The fullness of time...

THE FULLNESS OF TIME

Now Elisabeth's full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son (Luke 1:57)

The fullness of time is often used in the King James version of the Bible. The version is rarely read because of its quaint English, yet was one of the early commissioned works of compilation that has lasted for centuries.

It is very easy to imagine a baby being born in the “fullness of time”. In fact it is not desirable that a baby be born before the fullness of time, or after the period specified for it. 

Most things in the world work on this celestial clock, whose ticking is often inaudible to harried ears and drowned by the strident calls of our busy schedules. We desire faster, quicker, further, and it all has to happen at the touch of a button or a swish of a screen.

Yet there is a fullness of time that makes the sun rise on schedule, and the rivers run in spring. Leaves fall in autumn, and buds respond to birds in spring from skeletal branches that watch over winter.

How deep is that understanding of that clock within us, when all of nature follows its baton?

We get impatient with others, with ourselves, and with the world, and can often despair of people who don’t respond or change, circumstances that don’t shift, or situations that seem stuck in a quagmire. Are we forgetting that our celestial conductor still holds the baton over all these things? And do we remind ourselves that there might be in that situation, for that person, or for that circumstance, a fullness of time that is yet to be?

If we are able to see that, we might join the universal choir in singing in tune, rather than raising a discordant voice that grates against the bars of music that dictate our days.

Well did the wisest man in all the world write … “He makes all things beautiful in His time.”

Wanting to know

HOW CAN WE UNDERSTAND?

Life is a slow unveiling. A gradual awakening into the wonders of our world. As a child gradually grows into the understanding of his environment. Tentative forays leaving imprints of experience on his being. These imprints mould him as he bases his perception of life and those around him from what is within him. He grows.

In the beginning was the word. The word was with God and the word was God. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. Life was in Him, and that life was the light of men. (Taken from John 1)

How do our eyes perceive what God is doing within us? “The words I have spoken to you, they are spirit and life (John 6:63)”, said Jesus. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (John 8:32)”, He said. How do we listen and having listened hear? How do we understand?

Jesus spoke in parables. Stories, allegories, illustrations. He ended quite a few of them with the injuction that “those who have ears should hear”. We often appreciate their meaning and content, but do we hear?  He also explained why he  used this method of instruction. “Therefore speak I to them in parables,” He said, “because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.” Was the purpose of the parable to hide the meaning? How can it be unveiled? 

What is the secret to this understanding?

Jesus said it lies in our heart. He cried out against that generation, quoting Isaiah, saying their heart has grown callous. The hearts of the people of Israel had also grown, but it had grown calloused. The inevitable consequence is a darkening of their understanding, and a blinding of their mind. (Matthew 13: 13-15)

The first step to learning is a desire to learn. A wanting to know. No amount of tutelage can ever instill that hunger into a soul. Do we want to know our God? “If we hunger and thirst”, He said, “we will be filled”. If we don’t have that hunger or thirst, we will become like those in the market place whose only emission is a complaint against what is, for what others are not. They are like unto children that sit in the marketplace, and call one to another; who say, We piped unto you, and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not weep. (Luke 7:32)

“Love God”, Jesus said. “And love your neighbor.” Love for our neighbor is warped without our being able to love God first. Filial or fraternal or storge love can only grow in a godly way if  the foundation is built on agape. Else it will be always be a distortion. Our distortion, interpretation or perception.

How do I understand His love? Do I want to know? How deep is that desire in me?

How do I understand my neighbor? My family? Do I want to know? 

Matthew 18:23 – 35

What does it do for me? What is my take home message? How do I grow from reading it?

Are we paying time to our jailer? Or are we living free? Who holds the key? 

Luke 9:23

Luke 9:23- 24

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

These are verses often quoted. Denial is  intrinsic to devotion. However, denial can become the goal, rather than a path. Denial for denial’s sake is self defeating. Every ascetic and hermit has walked this path. Indian mythology and religious fervor is characterized by varying and often extreme forms of denial. The obliteration of all desire is the goal, with the hope that this release will provide the soul the necessary impetus to mystically unite with god. Out of this strange marriage is supposed to flow power, and the enhanced ability to flow with the continuum of time and energy that impels the universe. While wildly probable, it is quite evanescent and ethereal which is why ascetics and hermits are so infrequent, and often revealed as charlatans in a futile garb of ochre.

But denial still occupies a central position in devotion and discipleship. What is different about Christian denial? Central to denial for the believer is the prefix that Jesus gives it. If. “If any man would follow, or come after me” He says. This is a personal plea, the pre requisite being the overwhelming desire for companionship with the Master that dwarfs all other desires. Desire denied is not for the sake of ascetism, but is an all consuming devotion eclipsing all other desires. The focus of the denial is not ourselves or our desires, but a desire to be with Him, and follow Him.  It is not denial for denial’s sake or some Olympic religious exhibition. How consuming is this desire in us ? For if we lack clarity,  our path too might get tangled in the thickets of our desires, and we might be strung up on a branch by our own hair. A pitiful end on a detour masquerading as devotion.

There is no arguing with the “must” of denial. It seems a natural corollary or consequence to devotion. It is an invariable accompaniment to the mystique of the marriage. But it is not heard as a dirge, but as a joyful accompaniment in a dance with Him who made the heavens dance and the earth sing.

Denial is as much about Lordship than anything else. And Lordship is a state of being. All that is within us actually rebels against Lordship, veering towards independence. Independance is a sugar coated word for rebellion. There is no middle ground. We constantly need to remind ourselves of our place. Which is why the first beatitude speaks of a spiritual bankruptcy, of being poor in spirit.

Jesus said that we must deny ourselved DAILY. Our fealty and alleigance is not an event from a fondly remembered past, but a minute by minute, day by day assumption of our spiritual stand, our spiritual position in Him. Life teaches us about this, and the older we get, we get more chances to practice it. How do we react to these opportunities? If there is disappointment, or anger or regret, or frustration, these may be indicators that our vision may be more focused  inwards than on our Master. If there is peace, and quietness, and may I even dare to say joy, it reassures us that we do occupy the place that is marked out for us.

Neither does that denial stop there, for we are on a path hot on the heels of the Master himself. He goes before us. We just have to follow. It is far easier to follow. He decides both destination and direction.  We have footsteps ahead of us showing us the way. We are not lost, though the direction may not be clear. Following a footstep at a time is also against our natures, since we want a google map for life with directions from point A to E. Little do we realize that all the points B, C, and D which appear futile for us to chart, bring us closer to our destination, our inner transformation. Viewed in this light, would we even want to bypass those milestones, however irrelevant or pointless they may seem?

We constantly seek to be the captain of our souls, the master of our fate. Rebellion uncapped, spewing malcontent around us. Why should I sacrifice my life, and surrender all to futility? Here again, Jesus reminds us that our surrender is for Him, for His sake. A faithful dog rarely questions the path the master takes. Sufficient for the mongrel is to dog His masters steps and to be in His presence. All else is secondary. He who wants to save his life will lose it.

Is not all of life as we know it an attempt to save it? The strife to survive? Once we have survived, the strife to get ahead? Once we get ahead the strife for a better job, a better position, a better house, a better car ad infinitum?  Jesus is saying this road tumbles into a bottomless pit. Loss of life itself is the inevitable end. But he who loses his life because of Me will save it. The salvation of our lives is not the focus but the byproduct of our devotion. Why do we do what we do? Is it because of Him? Is it because He said so?  The consequences are in His hand, and it will result in a salvation far beyond what we can comprehend. 

No eye has seen or ear heard what God has prepared for those who wait for Him.

Abide. 

Disappointment or death?

Disappointment or death?

Which comes first?

Disappointment or death?

It is an oxymoron, 

Because no corpse can be disappointed 

It lies frozen and still

Bereft of feeling or will

Expectations are buried

Hollow clod resounding earth enclosed

How can it ever be hurt?

Six feet under the earth?

The sword has two edges...

I read the presidential address of the new president of the college of surgeons and realize indeed, clearly that surgery is about the people. He was from Portugal. It does sound a bit pompous, and I can easily imagine someone from India giving a similar address. (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/836034?nlid=73946_2381)

Surgery  is a subject, indeed, it is technique, and it is principles, but at the bottom, it is about the people. People who allow us access to  their insides,  give us liberty to tinker with the inner recesses of their being, with a trust that we will help them. It is that trust that fuels long  hours, long days and longer nights. The joy of a smile the next morning, the liberty that we both experience when we lead them on to discharge home. As much as they are released, we too are permitted the joy of the moment. It is about moments, some of which can be fraught with danger and a knife blade distance away from disaster. Many sequential steps taken in concert, not just by me, but by all who toil alongside as a team. Our or team functions as a  finely tuned orchestrated instrument. At the end of it all, we can have the joy of telling a people, we did our best, and it was good enough. You have a new lease a life, a chance to live better.

However, there are also those to whom we cannot say these words, those who have come closer to the knowledge of their impermanence on earth as a result of our delving into the depths of their body. Those to whom our borders of benificience have been reached and we can only behold them dancing like wraiths in another world to come. To these we can hold out the hope of eternal life, and point them to the way to a peaceful end, the final peacemaking with life, and a death that is to come. It is not a defeat, or something to be shunned, but again, it is about people, who come our way and our sharing of the truth we see and transmit to them.  A sword has two edges, a scalpel has only one.

I cannot think of any other way of practicing surgery. I am grateful for this great liberty that people lend to me, for we are but an instrument, and our job is to keep our cutting edge honed. For it is not really us who weild the scalpel, we are wielded. The sword has two edges, the scalpel only one.