*Posted by Kirk Spencer
Sometimes I feel like the Bible was written just for me. I know its crazy, but when its words speak to the very thing Im facing at that particular moment, I cant help it. There have even been times when, in desperation, I have opened its pages longing to hear from God and I am not disappointed.
It wasnt until I began to hang out with professional theologians that I discovered I was a mystic. I was reminded of my mysticism the other day standing in the foyer of a little Baptist church. My kids were in the sanctuary preparing for their piano recital and I was loitering in the sun-warmed foyer finishing my root beer and enjoying that distinctive, memory-inducing small Baptist Church aroma.
The room was empty except for a chair that propped open the door to the sanctuary and a sign on the wall that forbid food and drink in the sanctuary. There was also a large white desk, centered on the back wall, with a family-size Bible open on its stand. The pages were glowing in the sunlight and I found myself standing in front of them. Someone had opened it to Isaiah. In the upper left-hand corner was the famous chapter 53. So I sipped my root beer and began to read the well-known words.
As I read, I remembered the eunuch who read these same words while riding in his chariot on the desert road, making his way home to Ethiopia. Phillip used these very words to introduce this eunuch to saving faith in Jesus Christ and then baptized him there in some water they found along the way (Acts 8). Afterwards, the Bible says the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. And heres the mystical partif the eunuch was reading Isaiah 53 before he met the Lord, then what do you think he did when he got back into his Chariot?
I cannot imagine that he did anything else other than to keep reading54, 55, then to the words which begin Isaiah 56. I read them there in the sunlight of that small Baptist church. I didnt even have to turn a page. They were shinning there in the lower right-hand corner. The same words Im sure the eunuch read while still wet with baptismal water. And I cant help but imagine, in that time and place, the eunuch must have thought them mystical words written just for him:
For thus says the Lord,
To the eunuchs who keep My sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, to them I will give in My house and within My walls a memorial, and a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which will not be cut off. ~Isaiah 56:4-5
Though Gods Word has appeared in space and time, its power and application is not bound by space and time. God has dominion over both. I can imagine that as the eunuch was wondering about the timeliness of the words he was reading, Phillip was wondering about the spaceliness of being snatched away by the Spirit of the Lord (Acts 8:39).
Before God first spoke to this world it was dark, confused, and empty. And when we begin to believe that God no longer speaks, or we stop listening, the darkness and confusion and emptiness returns to our hearts and to our culture.
Dear Heavenly Father, may my life hang on Your every word. Please keep me from falling in love with my own words and the sound of my own voice. And dont let me get lost in the dark and confusing and empty words, and actions, that surround me on every side. Keep me faithful until the day I can hear Your voice and not just Your words.