The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Personal"
Huck Finn and his friend Jim lay on their backs as they journeyed down the Mississippi River, gazing at the the stars and wondering "whether they was made or only just happened." Jim opted for the former, but Huck for the latter because "it would have taken too long to make so many."
Jim was right, of course. "He made the stars also" (Genesis 1:16). Huck would have been even more flummoxed had he known the Creator of all things not only made the vast company of celestial bodies by immeasurable power, but also in terms so personal that He named every star.
"He telleth the number of the stars; He calleth them all by their names" (Psalm 147:4).
God has forever existed in the most personal terms imaginable, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have related to one another in a love so infinite and yet so imminent that Three exist as One (yet another reality that would doubtless bewildered Huck). We must view Him in this way because we will never otherwise know the reality of love as defined by Scripture.
"And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you" (I Thessalonians 3:12).
"One toward another." Personal. Our Lord made us for living relationship and fellowship, first with Himself, and then with others. Consider that to redeem us from our sins, God took upon Himself our humanity in the second Person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). He did not decree our hope of salvation from a Heavenly vantage point. His righteousness would not have allowed for that. Someone like us had to die for our sins to make atonement for them. Someone like us. The Lord Jesus had to live among us, to move among us, to relate to us. He had to touch and be touched by us. He had to be "tempted like as we are" (Hebrews 4:15). Finally, He had to die like as we die, albeit in the most extreme circumstances of sorrow, pain, bewilderment, and agony. How personal is that? Thereby, His prayer was answered for us, that we would enter into the glory of love He and His Father had forever known by the Holy Spirit entering into the hearts of all who believe.
"And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them" (John 17:26).
"The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us" (John 5:5).
We do well to look up at the stars and join Jim in knowing Somebody made them. We can also understand and even share in Huck's bewilderment that so many stars could have been made by One. Far more, however, let us fall to our faces in wonder that this One exists as the most personal of beings, and that He desires the most personal fellowship with our hearts. He made the stars and He calls them by name. He made us also, and calls us by name. In this holy light, a day approaches when God's desire to be personal with us will result in a most mysterious, a most wonderful, and a most personal gift given to all who trust in His saving grace through the Lord Jesus…
"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it."
(Revelation 2:17)
Weekly Memory Verse
Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
(John 4:14).
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