In the November 2011 article, Silent Night of the Soul, I pondered what it might mean to live in
eternity—to ‘experience’ (if it could be called that) a silent
night reality: pure freedom
from the wrangling disharmony of the flesh-self.
In honouring the Giver of Life we
were given to life in order that we would live in ways pleasing, as it were, to
the will of God. Such a vision—the Self free from its broken self—is heavenly,
and entirely of God’s original design.
Imagine this reality: it’s something
like a silent night of the soul—where we would be salaciously harmonious in
movement, state, and being. It’s something like living as we would in Heaven,
but here on Earth.
We could wonder if that’s even
possible.
But we can wonder, all the more,
how we might live the brief instances of that silent-night-of-soul as the moments
of our lives are enjoined—one to another—in series from beginning to end.
Glimpses of Resting in Peace Now
When we let our imaginations roam
wild, especially as they are augmented by our biblical spirituality and our
sense of Spirit, we invite the Presence of the Spirit to furnish our minds with
glorious visual concepts home to God’s abundance. There would be no limit;
nothing of virtue beyond God that might inspire us in our living—to live by
ways of love, hope, and faith.
God completely owns this territory
and we are passionately subject.
Imagine not the opposite of the
dark-night-of-the-soul reality, but a different experience where intimacy-of-God is the connecting parallel.
Oh, intimacy-of-God: where the
Kingdom agenda holds sway within our moments—not every moment, including our
thought moments and moments-of-emotion, but in more and more active moments
where we, so plugged-in to God, have not an iota of consideration for the needs
and desires of self. At such a destination of spiritual homoeostasis there is a
harmony within very much like that silent night, starry in effect, with a
gentle wafting breeze soothing our senses.
Our souls would be giddily
blissful—if that’s
indeed our view of the silent night state.
At such a silent night place
within the soul, hope is the foreboding gait-of-mood and the Holy Spirit’s
abundance is made real by true tranquillity.
The prevailing experience of
resting in peace now, as much as we could imagine it as a state of being
post-death, is surely the spiritual blessing God wishes to pour into our lives.
Such a state of peace we term
Shalom. It means many things to many people.
A silent-night-of-the-soul
reality—a lived phenomenon—is the spiritual essence of life where God, alone,
indwells us, really, by his unremitting Presence. Such a state, breathed of
hope, and swelling with passion upon elucidation of love, is the gorgeousness
of the knowledge of God as one person could experience it.
What would spoil these visions is
nailing the lid shut on the imagination, for surely the Spirit moves in such
designates of grace as any mind can procure, underpinned by a heart owned by
the Lord.
***
Lord,
Help us to involve our
imaginations toward the end of meditating and ruminating over the glorious
conception of this silent-night-of-the-soul reality. Furnish our minds with
visions that will propel us into holy works of love destined to glorify your
name. Drive us to go on in our journey with you, such that we would truly
experience the majesty of maturity in the Spirit, such that your Holy Spirit
would set us in fertile ground, impel us toward a sanctified germination, and
ultimately bring us to fruitfulness for your name’s sake. Help us understand
such fruitfulness is devoid of those parts of ourselves emergent of fear. Help
us, furthermore, to see such fruitfulness can only be emergent out of the
purity of love—your love, O God.
AMEN.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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