Can Lost Reverence Be Found?

Her rival, however, would provoke her bitterly to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb.  It happened year after year, as often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she would provoke her; so she wept and would not eat.  Then Elkanah her husband said to her, "Hannah, why do you weep and why do you not eat and why is your heart sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?"  Then Hannah rose after eating and drinking in Shiloh. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the temple of the LORD.  She, greatly distressed, prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly.  She made a vow and said, "O LORD of hosts, if You will indeed look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant, but will give Your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head."  (1 Samuel 1:6-11 NASB)

In my youth, I was taught reverence for the One my family worshiped.  It was taught in a thousand different ways, but I still remember it.  We spoke only in whispers in the sanctuary (and called it that).  We wore our best to church, better than we dressed anywhere else; not to impress others but to bring our best to our God.  We didn't miss church.  This tended to spread communicable diseases among the faithful church-goers, but we shared so much anyway, it didn't matter.

There were just things you did.  And there were just things you didn't do.  You did not question a leader, at least not as a child.  But we also did not direct our anger at God.  Ironically, it was understood that, as Master of all things, ultimately whatever bad thing happened to me was His fault.  Yet we were never to blame Him, at least out loud; or so it seemed.  The lesson being taught is actually one that is struggling to emerge again in modern congregations.  The lesson was that nothing bad that happens smudges the goodness and glory of my Master.

This lesson, lost in the rebellion against "organized religion", is one that needs to be renewed.  It's one among many, but it is one for which we pay dearly.  The loss of this lesson has permitted our society to dictate belief and practice to us in the place of Scripture.  This is evident in our disdain for authority.  When we teach that the Scriptural Deity can be yelled at and resented, and He's big enough to handle it, we degrade His holy goodness and glory.  We bring the One we cannot reach into our realm, and make Him one of us.

Jesus became one of us by His choice.  Our Maker reaches out to us.  He is unapproachable, unreachable, incomprehensible, and unknown by our own devices.  We can't reason Him into existence, we can't reliably demonstrate in controlled experiments one element of His character.  The best we can hope to achieve to to look at His handiwork and marvel at such magnificence and power.  Once there, we can then, with awe, approach the Scriptures; His record of His self-revelation to His human creatures.  And from there we can make ourselves available to His Spirit.  That is the best we can do.  Most of us don't even do that.

I believe that when I consider myself free to resent and be angry toward my Master, I deny the very first line of His Scripture, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  If He created it all, what right do I have to resent Him for anything?  That I know of His existence means He has revealed Himself to me.  The blessings I receive from Him could stop right there, and I still have more than I deserve and more of His attention than I warrant.  That He does not stop there multiplies shocking grace until I reach the cross where all my assumptions, presumptions, pride, reasoning, and self-righteousness fail, revealed as the refuse heap they are.  And destroyed as a modern American male, I stand before an empty tomb, myself empty of all that I call my own, where I crumple to the ground in worship.

The truth lost with the lesson of reverence is that my Master has assaulted and utterly destroyed the limits of my imagination, understanding, and comprehension so that I sometimes can't, or won't, see Him as He has revealed Himself.  Like He hid Moses in a rock so he would not die as he saw only a part of His glory, so I am only able to see a part of my Master.  But the part I see is so much more than anything I endure.  How can I resent the One having done so much for me?  How can Jesus, the cross and the empty tomb not be enough?  How is that possible?  Scripture is already more of a gracious gift than I can ever be worthy.  How can the message it contains not reduce the rest of me to mere heap of gratitude, gratitude I can never really express well enough?