Waiting for Willing

“Hallelujah! … Hallelujah! …” My soul filled and my heart thrilled to the strains of “The Messiah” as I stood in the Loma Linda University Church. Only one week ago we were watching the breaking news of the Sandy Hook massacre, and yesterday some were thinking of winter solstice, the end of the Mayan calendar, and the much-joked-about end of the world. At this moment I marveled at the glory of the good God we worship with the best of our art and at least a piece of our heart.

“Oh, Lord! Can’t you just end this degenerate world and gather us unto Yourself?!” I silently cried.

In my mind’s eye I could see us all caught up together with Him, and in a flash I got an answer as to why that doesn’t happen. The filth, darkness, and pain are infused in us. We would take them with us. God can’t scoop up a handful of humanity without having it drip with the sting and the ache that we long to escape. We don’t need to escape the planet; we need to escape us.

When I lived on an island off the Olympic Peninsula, a visiting preacher said, “This is so beautiful; just remove the sin and it would be paradise.” Since then I have lived in many places of which the same statement could be made. But in every place I’ve lived, and as the headlines will confirm, we have our own way of adding injury, insult, and injustice.

Could God be waiting for a people who have attained the perfection needed for entry into the New Earth? I doubt we understand the fullness of “perfection” as it is known to God. And I doubt we have either the strength or the situation to attain it. But I do believe we have to be willing to let Him mess around in our lives. It has to happen sometime. If we can go from pond slime to sublime without any effort on our part—if it all depends on God—then He has “some ‘splainin’ to do” for the 2,000-year delay.

But as I listened to the rapturous music and thought of my kids, my friends, my enemies, and my own sorry carcass, I was grateful that God is today accepting all who say “Take me, break me, remake me.” If He threw us right now into eternity, it would be like “throwing us under the bus.” We are not ready for a perfect world.

Isaiah said that our salvation lies in our ability to repent and rest (30:15). We regret how we are, and we rest in His work to change us. We don’t rest from obedience or cooperation, we rest from our resistance to His meddling. We become willing, and He begins to remake our appetites, our attitudes, and our attachments… just as far as we allow Him to go.

Today we (and those we worry about) still have the opportunity to let Him work heaven into our lives. “Hallelujah!”