Turning Back To Center- With References

Turning Back To Center

References

By Pawel

(NASB)

There once was a man with a tremendously large head. It was his burden to carry, and carry it he did, as best he could. With that head the man began to look around, swinging it first one way and then the other to see what he might see. But, try as he might, and he tried mightily, the man was never able to see both ways at once and at the same time. But he was able to see down the way a bit and then up ahead a ways, and that was a start. For a man with such a head could not ask for more than that, could he? _______________________________ What He Saw Down The Way In the beginning a force was stirring within the Existent. This force was LOVE and it was beyond compare and was fully contained within the Existent Himself. Indeed, it is said that the Existent was actually composed of this LOVE, which He alone possessed. He alone possessed it because in the beginning there was no one else beside those who are the Existent. Now, being that He is Existent and without beginning or end, it is rather difficult to explain the beginnings of His thought to share His LOVE. Suffice it to say that He did share it; He opened Himself and released His LOVE into the space He had prepared for it. It burst forth with a radiant glory unto itself and it filled the space into which it was released. The Existent spoke words of power as well with which He created a world for His LOVE, a world of beauty and splendor that was material and sure. It was a world of such infinite detail that in the ages that have past since its creation there has been no end to the unlocking of its mysteries. However, this new world was only to be the pedestal upon which to showcase that which was to be the true recipient of His LOVE. With a single masterstroke the Existent made Man, a being made to carry the very stamp of the Existent’s image and from whom the Existent desired His own LOVE to be reflected back to Himself. The Man was given a beautiful Garden in which to work and a wife to care for and protect. And he was given the LOVE of the Existent and daily fellowship with Him as they walked together in the cool of the evenings. This idyllic creation was not the extent of the ‘thought’ our Existent One possessed. His powerful LOVE moves more passionately within Him than mere aesthetic beauty and fellowship. His LOVE boils over, churning and increasing, working always to show itself in its truest, most incredible form. And so, as LOVE would have it, Man and Wife turned away from the Existent and ultimately chose to love themselves instead. They took what they had been given and they used it for their own benefit rather than freely giving it back to their Maker. Because of this, Man and Wife were permitted no further

1 John 4:16 “God is love…” Genesis 1:3 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” Genesis 1:1-31 The account of creation Genesis 1:26-30 The making of Man Genesis 2:15 “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” Genesis 2:18-24 “Then God said, ‘It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’”

Genesis 3:1-24 The ‘Fall’ of Man

fellowship with the Existent but were forced to enter the world, which had been prepared for this. The Existent became to them their God and He removed Himself from these, His children, until such a time as His LOVE would be returned freely. The Man passed his own selfish love down through his generations resulting in all manner of horrific expressions of the true LOVE and Its power. Murder, was the first, then lust, and eventually idolatry, which was perhaps the most hateful of all of man’s behavior as image bearers and reflections of the Existent. Throughout this progression of sinfulness the Existent continued to slowly knead LOVE into His cherished humanity. In so doing, He chose for Himself, out of the masses, one people in particular within which He would fulfill His masterwork. This people He prophetically named God Prevails and to them He gave the promise of eternal LOVE. He blessed them with this promise; He worked throughout the years to perfect it in them. He gave them a Law that they might know what He desired of them and that they might in turn see their own hatefulness reflected in it and in the consequences it demanded. In spite of her name, God Prevails struggled with this LOVE; the people were defect in themselves, carrying the blood of their father and like him continually turning their backs on the Existent and loving themselves instead. To discipline these wayward children the Existent used a heavy rod, bringing upon them a calamity of hardship from the other nations, the harshness of plague and famine ravaging their land, and the removal of His presence from their midst for generations at a time. But LOVE Itself was not removed, It continued to work in the world and at just the right time, the time came for It to make known the extent of Its awesome power. The Existent, who has no beginning or end, but simply is, deigned to enter humanity in order to release it from its wicked and selfish perversion of LOVE. He who made Man became man, visiting the object of His desire as one of their own. To the people who would not, could not, perfectly love Him or return His LOVE to Him, He visited to show them a Way. As a man He lived a life of purity and holiness, honoring the Existent in heaven and loving Him above all else. He used the Law and its commands to teach them about the powerful LOVE of the Existent, His unceasing effort to share it, and His desire to receive it back to Himself. And when He had completed His teaching and had begun a new Way for men to live upon the earth among the peoples, He finished His work by expressing the Existent’s LOVE in full, submitting Himself to the Law and dying as payment, erasing His beloved’s debt. Those whom He created and loved above all else He allowed to utterly reject Him, nailing Him to a tree and killing in Him the one true Image Bearer of the Existent. This death was a seeming victory for Hate and it’s servants. By killing the Image of God, it seemed that mankind was now free to love themselves without cost and to the death if they desired. In this one work of sacrifice LOVE was not only incarnated among the Existent’s people but also willingly laid Itself down in order to

Genesis 4:8 “Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.” Genesis 6:1-5 “and they took wives … whomever they chose.” Genesis 11:4 “They said, come let us build for ourselves a city… and let us make for ourselves a name…” Genesis 12:1-3 “the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country…’” Genesis 32:28 “He said, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel.’” Exodus 19-24 The giving of the Law Romans 5:12 “just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men…” Psalm 89:30-37 “I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes…” John 1:1-14 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God…” 2 Corinthians 5:21 “Him who knew no sin…” Matthew 5-7 The Sermon on the Mount John 3:16 “For God so loved the world…” Galatians 3:13-14 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us…”

purchase His people. You see, to answer the Law the Existent had to satisfy the Law. To satisfy the Law for all of His children He had to pay for all of their wickedness as the Law required. To pay for all, He had to die for all. In the beginning the Existent had had a ‘thought’ to share His LOVE, so He created in His own image those who could receive it and return it. He made them free, free to do His will, but also free to hate Him if they chose. He did this to show the true nature and power of the LOVE He possessed. As a result He died for them, in their stead, paying with Himself the price for their selfish hatred. He who created out of LOVE, died in LOVE. And then, the Existent showed the true power and nature of His LOVE and astounded all by raising the Image Bearer back to life, thereby glorifying Himself and His LOVE for us, and vanquishing death forever as a consequence to hatred. Because the Existent loved, He visited; because He visited, He died; because He died, He rose; and because He rose, we are free to live forever. There no longer exists a penalty for wickedness but only the opportunity to love Him in return. We now have the chance to choose to love rather than hate and to live forever rather than perish. And all that is required is that we say ‘Yes’ to the Existent One. We are now both like the Man in the Garden and so very much unlike him. Like him we have the opportunity to choose to love our Father. But unlike that first father, we have a never-ending fount of LOVE covering our mistakes for ever after. We now have the first choice and the last choice. Do we accept His LOVE and let it penetrate our hearts where it can explode in joy and peace and burst out into the world to penetrate the hearts of those around us and then return to God above? Or do we say ‘No’ and consign ourselves forever to leave His Garden, hurting the One whose only desire in the first place was to love us? What He Saw Up Ahead A Ways Some of the people heard the Word spoken by LOVE and began to walk along the Way left by the Image of God. They left the others behind, the ones who refused God altogether as well as those who for their own foolish gain, stubbornly clung to the Law that they would not admit He fulfilled. Those who had killed God rejected these new followers of the Way and forced them to flee further into the world. The followers were taught through this how to better follow the Way as it went to and fro pursuing the Existent’s LOVE, which was boundlessly entering and exiting the peoples of the Earth, shining Its Light back into the heavens upon the Existent’s beaming countenance. In each new place the followers went, Family was created around a Table of LOVE that itself was an image bearer of the one true Image Bearer. For a time LOVE was truly to be found among the children of God. It passed through the people freely, effecting charity, kindness, and compassion in each heart that it transformed. It cut away the habits of selfishness and pride and grafted in their place the fruits of LOVE

Isaiah 25:7-9 “He will swallow up death for all time…” 1 Corinthians 15:50-55 “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is your victory? O death where is your sting?” Romans 10:8-13 “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Galatians 5:16-26 “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit…”

Acts 8:1-4 “And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria…” Luke 22:14-20 The Last Supper 1 Corinthians 11:23-34 Instructions on eating at the table of Christ

Acts 2:41-47 “and were

amongst all who were Its own. The Families were one with each other, sharing with each other as they had need, growing strong on the Way as they were fed by the Existent’s LOVE. The Families soon spread beyond their initial borders quickly encompassing entire regions of the world. As their tribe increased the shining beacon that had always guided them began to lose its luster for them. Maybe it was ignorance, maybe complacency. It might have been naiveté, or mere laziness. More likely, it was forgetfulness of the price that had been paid for the Way. The Families grew sleek, fat, and large, becoming accustomed to hoarding the spoils of LOVE rather than working to share them as at first. They began to forget LOVE’s purpose and that It was roiling amongst them seeking expression in the Existent. They, like their fathers before them, began to love themselves and to follow their own desires rather than those of the Existent. In a perversion more horrendous that idolatry, the Family began to worship and adore itself and the struggle to control it and profit by it soon broke out all along the Way. Oddly enough, fueling the Family’s degeneration was their sincere attempt to protect her against the influence of the God Haters who continually worked to detour the Way. These taught a return to the Law of consequences for wickedness, and that LOVE did not adequately compensate for the people’s selfishness and pride. To combat these evils the Families banded in a unified opposition to this wickedness. They met in large councils to discuss the evils of the teaching and worked out acceptable doctrine to counter this enemy and shepherd the followers. Evil, however, had its own purposes, and the heresy that it propagated was not its only objective. For with the good of the Families’ united front came the evil of a struggle within the Families themselves for leadership. With the struggle for leadership came all manner of division and disunity. LOVE was all but forgotten as Pride swelled its head and carried itself among the people of the Way. The Families began arguing not against those seeking its ruin from outside the Way but between themselves about the very things that the Way had effectively abolished. They argued about matters of doctrine, not seeing in their doctrine a new version of the old Law. They argued about matters of membership, not seeing in their argument a rejection of the openness of the Existent’s invitation and the oneness He so zealously desires. Their arguments led them to schism eventually, breaking the bonds that the Existent had worked to create in His people. The schism of the Family was severe enough that it weakened the cords of LOVE so severely that irreparable fault lines were created that would deepen and widen and ultimately rip the Way asunder. The Family no longer resembled the Way but instead resembled that wayward people of old who never quite lived up to their name. The Family now followed only custom and tradition. They worked, not to reflect LOVE above but to selfishly keep it for themselves in perverse self-adoration. In a series of bursts of Light, LOVE reared Itself once again and presented the

sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.” 1 Samuel 2:27-27 “making yourselves fat with the choicest of every offering of My people…” Nehemiah 9:25-26 “So they ate, were filled and grew fat…” Jeremiah 5:26-31 “They are fat, they are sleek, they also excel in deeds of wickedness… Shall I not punish these people?”

Proverbs 11:2 “When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but with the humble is wisdom.” Proverbs 16:18-21 “Pride goes before destruction…” John 17:22-24 “that they may be one, just as We are one…” Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together…”

Family with a list of its offences and rebuked It’s children in order to set them right again. But the people of the Way refused to listen; they were too hardened by their Pride. What might have resulted in reform instead turned once again to schism and the Family was torn in pieces. There was no turning back this time; with each new argument over their beloved doctrine or rule of fellowship the Family disintegrated until she became as reflective of the Image of God as a pond of crystal clear water during a rain storm is reflective of its surrounding trees. Today, she no longer reflects and mirrors LOVE but instead refracts and absorbs it. Her selfinterest outweighs her selfless interest and her charity has turned to greed. What entered mankind so long ago; what was made impotent by the loving sacrifice of the Image Bearer; what was for all time removed by the loving embrace of the Father, has now been willingly embraced by His created people, His own Family. And in the ultimate act of defiance and hate toward the One who desired only to LOVE; she has done all of this in the very name of the Existent’s own, the Image Bearer Himself. Can there be any hope of expectation that the Existent has yet another revelation of LOVE’s power to save? Will there be no Way left for future followers? _______________________________ So, the bigheaded man slowly turned his head back to center, tottering a bit at the weight of it. And as he waited for it to finally stop swaying, he resisted the urge to shake it in despair and disgust at all he had seen, because that usually only made his burden that much harder to bear. Instead, he chose a simpler path; he just let it drop in order to look at his feet. When he did so, he noticed that he was standing on a piece of the Way and that his feet did seem to be pointing in the right direction. This was comforting and He chuckled to himself at the thought of actually being ‘in the way’ (usually it was his head that was in the way!). He slowly lifted his face toward the Sun, which was just starting to rise. His head swelled a bit now and then, but just now it seemed to deflate, which was always a relief. He would be okay; even large headed people can learn how to LOVE, right? The bigheaded man’s life depends on the belief that LOVE has not finished It’s work. LOVE is a force akin to the Existent Himself and His plans for it among His people are beyond tracing out. It will know no defeat, but only glory. June 21, 2007 Abbey of the Genesee

Luke 18:8 “However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Isaiah 55:8-13 “So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”