Open-heartedness

One sibling being wheelchair-bound, the council automatically installed motorised doors in our childhood home, the only problem being that whenever mechanical failure switched them manual, I’d quite grown out of the habit of closing them after me.

Not that I’d re-write the above paragraph, but the first draft my parents got wind of they’d yell, “Were you born in a barn?” Surely of all people they ought’ve known I’d first made an appearance at Epsom Hospital and hadn’t got very far since, possibly due to my lack of practice in handling less-than-automated exits and entrances?

Anyway, it being Advent season, this devotional is more about a babe that actually was born in a barn, as Revelation 3 v8 reassuringly attests: ‘ I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.’

What got me thinking of open doors was a jar of chocolates our Samuel collects this time of year as he unhinges a countdown to Christmas, making sure to leave sequential revelations ajar to easier find next day’s number, following in his father’s footsteps. He might be more presently excited about his own birthday the day after this is published than his Lord’s twelve Christmassy days after, but this little ritual of orderly uncovering got me thinking of how Jesus was revealed in the fulness of time and even then took three further decades to mature before becoming the first fruits of the new creation in Easter’s Resurrection.

Advent begins in the dark of Mary’s womb, and though the promise of salvation remained largely hidden for millennia before, the Light of the World now beckons beacon-like, through his people set on a hill, all those around in darkness.

And how is it that we are to manifest the majesty of our Lord Who emptied himself to fill all-in-all?

When Moses asked to see God’s glory he was assured that the Lord would make all His goodness pass before him… namely His lovingkindness. Nothing has changed, for we manifest God’s glory by our fruits as we abide in Him by His Holy Spirit, and Jesus identified the self-same first of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Unlike the irrevocable gifts of the Holy Spirit, the fruits are a testament of maturing character, and even these have their seemly order as one of my favourite poets (the late missionary Dr. Kenneth Moynagh) attests in his beautiful rendition of Galatians 5, demonstrating agape love as the wellspring of Christlikeness:

‘Joy is Love exulting, and Peace is love at rest;

Patience, Love enduring in every trial and test;

Gentleness, Love yielding to all that is not sin;

Goodness, Love in actions, that flow from Christ within.

Faith is Love’s eyes opened the living Christ to see;

Meekness, Love not fighting, but bowed at Calvary;

Temperance, Love in harness and under Christ’s control.

For Christ is love, in person – and Love, Christ in the soul.’

Our God possesses numerous divine attributes theologians are gifted to search in Scripture, but Love is not a thing that God possesses but His very Nature that passionately and purposefully possesses Him.

We only love because He first loved us, but joy is the exuberant resolve of love that angelically sang at the birth of Creation (Job 38v6-7) and strengthened our Lord at Calvary as a peaceable hope set before Him. Even now Jesus’s epistolist brother exhorts us to find various trials joy for how they enable us to longsufferingly unfurl the next fruit of the Holy Spirit in a patience some untimely-ripped chocolate calendars aren’t blessed to know:

‘My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.’ (James 1v2-4)

And in the first chapter of Peter’s second epistle he encourages us to draw upon our God’s goodness who gives us everything that pertains not only to life but godliness as we add to our faith such virtues as self-control, that being fruitful in our knowledge of God there might be ministered unto us an abundant entrance into His everlasting kingdom. This is how God openly welcomes us to openness of heart as we share in the riches of His grace in ever-ripening overflow of spirit.

Gentleness is also translated kindness, which is a more elementary identification of heart with those of our kind we’d actively cherish, but only God is good, so goodness is another level of identifying with a holy God who isn’t like us but calls us in faithfulness to meek self-control undergirded by that earlier fruit of patience with God, ourselves, and others. This is diametrically opposite to the wicked one who’s also interested in fruits of the far more perishable variety.

One would think the opposite of Love has to be Hate whilst the opposite of Meekness must be Pride, but the devil is not a dualistic equal of God but a self-corrupted creature in antithesis. It was not hatred that first gripped him in opposing love but a misplaced love called pride that drew his worship inwards. Even Scripture warns us of the pride of life in a warped love that’s not of our Father:

‘Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.’ (1 John 2 v15-17)

Obviously we are to love the world as God does with self-sacrificial love, but where agape love breeds jubilant joy, devilish desire breeds a cacophony of chaos. As for peace, there is no rest for wicked. Our already defeated foe proves impatient in his cruelty as with evil rebellion he lashes around intemperately and seemingly out of control, though our God is able to work all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Let us then order our steps after Him who has so openly gone before us to ransom, reconcile, and restore all who would receive the Father’s wide welcome.

So often we stop short of maturing in failing to follow our Lord who embraces us in Psalm 85 to set us in the way of His steps, but let us follow through as in the joyous prayer of Revelation 7v12 which opens out from blessing to empowered worship of God. Too often we mess up the order in seeking blessing as an end, but our God freely begins with blessing that we might offer it up to Him along with all the fruits of His glory in our lives… ‘saying,“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honour and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.”