Saturday, March 29, 2008

Through clenched teeth

Weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That is, to this rather scruffy fricken, one of the most viscerally descriptive phrases in the English lexicon.  Gnashing is just such a guttural word that one can almost not say it without actually gnashing one's canine's together.  Not Spot and Rover, if you say 'gnashing' while smacking your dogs heads together, you should gently place the pups down on the carpet again and seek help immediately.  Much as i hate dogs, that's just weird.  Unless the dogs in question have been barking at nothing and everything since eleven last night, then it's not only perfectly justified, it's healthy and cathartic.  Carry on.

No, i'm not referring to battered family pets.  i am once again coming back to that same vomit heap i have been choking down and regurgitating for the last fifteen years.  Sheesh, i'm even beginning to bore myself!  Lessee if i can make this about something other than me.  
umm.  Nope.  Can't do it.  Lessee if the Spirit can make this festering flop of fertilizer into a flourishing flower.

Weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Or as my comrade-in-amity, Mauser Bob translates it, Wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It's a phrase that usually describes the 'Outer Darkness.'  Sort of the antithesis of wherever God is.  If you ain't in the Light, you'se in de dark.  And believe you me, de dark, ain't no place to be.  So if one is going through a hard time and the natural flow out one's heart at that time is wailing, weeping and gnashed teeth, is one cast off?  Have we been placed in Outer Darkness for a time?

Nay!  Laughably Nay, i say!  We have entered the New Covenant in the blood.  There is no separation now or forever.  There can be none, God does not break promises.  Period.  End of story.  Close the book, get a new one and fuh-geddabowtit.  Not going to happen.  No way.  No how.  That's a big Negatory.  Couldn't do it if He wanted to.  Am i getting through?  Yeah, you're feeling me.  You got it.  You love it.

So, we're inseperab, inseperata, insepra, you know, i'm frequently amazed by the holes in my vocabulary.  We are inseparable from the Father.  We sometimes feel lost and alone and we weep and gnash.  Are we being punished?  Are we being tested?  Are we being refined?

Maybe.  Are we sinning when we cry out like puppies in a car carrier on our way to the vets?  Oooh.  There's the rub, ain't it?  And as with all things spiritual, there's no single answer.  To not cry to God with our true, heartfelt emotions would be dishonest.  Trying to choke it down and work on it ourselves would be works.  My eldest, Happ, is an open book, his heart is out there for all to see.  You know what he's thinking whether you want to or not.  Rascal, my second son, is a clam.  You couldn't force his jaws open with a sugarcoated crowbar.  This has caused a breach at times in our relationship.  i have found myself trying to earn his trust in order to know my own son.  In order to Love my own son.  For how can we love someone we don't know?  This is what a relationship with God would look like if we weren't honest in our dealings with Him.  If all our prayers were the rote kind.  If we censored our emotions with Him.  

Now, He doesn't actually need us to tell Him.  He can see inside.  But why would we want to try and keep Him out?  So we lament when we feel locked in the car carrier.  We cry out.  But not as one who has no hope!  That is the difference.  We know where our hope lies.  We know it is a faithful and good hope.  This may hurt, this may downright suck, but it is meant for our good.

Just like a shot at the vets.

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