These days, at least in southeastern Virginia, nature has been putting on the annual color extravaganza with leaves flashing out from their varied shades of green into stunning reds, oranges, yellows, ochres, rusts, and burgundies. It never gets old, this glorious change of season display. There’s an entire tourist industry element, enticing thousands to come share in the free show. Of course, this beauty is fleeting. The trees are simply wrapping up their season as they prepare for the cool nights of their winter slumber. All this is in complete obedience to the order established by the Creator. It is not happenstance.
God’s order, His Truth, fills our entire world with blessed peace, reassuring predictability. It towers over creation with unmatched, unwavering benevolence. It reviles any and all intrusion, all attempts to re-write its ‘code,’ the way of things. It is absolute.
Mankind is designed to worship. It is our highest calling, our most-pressing priority. It is the Creator’s established order for us. Within a life of worship there is a filled-up-ness of joy-in-safety, along with the panoply of gifts of the Spirit, His armor, and the belonging-ness of adoption into the Beloved, with the onlooking great cloud of witnesses cheering us on.
Dark clouds gather overhead at all violations of the Love code set in place by the Father before the foundation of the world. His displeasure soars when the Enemy of our souls deceives us and succeeds in intruding on the sanctity of our relationship with the Father, using the faded and fading delights of this world as bait, delights, which admittedly, so easily attract weakened flesh. These ‘pollutions’ will not forever go unaddressed. There will come a terrible day when Truth will be devastatingly restated with majesty and authority, like a piercing, double-edged sword.
And then our dimly lit, grayscale, world will revert to the kaleidoscope of color intended by the Father. Love will be restored. Peace will be restored. Relationship will be restored. A white stone will be given. A new name will be revealed. The wedding feast will begin. And we, broken yet restored to spotless purity, will be in attendance, robed in glorious white, alongside our Bridegroom. PD
