good;
Establish justice in the gate.
It may be that the Lord God of hosts
Will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
So could it be that a day will come when our reach toward the remnant of Joseph will be used to measure the depths of our association with the true heart of Christ?
And what of the little cardinal wind chime? Amos tells us more to help in understanding its mysterious disappearance, and so does life. Recedntly, I saw the word cardinal in large letters...the name of a business mounted as individual blocks on a brick wall. It looked like this: CARD NAL, for the "I" had falled out of it. And for me, the message was clear as day: the "I" was to fall out of my cardinal, too. It was time for this bird to become a larger sign than just for me. The cardinal would grow, and with it my vision and my purpose as a story-teller for God.
So here is how I could interpret its disappearance: its loss is a personal one for me, a sign that I am deceived in thinking that I am chosen especially to live in this house, a sign that horrors loom ahead for me. But here is how I will interpret its disappearance: its loss is personal for me, but it is necessary as it foretells that in the days before the houses of Judah and Joseph become one house, a plumb line will be dropped, and many will be found crooked who to the naked eye look straight. When that day comes, the "priests" will drive the cardinal away, saying the same thing that this priest said to Amos in chapter 7:
12 Then Amaziah said to Amos:
"Go, you seer!
Flee to the land of Judah.
There eat bread,
And there prophesy.
13 But never again prophesy at Bethel,
For it is the king's sanctuary,
And it is the royal residence."
So, the Lord gave them what they asked for:
11 "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord God,
"That I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine of bread,
Nor a thirst for water,
But of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 They shall wander from sea to sea,
And from north to east;
They shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord,
But shall not find it.
And so in answer to the question, why did the cardinal disappear, the answer that sounds flippant but is actually rather deep:
...because that is the way the story goes.
If the cardinal didn't leave--and by hands other than our own--the story would be incomplete. In fact, we might not even have enough evidence to know which story the little bird was helping revisit. But now we know which story we re-live. And here is the best part about visiting the doom of all apocalyptic tales. They resolve well.
There is yet more to tell.
For the story does not end with the bare hook stuck into the porch roof in the gray winter chill. My husband in his heart knew it was right to replace that sign of interactive relationship with God. Although he searched high and low for a replacement windchime to give me for Christmas, no such windchime could be found anywhere in our town, so he gave me this picture of a Cardinal windchime with the promise that one would be ordered online and would come by mail from far away. He orders this gift because even without realizing he knows the end of the story, he still knows the end of the story because his heart belongs to God.
For the larger story will happen to the people of this world--and those who expect it will fare better than those who don't:
9 "For surely I will command,
And will sift the house of Israel among all nations,
As grain is sifted in a sieve;
Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground.
10 All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword,
Who say, 'The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us.'
Nevertheless, the story does not end there. The cardinal should return. For Amos closes his writings with the following vision:
Israel Will Be Restored
(cf. Acts 15:16, 17)
11 "On that day I will raise up
The *tabernacle of David, which has fallen down,
And repair its damages;
I will raise up its ruins,
And rebuild it as in the days of old;
12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom,*
And all the Gentiles who are called by My name,"
Says the Lord who does this thing.
13 "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord,
"When the plowman shall overtake the reaper,
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed;
The mountains shall drip with sweet wine,
And all the hills shall flow with it.
14 I will bring back the captives of My people Israel;
They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them;
They shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them.
15 I will plant them in their land,
And no longer shall they be pulled up
From the land I have given them,"
Says the Lord your God.
In the earliest days of the church, James went to these same words as he worked to understand the relationship of the two houses...the houses then known as Jews and Gentiles. In those days, the Jews were first believing that God would accept us--the Gentiles--as another fold.
So here we are again. But I fear we are not listening as closely to God as they were. In fact, this seems an almost insurmountable change of heart for the church. Only You could make it happen.
So as for me--a simple person in a simple life, and not a person of letters to have such authority to address the world--I will lock my faith on the thing at hand. I will pray that my husband does indeed find that windchime for me. And when he brings it to me, I will hang it from that bare hook. Then in the spring I will put a pot of fragrant flowers under it. I will take myself a chair out on that porch, and I will listen and breathe as the wind carries the sweetness of the fragrance of the flowers married to the song of the chimes, carries them past me and away into the larger world.
For that is the way the story ends.
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