(To gain a further understanding of the meditation that follows, a reading of the indicated scriptures would be most helpful. In addition, the Editorial Notes at the end of this post may provide further understanding)

Joshua 5: 9 – 12
Luke 15: 11 – 32
It is easy enough for humans to get trapped in the labyrinth of life, and then spend the remainder of their days decrying the seeming futility of it all. But suppose there is no such thing as a useless experience for any human on this earth – no lost good, no forgotten hope! What if a sojourn in the labyrinth is, after all, the highway to the kingdom of success and incredible fulfillment!
The Story of Joshua referenced above makes us aware of forces that batter the lives of the ancient Hebrews. Lost in the ‘slave pens’ of the Delta for generations, God’s chosen race is free at last. But that is not the end of the labyrinth. A forty-year trek through a pitiless, scorching desert is just beginning.
Is there a Divinity behind all that? Is there a purpose behind the wailing and the crying? How can any of those experiences be shaping a destiny? Forty years in the scorching desert, enduring the blistering scouring of driving sand – while still trying to keep alive a vision of a new place to call home – seems far beyond the most rudimentary understanding of fairness or decency. From the desert’s red-hot crucible of experience, individuals emerge reshaped into a community.

Let it never be forgotten, that all through these formative years a Divinity is shaping their destiny. Every day, in one corner of the scene or another, the Hand of God is in evidence: wiping the tears of a child, giving a song of victory to some over-laden soul, or laying ‘Bread from Heaven’ at the doorstep of some hungry family. Above all else, Divinity is the one thing needed to make sure that “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” God is keeping them alive for an end that He alone can see. Apart from those momentary glimpses of God, they are destined to succumb to the tortures of futility. This truth has even further application.

The world’s pre-eminent dramatist, William Shakespeare, creates his famous character Hamlet as one hopelessly lost in the maze of belittling and disgusting behavior. He proceeds through his swiftly moving years –  sometimes pensive, but never committed; often hot-headed, but never serene. Then one day there is a moment of startling profundity. Hamlet utters an immortal truth!
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”
(Act 5, Scene 2)

Hamlet is acknowledging that there are many things out of his control and that in the end, it is God who will determine our destinies. Even though the rough-hewn years of Hamlet’s life are self-appointed, this can never nullify the abiding fact: there is a Divinity that shapes life – Hamlet’s, and ours too.

Again, it is a fact of divinity shaping lives that provides the impetus for the telling of one of the greatest love stories ever told. This story, commonly known as “The Story Of The Prodigal Son”, is told by Jesus, the Master of Life. The younger of two sons in their father’s employ grows restless and responds to a call for adventure and unfettered freedom. He takes every step, in his mind, to ensure that this farewell will be forever. He takes everything he owns, and everything that the future and his father’s love might yet provide, and heads into the twilight.

The gaping entry into the labyrinth is always deceptive. Friends are waiting to introduce him to all kinds of new adventures. Away the young man goes, dancing his merry way. Away from home, away from decency, away from respectability. He is so inebriated with all “the good times,” that he doesn’t notice how narrow and restricting the maze is becoming. Soon there is barely room for one to travel alone, all alone. It is at that precise moment, Jesus tells us : He came to himself, and said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have enough bread, and to spare, and here I am dying from hunger. I will arise and go to my Father.’ There is divinity, shaping a life that was self-inflicted with rough-hewn experiences. For what purpose did Divinity shape the young lad’s decision processes? What is the purpose of reshaping his life, or any life? It has everything to do with destiny. That destiny is to finally know the Love of God that transforms every life into a thing of extreme beauty. In the service for the Lord that follows, even the scars from the rough-hewn wounds will speak eloquently of the Divinity that shapes our lives.

“With mercy and with judgment
My web of time He wove,
And aye the tears of sorrow
Were lustered by His Love;
I’ll bless the hand that guided,
I’ll bless the heart that planned,
When throned where glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s Land.

O Christ, He is the fountain,
The deep, sweet well of love!
The streams on earth I’ve tasted
More deep I’ll drink above:
There to an ocean fullness
His mercy doth expand,
And glory, glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s  land.” Amen.

Prayer To Follow This Meditation

Open my eyes today that I may see You
In all Your Glory,
my ears that I may hear You, offering Love to replace malignant hate,
my mouth that I may speak from the casket of my heart where You have stored the treasures
of Your Love and Your Peace!

You are providing the way out of this labyrinth that is tearing apart this severely wounded world. Give us the courage to arise and come back to You. With humility may we sit at Your Table and receive from Your Hand our daily bread, thereby rejecting the offer to select sustenance from the contaminated menu of this world. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.

Hymn :          Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us

 

https://youtu.be/JAve_-XMoMY

 

Editorial Notes
1. The Holy Bible. Here and throughout this discourse, the quotes from Scripture are from The New International Translation Of Scripture, NIV.
2.William Shakespeare. In The Tragedy Of Hamlet Prince Of Denmark. Act 5, Scene 2
ww.w3.org/People/maxf/XSLideMaker/hamlet.pdf

3.  “Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us”

4. Photo:     ‘The Sea’  Taken in Brigus, Newfoundland

( To gain a complete understanding of the meditation that follows, a reading of the indicated scriptures will be most helpful)

Job 42: 1 – 6
Mark 12: 41 – 44

“Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, ‘I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on.’ Mark 12:43

What in the world was she thinking? What has taken her rational faculties hostage? What is it in human nature that makes some willing to sacrifice everything, even life itself?
To satisfy this inquiry, it will require more than anthropological research. Nor will a careful review of political ideology provide an incisive reason for the self-sacrificing action of any kind. However, our present inquiry into the behavior of this particular individual requires a survey from a higher elevation than anything that is of human understanding alone. It is, after all, the Master of Life who acclaims her action in giving away everything, even though this action may be perceived as detrimental to her future well being. Will there come a time, perhaps, as early as her next meal time, when she may well regret her decision?
This choice, according to Jesus, is undertaken to satisfy the urgency of her soul to contribute to the Temple Treasury.
Consider the dynamic in any person, that presents itself as being more important than the preservation of physical life. In that endeavor, it is not forbidden to us to listen at the door of this particular person’s life, to learn the secret of what is within her soul. To accomplish this, we will have to supplement the few facts recorded about her, with the use of our imaginations, upon which we implore the guidance of God’s Spirit.
It will be helpful for our present discussion to create a name for this Jewish lady, so from here on she shall be known to us as Elizabeth. The Hebrew name Elizabeth means “My God Is Bountiful.”  Even a cursory glance at the brief story lends itself to a conclusion that this is an appropriate name for her.

Elizabeth may well be one of those who reflects William Wordsworth’s description of newborns coming into this world, trailing the evidence of Heaven’s glory:

“The Soul that rises with us, our
life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of Glory do we come
From God, who is our Home.” (2)

However, unlike the newborns described by Wordsworth, who too soon lose the suggestion of Heaven’s likeness, Elizabeth is destined to reflect that quality throughout adulthood. Whether it is a natal characteristic of Elizabeth, or something born out of necessity to deal with life’s hard knocks, Elizabeth owns a unique and special relationship with God. So authentically beautiful is that attitude towards God that Jesus, the Master of Life, identifies it as a liberal investment of Heaven’s riches. It is evident that this lady proves every day that her God is bountiful! She can proudly claim her ancestry with David, the Psalm writer, who understood life in this way: “In the shelter of Your Presence, God, You hide me.” ( Psalm 31: 21).

The loneliness and the devastating pain of loss have left their scars upon her. Ask her whose hands are even now applying the balm required for slow-healing wounds. Scanty meals and insufficient resources are her constant companions. But not a worry for her, mind you, rather they are daily conversation pieces between her and the unseen Guest at every table. Elizabeth could never allow her inner life, for any reason, to sever ties with the personal love of God.

“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, neither height nor depth, will separate her from the love of God.”
( Romans 8: 39).

Be assured that Elizabeth would never, in a thousand years, permit the slightest semblance of the attitude of her critics to come anywhere near her! That soulless rationality was a complete anathema to her! No dawn ever brought a need severe enough, and no twilight could bring unrest disturbing enough, for her to look anywhere but within the fortress of her soul, where her Bountiful God was faithfully on guard.

Do you suppose the soulless rationality of onlookers prompts Jesus’ comparison of the value of Elizabeth’s gift to all the others made that day? An inner life severed from the personal love of God is necessarily impersonal, legalistic, and abstract. A religion that becomes purely rationalistic becomes hostile to life. A soulless rationality will never inspire one soul to discover “the love so amazing so divine, that demands the soul, the life, the all.”

Present circumstances, in many ways, suggest that Western Christianity is falling into the shadows of this world’s eclipse. Now is the time for all those who preserve the glory of Heaven in their lives, to speak unabashedly of the same.
Let them daily live by their soul’s conviction that the greatest response they can make to the world’s brokenness and sorrow is to offer the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer To Follow This Meditation
Father, Job was confident that he knew everything possible to know about You. He listened to the voices of earthly wisdom expounding popular views of eternal things. He listened to soothsayers propound their personal conclusions about the way the human race should be. And Father, Job was confused!
But yet, we still have not learned the one essential lesson, that Job did in the end! It is not what all others have to say about God and eternal things that matter most! It is what one sees when he looks inside himself. This experience may well produce the vision of God heaping blessings upon one from His abundant store. Mere rational thoughts about God fall silent then, as Job’s did, and in their stead we will cry out: “I heard about You with the hearing of my ears, but now I have seen You with my own eyes.” (Job 42: 5)
Amen, So let it be.

Footnotes
1. Scripture references in this text are from the
NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV of The
Holy Bible.
2. William Wordsworth. In INTIMATIONS OF
IMMORTALITY. Section v in “IMMORTAL
POEMS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE”.
Edited by Oscar Williams. First printing
July 1952.