Hide and Go Hide (2)
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints Ephesians 1:18 NASB
May be enlightened – Heschel’s remarks (yesterday) establish the dangerous impossible seriousness of prayer. We know that God is in hiding. We know what it means to not be at home, to wander in the wasteland of soulless living. We know—and we cry. Because this is not human, this time of separation, of desolation, while the earth agonizes in the absence of its Creator. Oh, He is there, but around the corner, over the horizon, showing Himself only when we stake our lives on our words and our feelings. Because of this, we can use an additional guide. Anthony Bloom, who comes from a religious realm about as far away from Heschel as East is from West, yet nevertheless, and strangely enough, when we turn to seek the hidden God, both of these men point us toward the same path.
“God helps us when there is no one else to help. God is there at the point of greatest tension, at the breaking point, at the centre of the storm. In a way despair is at the centre of things—if only we are prepared to go through it. We must be prepared for a period when God is not there for us and we must be aware of not trying to substitute a false God . . . The day when God is absent, when He is silent—that is the beginning of prayer. . . . There is longing for home, but a home that has no geography, home where there is love, depth and life.”[1]
“Remember the many passages in Scripture in which we are told how bad it is to find oneself face to face with God, because God is power, God is truth, God is purity. Therefore, the first thought we ought to have when we do not tangibly perceive the divine presence, is a thought of gratitude. God is merciful; He does not come in an untimely way. He gives us a chance to judge ourselves, to understand, and not to come into His presence at a moment when it would mean condemnation.”[2]
Paul was of like mind. “May be enlightened” is his phrase. It’s actually the first word in his petition. Pephotismenous. In the midst of this construction, you find photizo, “to give light,” from which we derive “light writing,” that is, photo-graphy. But notice the subject of Paul’s fervent plea. It is not Eighteenth Century Enlightenment. Paul is not interested in more information, more theorems, more insights. He prays for the enlightenment of the “eyes of the heart.” Prayer is an inside job. Yes, we may read the words of Heschel and Bloom and Weiss[3], but the words will not suffice. Paul asks for a movement of the heart. That’s what we need. And, oh, how much more difficult than finding a few good words! Let us bow and open the depths of our despair. Perhaps God will find us where we dare not look.
Topical Index: prayer, Bloom, Weiss, Heschel, Ephesians 1:18, pephotismenous
[1] Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, pp. 17-18.
[2] Ibid., p. 27.
[3] Avraham Weiss, Holistic Prayer: A Guide to Jewish Spirituality
Once I heard a pastor say,”we’re all called to pray, and if we don’t answer that call, He will cause us to pray” this has been true in my life. It is the desperate times when all seems dark that I cry out. There have been seasons in my life where I have taken these very words from Paul and prayed them for myself and others. Today even that the eyes of my heart be enlightened so I may know the hope of His calling. Hope stands out to me because without hope I am surrounded by the total opposite, despair.
Then I really am in darkness.
Oh open the eyes of my heart !!!!!!
Jer. 5:21 (KJV): “Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.”
People who do not sense their separation from God must be in shock from sin. When you experience shock, you produce vast amounts of compensatory chemicals, such as numbing opioids, for example, to bridge the injury (that caused the shock) until you can address the problem. This can create a temporary ‘out of body’ type experience, where you are numb and cannot react properly. The senses are temporarily impaired. If the injury is a bad enough one of certain types, people may even lose the sense of who they are. With the injuries that sin causes, I think we do something similar, psychically, to survive. When you start to come out of shock, and the senses start working again is when most people are able to assess the extent of the injuries because they start to notice them: they start to HURT. The hurt was always there, but was hard or impossible to detect because the detection system was temporarily out of order. I know I used stress (fear) as my main way to keep myself IN shock so that I would NOT hurt; or, notice my desperation. (Ok, now, y’all, was that not the height of foolishness?)
I think all sin comes with a carrot (incentive), a stick (an imperative) and a tranquilizer (addictive ‘crutch’ to avoid noticing the damage as well as a set up to cause us to make the sin choice again – to feed the addiction to the powerful mind altering tranquilizers that make us “foolish”, or, unable to correctly connect with reality). When I go to examine what exactly the lies were that I fell for that caused me to sin, I find all three lies active, every time. In fact, if I want to shut the liar up for good, I have to go find and repent for all THREE before I am truly free of that particular temptation again.
Jeremiah must have been talking to people who were deep in the shock of sin and suffering from a profound shut down of the spiritual senses that keep us aware of our connection with reality and the present. We all are instinctively aware of this at some level, and the world keeps trying to come up with a way to deal with this separation from reality and the present (witness all the attempts of the occult to do an end run around this very problem by ‘seeking enlightenment’, for example), but I suspect the psyche has been designed this way to protect us from death. I know if I was fully aware at any one time of the enormity of my sin WITHOUT a Saviour, I would instantly die of shock and horror. Instead, I believe I have been cursed with “foolishness” to give me another chance and opportunity to learn to want something better. Grace is amazing! Halleluah!
Hello Miss Hayes and the rest of the tribe, it is my understanding that praying without ceasing. The Lord is always in the picture through his word situations arise in the word covers them all. Conversing with the Lord all day long is what people learn to do it is not a given. It is fine from those around us. It is not just about being joyful it’s about being hopeful.. we can. Not and should not carry the weight of others I can be your friend and do what I can but it is the Lord’s job to carry their burdens away. People may fail us… But the Lord never leaves us. We may even walk away from him but he always guides us back if we are willing to obey.
WHO’S HIDING FROM WHO?
Adam disobeyed God and went into hiding. He hid from God.
And he hid from himself. And his “sleep walk” began.
God, in turn, went into “pursuit” mode. Yeshua, going about His Father’s business,
made two revealing statements to man’s hiding heart in John 14.
“He who has My commandments and obeys them, it is he who loves Me. And he who
loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come
to him and make Our home with him.”
Paul’s faith finally woke up his hiding heart as he shares with us his experience:
“But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me
through His grace, to reveal His Son in Me . . .”
That revelation is the enlightenment Paul and man has been waiting for. God was not hiding.
Man just needed his slumbering heart to receive God’s wake up call.
In “Living Prayer,” Anthony Bloom shared:
“I remember a young woman with an incurable disease and after years of the awareness of God’s presence, she suddenly sensed God’s absence – some sort of real absence – and she wrote to me saying, ‘Pray to God, please, that I should never yield to the temptation of building up an illusion of his presence, rather than accept his absence.’ “
When I first read this excerpt a couple of decades ago, my response was (and still is), “Amen.”
Gayle, I am presently ‘absenting’ myself from some of my children so as to put us in a better place to grow and relate, as well as to allow natural circumstances to prune and correct imbalances that have been merely compensated for up to now. I am trying very hard to understand the parenting end of relationship, and I find myself identifying more with YHVH’s end of the deal as time goes on. How He handles things has become much MORE interesting to me lately.
Boy do I understand Laurita! It is good to consider the fact that as we try to parent our children so God parents us.
Yes, indeed. As painful as it is for us to watch, the natural corrections that occur are for their growth. And, it brings gratitude when we see that walking the tightrope between detachment and engagement has contributed to them hearing the Father’s gentle call. It is wonderful to see Him guiding them as they grow.
“…that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened…”
Maybe in other words…..
That your mind, your deep thoughts, your imagination, your understanding, be awakened, stimulated, and become much more active and engaged in considering and realizing, even more personally, being more fully convinced and more knowing of the real truth, without doubting or uncertainty or unassuredness, like light being more intensely turned up to shine in greater brightness so as to be able to better see all variations of colors and shades and hues and tones more clearly and cleanly and to see more details of design more distinctly and definitively…..so as to, In this way KNOW!!!…..REALLY KNOW!!!…what is the HOPE of HIS CALLING, what is the RICHNESS of HIS GLORIOUS INHERITANCE IN THE KEDOSHIM (SET APART ONES), and (to carry on with the next verse) what is HIS EXCEEDINGLY GREAT POWER TOWARD US who keep trusting Him—IN KEEPING WITH THE WORKING OF HIS MIGHTY STRENGTH.
May the eyes of your heart be enlightened like THAT and about THOSE things. And that’s not even beginning to describe what is to happen in us in our EMOTIONS of our hearts!!!
Flayed before the throne of God,
My heart,
My soul,
This emerging, this growth, this transformation
It is hard, but good.
Flayed before the throne of God,
Gratefully;
Truth manifest as the flesh quivers before His power,
I am undone, yet he is released.
It is good with my soul,
It is good.
william mark parry © 5 .27.2009