Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, dear people.

It’s a pretty morning out there. Becki and I will take off on a little walk/jog excursion in a few minutes. Then I need to keep at this challenging project…hoping to be able to temporarily assemble the basic frame and apply the log wash treatment.

In the course of discussing the devotional this morning with Becki, she read to me a devotional she had read this morning by Max Lucado. The last line of his little composition is a brilliant profound piece of advice. It goes something like this: “This is worth remembering the next time you hear the silence of God.” That advice can certainly apply to the theme I address below.

Time to walk. Wish you could join us. Do you?

Blessings. And if you nurture A HEART AFTER GOD, you ARE blessed…beyond what your little thinker can even think.

Love, Dad/Ray

PS: This is very impulsive. On Jill’s birthday, I arbitrarily grabbed one of my old journals, and typed out the day’s entry for June 18, 1994, and sent it to her. Just for the fun of it, I’m going to include it here as an attachment if you feel up to one little glimpse into our non-typical past.

I run the risk of being a kind of broken record, but I’d like to lace into this statement the essential of A HEART AFTER GOD. I think it fits. Let’s see if you agree.

Jesus pauses before entering Jerusalem and appears overwhelmed with emotion in His overview of the city. Jesus wept. “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes” (19:42). One of the ideas I have here is this: If important things are hidden from the eyes of the closest disciples, how can we expect to see things with perfect clarity? Is it not possible that certain yet-to-be-revealed things are hidden from our eyes as well—for the time being?

Just before this pause in Jesus’ course it says that “the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen” (19:37). Get this—they were disciples. So did they really get it? Were they really understanding all that was transpiring? Nope. They had made some wrong assumptions, thinking “that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once” (19:11). Yes, they were caught up in the “Jesus movement.” They enjoyed the fellowship of the group and the excitement of beholding miracle after miracle. But there was still a lot of stuff HIDDEN FROM THEIR EYES. That fact is proven by the unfolding story. They just didn’t get it. But for those who were in possession of A HEART AFTER GOD, however, they made it through the surprises, setbacks, and disappointments just fine. Those who didn’t, didn’t.

I’m convinced that A HEART AFTER GOD is the essential foundation of an essential faith. It’s like the lowest common denominator of the Kingdom of God. It is this kind and quality of essential faith that supports us and carries us successfully through our own sojourn—even though we may not clearly foresee the future or even understand the full significance of the present. There are a lot of details still hidden from our own eyes. We still “see through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But A HEART AFTER GOD says—and even sings, “That’s quite OK—I know Who holds my hand.”