#3 Kaleidescope

#3 Kaleidescope

“Jesus said ‘But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.’”[1]

I remember when I was young that my grandmother had a kaleidoscope, which looked like a telescope. It was a long tube, with a lens at one end and mirrors in the other. When you held it up to the light, the many bits of colored glass between the two ends reflected a myriad of bright colors and patterns. As you turned the far end, the broken bits of glass would fall and rearrange themselves, and produce an array of colorful patterns that could hold your attention for a long time. This was obviously before cell phones, iPads, computers, mainframes or even television! But when first produced in 1817, over 200,000 were sold in London and Paris within 3 months![2] (and illustration too).

To get the beauty of the experience, you must

1) look through the right end (to the right);

2) hold it up to the light;

3) turn the end of the scope;

4) watch the colors and patterns change;

It’s amazing how many different patterns and colors appear as you slowly turn it.

The Bible is a finite book that contains the infinite Word of God, just as Jesus incarnates all of God that we need to know about the Father’s love and grace for us and our salvation.

Often people remark that they just don’t understand the Bible, and I say that it’s just like a kaleidoscope:

1)     Look through the right end. In terms of a kaleidoscope, looking through the wrong end doesn’t produce much to look at. So when we read the Bible as an Answer Book for our particular problem or situation, we’re reading it the wrong way. We need to look at the God in the Bible, not our problems.

2)     You must hold it up to the light of the Holy Spirit to illuminate what’s inside. Many people may read the Bible, but not with an open heart and mind, or they just study it as history. (Thomas Jefferson cut all the miracles out of his Bible!) We need to let the Holy Spirit guide and direct our thoughts and reading and struggle with what we yet don’t understand. That’s why Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would guide us into all truth.

3)      You must turn it. Keep reading scripture day by day, and as life turns around through good and bad, you see more and new meaning in the scripture and your life. The bits and pieces of our lives fall together in new patterns and meanings. Many times I’ve discovered new meanings in Bible passages that I’ve read before, but because of experiences I have had since I last read the passage, I am given new or fresh insights.

4)      Broken pieces. And the Bible is made up of stories of broken people, broken promises, broken lives, broken communities, and about God’s care for all the world - to the Jews first and then to the nations. “Rejoice, you nations, with his people…”[3]  In holy scripture we see HIS story (history) unfold from Genesis to Revelation.

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[1] John 16:13 NIV

[2] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope

[3] Deut 32:43, Rom 15:10

#2 Living Stones: It Hurts to be Alive(2)

Living Stones: It Hurts to be Alive(2)[1]

“In building the temple, only blocks dressed at the quarry were used, and no hammer, chisel or any other iron tool was heard at the temple site while it was being built.” I Kings 6:7

“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house …“ I Peter 2:5

When King Solomon built the temple, he used huge stones that had been shaped at the quarry so that no noise or sound would be made at the temple building site when the temple was built. The apostle Peter says that we are to come to Him as living stones to be fit into the temple of God, a spiritual house. It occurred to me that when Christ comes into our lives, he must chisel and shape us, because we aren’t in perfect shape to fit into His body. I can think of three important points from this analogy.

1.      We are a work in progress. Although Christ accepts us as we are, we are yet to be conformed to His image[2]. Although we have been freed from the penalty of sin, and given the ability to resist the power of sin, we still must deal with the presence of sin. We need daily confession and prayer, strong fellowship, and Bible reading to bring us to perfection. Remember that it took seven years for Solomon to build the temple[3] – we aren’t going to be rebuilt in an instant either. It takes time to reform us – to change bad habits that have accumulated over a lifetime. And God is not only working on me, but countless others, to fit together into the living temple of God.

2.      It hurts to be alive. God must use His chisel on us, to take away the rough spots in our lives that rub God and others the wrong way, and He does it, not when we are “deadened” by sin, but when we are truly alive, having been born again in Christ. Why couldn’t He have perfected us when we were deadened? Then it wouldn’t hurt so much to be reshaped. It hurts our pride to be corrected, to have to admit our faults, or to ask forgiveness from others. And things that didn’t bother us when we were dead, now seem to matter more to a soul alive with God’s presence. God works on us, tapping off our resentments, knocking away grudges, filling in disappointments, so that we become smoother, gentler, and fit for the Body of Christ.

3.      Our personal quarry. God works on us in His personal quarry. As the old Negro spiritual says: “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, nobody knows but Jesus.”[4] Only God truly understands what we go through and we work on these difficulties in private with Him, crying when no one hears us. We wrestle in the “silent gymnasium” of prayer, just as Jacob wrestled with God[5]. God doesn’t want us parading our problems in front of everyone, day after day, but instead He wants us to depend upon Him daily – to go into our closet and pray. I think this is some of what Jesus meant in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen.[6]” The image of being built into a temple means we don’t want to rub other stones the wrong way, or grind at each other’s nerves, and or get pounded into place.

So God works on us daily, in our quiet times with Him, so that at His glorious coming, we each will fit perfectly into place into the body of Christ, the family of God, if we but yield to Him and allow Him to work on us.

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[1] Rick Hesse is a Professor Emeritus of Decision Sciences at Pepperdine University and teaches Bible study classes. ©Azel Publishing.

[2] Romans 8:29

[3] I Kings 6:38b

[4] Lyrics – Sam Cook from old negro spiritual

[5] Genesis 32:24-32

[6] Matthew 6:6