First Reformed United Church of Christ

PASTOR WALT'S NOTE: This extraordinary devotional piece was written in the early 1970’s by Professor Charles K. Robinson, one of my teachers at Duke Divinity School and later in the Duke Graduate School of Religion.  It is inspired by Psalm 139 and his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is written in the first person, as if God is addressing each one of us, directly and personally, which, he believed and I believe, is one of the chief functions of the Spirit as He engages us through scripture.  I have shared this material with our Transition Team, and we will use it as a stimulus to our spiritual growth.

 

“KNOWN”

“I know you.  I create you.  I am creating you.  I have loved you from your mother’s womb.  You have fled, as you now know, from my love, but I love you nevertheless and not-the-less and, however far you flee, it is I who sustains your very power of fleeing, and I will never finally let you go.

“I accept you as you are.  You are forgiven.  I know all your sufferings.  I have always known them.  For beyond your understanding, when you suffer, I suffer.  I also know all the little tricks by which you try to hide the ugliness you have made of your life, from yourself and others.  But you are beautiful.  You are beautiful more deeply within than you can see.  You are beautiful because you yourself, in the unique person that only you are, reflect already something of the beauty of my holiness in a way which shall never end.  You are beautiful also because I, and I alone, see the beauty you shall become.  Through the transforming power of my love, which is made perfect in weakness, you shall become perfectly beautiful.

“You shall become perfectly beautiful in a uniquely irreplaceable way, which neither you nor I will work out alone, for we shall work it out together.  Your life from now on will be neither simple nor easy.  I will grant you moments of abundant goodness and joy; moments when you will be lifted very high; moments in which, even in the midst of chaotic noise, you will begin to hear my symphony playing; moments of meaning when you will find yourself on a mountain where the distant bits and pieces come together in the worthwhileness of the whole.

“The abundant goodness of the moment of meaning will be a crisis for you, though it may not seem so.  For then you must decide whether you will, in forgetful pride, grasp the moment to yourself as though it were your own autonomous possession or whether you will simply open yourself to the moment, receiving it in grateful humility as a gift, remembering the Giver and sharing the abundance of your blessing with others in need.

“I will to give you paradise.  But you will only become finally ready for paradise when you have fully learned how to live in Heaven and not wreck it through the self-surging of ungrateful pride.  When you are exalted with abundant goodness, do not forget to remember, remember who you are, remember Who I am, and remember your neighbor in need.

“Remember my Son who took upon Himself the life of the Servant and, though He is exalted now, remains the Servant still.  His early life was not lived upon the smooth plateau of high abundance.  Jesus also suffered and you will suffer too.  Do not ask yourself whether you deserve to suffer.  That is not the point.

“Jesus did not deserve to suffer.  But He suffered and was cast down, and you will also suffer and be cast down.  Only when you have learned how to be grateful in memory and hope, even in Hell, will you be fully able to be steadfastly grateful in Heaven.

“In the mystery of my working with you, I must sometimes appear cruel in order to be kind.  I will give you a foretaste of Heaven.  I must also place in your mouth a foretaste of Hell.  For wherever my gifts and I, the Giver, are not received through grateful faith and shared through grateful love: There is Hell.  Only when you have learned, even in Hell, to be grateful still in memory and hope, will you be fully able to be steadfastly grateful in Heaven.

“I will not drop you all the way down to the bottom of the abyss of Hell—though you may think I have.  Only One has been to the bottom depths.  And He has gone through the ultimate extremity of suffering and has conquered that ultimate temptation, so that none other need ever go through the ultimate agony.

“But as you must be tried through joy, so also you must be tried through agony.  You will awake on some morrow to find that you no longer find me.  Instead of fulfillment, there will be a void.  Instead of my Presence, there will be my absence.  From my side, I shall still be present with you.  But you will not perceive our relation that way.  You will perceive my Absence.  That will be a crisis of temptation, and you will have a choice to make.

“If you choose wrongly, that will delay the business to be transacted between us.  But, even so, your choice will not be the last word between us.  For your sake, I must have the last word, for I am the first and last Word for your sake and for all.  If you choose rightly, that will facilitate matters between us, speeding up the process of perfecting your faith and purifying your love.  For I am like a refiner’s fire.

“The fire is the fire of my holy love.  That will not be pleasant for you.  But it will be worth it.  For I am Holy, in a way you cannot now understand, and the last distortion of unlove must finally yield.  I sovereignly will to give you, and all, eternal life.  But the eternal life I will to give you can only be blessedness and joy for you when you are utterly perfected in unswervingly grateful faith, love, trust, obedience, and worship.

“If in the darkness, when you are all alone, and I am gone, and there is only anguish and forsakenness, you will not let me go, but continue to wrestle with my impalpable Presence even in my Absence; if you steadfastly insist upon remembering our former communion; if you just go on loving me when you cannot have me and loving your fellow sufferers when you cannot sense my compassion; if you go on stubbornly worshiping me in the night when there is no light to behold my face; if you say, ‘Though I have the world and have not Thee, I have nothing, yet if I have nothing in the world and still have Thee, I have all’: Then, having been willing to learn what it means to be crucified with my Messiah, you shall learn also what it means to be raised with Him, for he is the Pioneer and Perfector of faith whose victory was once-for-all perfected through suffering and temptation.

“For I know you.  I created you.  I am creating you.  I know all your sufferings.  I have always known them.  Beyond your understanding, I have always shared them.  I also know all the little tricks by which you try to hide the ugliness you have made of your life, from yourself and others.  But you are beautiful.  You are beautiful more deeply within than you can see.  You are beautiful because you yourself, in the unique person that only you are, reflect already something of the beauty of my holiness in a way which shall never end.

“You are beautiful also because I, and I alone, see the beauty you shall become.  Through the transforming power of my love, you shall become perfectly beautiful.”