Moment to Moment

[HKHaugan]

When all moments become one.
Actually that’s what we are looking forward to, when moments blend into one continuous moment where experience has no lines, limits, layers or location. Distinctions, divisions, differences disintegrate into one flowing movement. This world is about each moment, a half-life edging toward a whole life. That which is to come, the life to come, the face of eternity, is total freedom from the boundaries of our self-consciousness aloneness.

In this world we count the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the days, the months and the years. While we lose no consciousness of self it is the realization that we have arrived in the presence of what the individual self was created for, unbridled, unrestricted, unfettered free relationships that are fulfilled, that is filled full, completed, a finished design.

There even the concept of time is no more. There is where knowledge is total, meaning understood, purpose cleared and evil, sin, struggle, tears, sorrow, death, fear, emptiness, aloneness, depression, insecurity are not only gone, they are forgotten, erased, thrown into ‘never again.’ There uniqueness replaces difference and separation vanishes into appreciation. There the point of faith has been reached and complete openness and full awareness carries into a new level of faith.

What has been described in these first three paragraphs is a suggested expectation of the Kingdom of Heaven. But how do we substantiate this speculation? The Bible is centered in three summations of human existence and its origins, spiritual, personal and interpersonal. Centered in the person of Jesus we glean from His nature and observations that all of Creation is spiritual, created by a spiritual God who has designed every detail to fit a purposeful pattern and to serve His spiritual purposes. David grasped a piece of this reality in Psalm 8:1-9,

“LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory
in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

The valley of longing in our deepest needs vanishes to become a plateau of love scanning a forever scope and forward, beyond, moving light and cascading relational inspiration blends into one anthem of praise to Him who died to that life and rose to this life to bring us there. The memory of pain and suffering, of despair and anxiety, of remorse and regret, of wishes dashed and desires denied, swept instantaneously into nothingness. All of this, every bit of what we know in this fallen and broken world, gone in the twinkling of an eye, as though an artist had brushed the canvas with a stroke of new color, the old gone and the original intention satisfied.
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away (Rev.21:1-4).”
This reality is all wrapped up in the risen Jesus who is ever present. He was before Creation, through Him it came into being. When it ends it ends in Him and we will be risen into and with Him. He is present with us now. He is our present awareness. He is the focal point for everything, the hour glass through which the sands of His understanding inform us. “I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes---I, and not another. How my heart yearns for Him (Job 19:25-27).”
Yes, all of this is the promise when we arrive home, the awakening reserved for us in the presence of Jesus where we see the Father as Jesus sees Him and the Holy Spirit surrounds us with the “Now Moment” for which we were created, “i” with the “I AM” who has made me to be an “I” growing in Him forever. That which we could only guess at no longer a guess but real and what was once just a hope is total absorption into love beyond imagination. There is complete joy in the grace of acceptance and the acceptance of grace and the more that comes when we find ourselves among the myriads who welcome us into this realm of increasing light and deliverance. We revel in their completion and sharing is never ending. The release into personal and interpersonal awareness is the beyond we can only place in a vision of what we know is yet to be completed. In John 10 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep (vs.7)…I am the gate, whoever enters through me will be saved (vs.9)…”I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (vs.11)…I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me---just as the Father knows me and I know the Father---and I lay down my life for the sheep (vs.14-15).”

Switch now from the promise to the present.

This world we are born into gives nothing like that for which we were intended. Without the Lord God this world is an end in itself with nothing to look forward to after it’s all over but a lonely ‘I’. What we are given to start with is self-centered development whose only promise is a progressive death---I, idea, ideal and idol. Note how each one begins with I. There is I, me, the ideas I embrace to build my own worldview, the idealism I rationalize to justify my personal morality and the idol of success that I am comfortable with. It is a downward spiral into eternal aloneness dressed in “I”. How does that happen?

Watch the sequence carefully.

God created each of us to be an I in His image in a relationship with Him (note the beginning of the word image starting with an I). His image is a good “I”. It is a spiritual and relational “I”. But when sin entered the world God was dismissed and the “I” in mankind left out the Creator becoming a small “i”, its own god. But the image remained which meant that man still had a mind, heart and spirit but they were separated from Him (Genesis 3). From this point on every person chose to take God’s I and separate God’s ideas from God. Then they made up their own ideas which became their ideals which in turn became their idols and this is what they worshiped, gods of their own making, which was and is idolatry. Idolatry is the sin of sins that puts our ‘i’ above God’s intended “I”. It was a simple decline which we have inherited across time, from I to idea to ideal to idolatry, thus a lonely “i”.

Take an idea from God’s treasury, redefine it to make it an ideal and it becomes an idol of our own making. For look what has happened to love. There is the perfect love of God but take the word love, separate it from God, define it in order to be in control of it and it degenerates into the mistaken idea that we can ‘make love.’ See what I mean? Passion becomes a physical expedition into pleasure. Look at inclusive as well and see what we have done to it. From God who includes ‘all people’ in the love of Jesus (John 3:16) it has descended instead to man changing its meaning to ‘all behavior.’ When we separate ourselves from God self-justification becomes the order of the day. We can justify anything we want to which is the essence of sin and its product, moral anarchy. For liberal religionists, compromise of every God ordained principle is acceptable because they use His name while defying His copyright.

We have to shift from that orientation to the one Jesus gives us. If we look at His structure it begins with God and His Word; worship, discipleship, ministry and mission and in that order. We worship Him, we learn about Him, we minister to one another for Him and we bring others to Him. We recognize the limitation sin places on our judgment, turn it over to the Lord, His forgiveness cancels its power and His Holy Spirit guides us. He redeems our perception our sensitivity and our awareness to be consciously personal, interpersonal and spiritual. He restores our belief, our trust and our faith to be Jesus-conscious. This means character built like His with His direction is our concentrated collective moments becoming one experience of the risen Lord’s presence.

Time begins to take a back seat as the Holy Spirit directs our every next moment. Time becomes blending one moment into the next until they merge. Heaven is that merger. This is the why of worship. Instead of worrying about the length of a service, we experience the Lord in music, preaching, prayer and sharing. Instead of doing ‘church work’, helping move chairs and joining committees, we discover our spiritual gifts and ministry to spiritual brothers and sisters. Loving others replaces time-consciousness. Instead of enjoying the safety of like-minded social survivors we look for opportunities to share the Lord with others outside the Body of Christ who now, because of Jesus, are viewed as images of God needing a personal relationship with Him.

Our desire is to join Him where He is as opposed to Him joining us where we are. The more we are open to being spiritualized, the more our attitude becomes like that of Jesus, an attitude that moves our heart’s readiness to recognize the Kingdom of God right there in front of us. Like when we feel close to the meaning of Jesus’ parables when they are read and taught. We know His presence. It’s the realization that Jesus is waiting for us at the super market, at the checkout counter, in a restaurant, in the face of a lonely person, while we are on the way to our next appointment, when our kids ask us questions when we are most tired and where and when the unexpected happens. Each moment is a character builder blending us into our final moment in Him.