The Bubble and Isaiah 65

I dreamed once of the Bride of Christ walking, and she wore a beautiful gown. The gown had a lining-layer of peachy-gold over which swelled and popped myriads of different bubbles, all glowing warm colors as they rose. Scripture says that the Bride's gown is made of the righteous acts of the saints, so I began to think of each bubble as a righteous saint getting his/her share of space on the gown, or maybe as a particular facet of righteousness being made real by the various saints called to activity in its context. Interestingly, I found this article about our understanding of the formation of bubbles:

Scientists had thought bubbles form when jostling liquid molecules create pockets of low density in the liquid containing relatively fewer molecules than surrounding regions. Most of the time, other molecules will just rush in to fill in these air pockets. However, an exodus of molecules can also occur, causing the pockets, or bubbles, to grow.
David Corti, a chemical engineer at Purdue University in Indiana, compares the process to scaling a mountain. A pocket of air begins at the bottom of one side of the mountain (the liquid phase) and must climb the mountain and reach a destination on the other side (the vapor phase) to become a bubble.
"A small bubble needs to climb up one side of the mountain, cross through a reasonably well-defined mountain pass before it rolls down the other side of the mountain towards forming very large bubbles," Corti explained.
According to the conventional view, once the bubble makes it over the pass, it tumbles down the other side of the mountain like a snowball, picking up more molecules and growing bigger.
The new computer simulation suggests there "is no other side of the mountain," Corti told LiveScience. "Once it gets over the pass, we have found that the mountain just disappears, in a sense."

This is interesting to me in part because of the timing of my exposure to this information--the idea that at the end of the uphill climb comes an easier time than was once understood for anyone "riding a bubble." The question of "life after the hard mountain climb" has been tantamount for me of late, too. I blogged several entries lately lamenting things that need to change and don't as well as things that change disruptively. I've questioned how to understand the role of faith in a world where a God who "can" simply seems like He "won't." The mountain pass seems to go upward without end.

"Why, God?" I've asked several times. How do I hang on to the belief that after this life, peace will prevail? Sunday I stood in church and underneath the song I sang, I prayed for forgiveness because I sang about You as a mighty deliverer, but I felt no assurance of the truth of those words. Our relationship leaves me no doubts about the fact that You love me, so why the hang up in finding peace among the living in this world where You are after all the Overcomer? Why the constant barrage of "bad luck" happenings, year after year? What is the lesson I'm not learning? Strenuously, I asked, where do I hang my hope in this particular phase of life? Can I be sure I haven't missed the boat, leaving You to the re-teaching of the same lesson over and over again, the lesson that I'm too pig-headed to learn? The bubble-mountain swells, now looming large enough that to look to the horizon feels mighty precarious, but belief in what is on the other side of the mountain is still uncertain to all but the eyes of faith. Now this article says there may not be another "side" to that water-molecule mountain that the forming bubble traverses. And this scientific discovery seems to match the spiritual discovery You made available to my grasping soul.

I reasoned with You, like Job, pointing out that even as You send signs of a "blessed inheritance" being ours, nevertheless hardship prevails, delaying that inheritance to the point of its very existence being questionable. And if that inheritance is so important as to be announced to us, then what purpose lies behind all the trouble? "What do we need to figure out so You can relax this hedge of trials around us, God, and bring us out of the maze of this life and bless us? Must we die to receive this inheritance? Is that the end of our faith?" But again, all believers have that hope, and it hardly needs special revelation as to its coming. So what is this inheritance, and when will the peace and nearness of You no longer be compromised by the forces of this world? Is this so hard to accomplish? Are my prayers full of strength and effectiveness in all area but this one? Again, why?

And God was gracious and opened the eyes of my perception. This, too, I dreamed now that I think about it. White, translucent scales fell off my eyes at the touch of Your hand in a prayer-dream once, and I wondered at the time what I wasn't seeing, but I knew I should pray to see. It left me with not a little trepidation. Now the scales have certainly fallen off regarding this particular challenge to my faith. Funny how those dreams come back to mind when their associated prayers come real, because I dreamed that dream of blindness a year ago at least, and haven't thought of it since. But now, it revives, even as my vision is changed. God knew I needed His character clarified for the health of my faith, and He accommodated that need, even teaching me to ask for it ahead of time. Such is His way of working.

Mainly, the larger picture of my situation came to me as two randomly given scriptures came tumbling in on top of each other in my study-life. The first was this:

"God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy to a man who is good in His sight; but
to the sinner He gives the work of gathering and collecting, that he may
give to him who is good before God. This also is vanity and grasping for
the wind." Ecclesiastes 2:26.

The second reference encompassed practically the whole chapter of Isaiah 65, the chapter about the righteousness of God's judgment. God spoke to the future of those who prepared a table for "Fortune" and a drink offering for "Number, or Destiny" (both these names in quotes are the literal translations of the names of the pagan deities mentioned in this prophecy, but I can't help but think of the contemporary emphasis on prosperity in off-shoots of Christianity and the concurrent emphasis on gematra in off-shoots of Judaism, even I myself have found You speak to me in numbers, but not to the point that I deify the numbers as the prophets of my fortune, nor do I look to the wealth of this world as a sign of Your approval of me.) As to what was to come for those who are so inclined in their worship, Isaiah claims God says the following:

Therefore thus says the Lord God:

"Behold, My servants shall eat,
But you shall be hungry;
Behold, My
servants shall drink,
But you shall be thirsty;
Behold, My servants shall
rejoice,
But you shall be ashamed;
14
Behold, My servants shall sing for joy of heart,
But you shall cry for sorrow
of heart,
And wail for grief of spirit.
15
You shall leave your name as a curse to My chosen;
For the Lord God will slay
you,
And call His servants by another name;
16
So that he who blesses himself in the earth
Shall bless himself in the God of
truth;
And he who swears in the earth
Shall swear by the God of
truth;
Because the former troubles are forgotten,
And because they are
hidden from My eyes."

Both of these references remind me of the balance that my self-focus is primed to ignore. Strangely, seeing that my life is caught in this balance actually increases my significance (instead of lessening it as a surface glance might incline me to believe) to the God who will ultimately deliver me. So often You answer questions with questions, Jesus. The one You put to me: will my current level of faith accept the delay in the "blessing of me" as being a good thing for others in the sight of God? Eventually, there will be people living--and appear likely to be on earth even now--for whom it is true that when the "former troubles" are no more, it will be because those troubles are hidden from Your eyes, forgotten entirely. When Your divine balancing act occurs, the price I pay now will flip over to being a cost to those who have it easy, easy at the exclusion of You from their lives. I've known this tenet of the faith before, but never quite so deeply as it strikes me now.

And You ask me to look in that same chapter, where You say:

"As the new wine is found in the cluster,
And one says, 'Do not destroy
it,
For a blessing is in it,'
So will I do for My servants' sake,
That
I may not destroy them all.
9
I will bring forth descendants from Jacob,
And from Judah an heir of My
mountains;
My elect shall inherit it,
And My servants shall dwell there."

You show me those grapes. You ask, "What do you have to say about My omniscience in sight of those grapes when they are put in the lap of your current life?" I want to say that if my patience, perseverance and willingness to wait for that inheritance in any way protect that new wine that hides in the cluster on the vine, then help me endure these days until You reap, help me remember Your purposes.

So once more I am reassured of Your power to prevail, and of the why behind Your hesitancy to set me/us free. Somehow, it seems, when I break free of the bondages of this life, in those days when Your elect and Your true servants receive what waits in Your hand, bigger change is in the offing than just an easement and a small blessing on our daily burdens. This time, it is going to be different.

So again, I will believe and anticipate that world You have in the palm of Your hand; the world You hold loosely, not yet scattering it at the feet of Your people, but nevertheless moving Your cupped hand nearer to their famished hearts, giving them a peek at what You hold there for them.

The Glorious New Creation
17
"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;
And the former shall not
be remembered or come to mind.
18
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create;
For behold, I create
Jerusalem as a rejoicing,
And her people a joy.
19
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
And joy in My people;
The voice of weeping
shall no longer be heard in her,
Nor the voice of crying.
20
"No more shall an infant from there live but a few days,
Nor an old man who
has not fulfilled his days;
For the child shall die one hundred years
old,
But the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed.
21
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
They shall plant vineyards and eat
their fruit.
22
They shall not build and another inhabit;
They shall not plant and another
eat;
For as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people,
And My
elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23
They shall not labor in vain,
Nor bring forth children for trouble;
For
they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the Lord,
And their offspring
with them.
24
"It shall come to pass
That before they call, I will answer;
And while
they are still speaking, I will hear.
25
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
The lion shall eat straw like the
ox,
And dust shall be the serpent's food.
They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all My holy mountain,"
Says the Lord.

I can hardly read those words without my vision going tear-blurred, God. If the picture You painted weren't so beautiful, it would be so much easier to wait.

Nevertheless, thanks be to God for the vision.