The day poured itself in misty grey plumes over the beautifully minded man; a scholar of sorts, who pushed out on the plain to give in to its fading dusk. Desperately seeking escape from the unforgiving voices that haunted his rearing. Moving in waves one foot over the next, crashing and spilling to his knees, an ocean of earth yielded him into the cool mud. Whispering cackles and grunts from distant flocks, the earth is made of sheep and the wet grass they feed on. Sleep once an enemy, now the lover that jails him, locks his sad eyes closed against the watery soil. A shallow canyon of breath flexes the words from his lips “Oh lord………What do you want?
He dreams of a courtship with death, but unrequited, the rhythms of life hold him still. Words collide and caress “stay silent” as they lyrically fill his room. One lamb raises up from the dirty patch and speaks softly to him after pondering his question
The lamb ponders….
Ah…The question we learn to ask only after we’ve failed to clearly understand what we need from Him.
Hmmm…..Does he ask because he really believes he is divine enough to understand God’s answer? Did God not make him is his own image? Yes…..divine enough to desire the answer, but perhaps not enough to know the answer until he is reborn.
Reply of the lamb…..Be reborn………
The lamb turns away as the scholar is awakened by his gentle nudge. The scholar replies……
Do you mean…….confess and be baptized? The scholar asks…..
These things I’ve long since done.
The lamb ponders silently to himself………Is the answer within the question itself? What does his desire for the answer say about the answer? Perhaps confession is conception, baptism is labor, and the spirit the physician. What then is born? Perhaps it is the realization that he IS what God made him to be.
Second reply of the lamb…… Be what God Made you to be…….
The lamb now pleased with his answer steps further toward a tunneled horizon.
The shivering scholar now fully awake reaches into the night air. Wait…..How can I be what He made me to be? The scholar asks…..
The lamb grows smaller as he mines for his answer…………
Can the answer be found in the question? Doesn’t the answer exist somewhere? Maybe the answer can only exist with giving up on the question. Isn’t forgetting the question the difficult part that will inevitably produce an answer? What if we were to forget the question itself and act? What if we moved for the sake of our ability to move? We can go forward, so we should…..knowing that the answer to what we can be, will not be decided by us. If I am created by God then he must know what I can be. Isn’t that enough? Maybe the question should be posed to God but then left alone for him to answer not to us, but for us, only to Himself.
Third reply of the lamb…….. Trust in earnest!
The lamb is leaning toward his flock but now standing still in the distance as the scholar begs for one last question to be answered.
Can we say then…..that Faith is the only answer to our existence and purpose? Is there more? Asks the scholar………
The lamb gives one last thought to how he will answer…….
Perhaps in it all, we are simply here to stay motivated by the selfish anticipation of an answer, but to simply go forward knowing that He is using us and find our ultimate satisfaction in that.
Conclusion of the lamb to the scholar……….Go!
The Scholar astonished by what the lamb says thinks silently to himself as he falls back to the ground in a searching twitch……We exist because God made us for Him. He plainly says that we are to do his will. He plainly tells us what his will is.
Perhaps all that we need to do is stop asking the question and give Him our answer. Jesus didn’t tell Peter how to walk on the water…….he simply said COME!….and Peter did. It was only when peter asked the next question (HOW?) that he sank.
I understand! Replied the scholar….I understand! He leaps into his full homeward stance…….
I will stop asking God:
What I am and who I am,
why I’m here and what I’m to do.
The lamb echoes one last reply to the scholar before blending back into a thousand others
Just GO! He will do the rest……………