Ensign: Saint Valentine And The Constant Invitation

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3

AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 14 February 2014

[My long time readers may recognize this as the Ensign from last year – for February 15, 2013 to be precise. And so it is. This actually BEING Valentine's Day today and not the day after, I was re-reading this piece and something about it … just clicked, so I wanted to share it with you. And for those of you who look for new material from me, don't worry, it will come (if the Lord does not tarry) starting next week. Right now I'm looking at the similarities of the stories of Superman and Ruth … anyway, Happy Valentine's Day! David]

“Kazak bites,” Mrs. Rumfoord had said in her invitation, “so please be punctual.”

So does Valentine's Day. Martha my wife made an interesting observation Wednesday night when she picked up V-Day gifts for me and our kids; women had apparently already done most of their shopping because the cards for husbands were nearly picked clean while the cards for wives were nearly all in place! Now to defend the guys, of whom I am one, who don't shop for the Valentine's or any lovey-touchy-feely stuff until the last minute or that we have to … it's not that we don't care, it's that we have different priorities. Showing you we love you by contributing to the housework, working to keep a roof over your heads, and providing the protection we value more sometimes – not all the time – than saying the words, or buying the candy, or sparkling the jewels.

Constant smiled at that – the warning to be punctual. To be punctual meant to exist as a point, meant that as well as to arrive somewhere on time. Constant existed as a point – could not imagine what it would be like to exist in any other way.

Yesterday I was in a local bookstore and had a few minutes in their used book section (Minot's Main Street Books, http://mainstbooks.indiebound.com/) and one of the books I picked up was a novel called The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I hadn't read for a few years that I'm excerpting here. What is it like to exist any other way – for you physics buffs, I expect “particle” would be more accurate than “point” – than you are when we lack first-hand experience was a good springboard to get this week's Ensign off to a flying start. It was better than I had and, on this third day of Lent when one of my goals this season before Easter is to pray (and thereby get focused on God wants for me and through me more than what I want) more, perhaps more meaningful to you.

That was one of the things he was going to find out – what it was like to exist in any other way. Mrs. Rumfoord's husband existed in another way.

So St. Valentine, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jesus Christ walk into a bar … seriously, I can picture the Son of God doing that, and not just to make a joke. After all, wasn't one of the Pharisees' issues with Jesus that He spent time with publicans [tax collectors, not any more popular two thousand years ago than now] and sinners [well, everybody]? Jesus responds to them in Matthew 9:12 that it's not those who are whole who need a physician, but those who are sick. And recall Hosea's words – the “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” in verse thirteen was quoted from chapter six verse six of that prophet's book, and then Jesus adds that He's not calling the righteous (or the people who believe they are) but rather the sinners to repentance. This is love.

Winston Niles Rumfoord had run his private space ship right into the heart of an uncharted chrono-synclastic infundibulum two days out of Mars. Only his dog had been along. Now Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak existed as wave phenomena – apparently pulsing in a distorted spiral with its origin in the sun and its terminal in Betelgeuse.

Love is the constant invitation (another play on Sirens for the novel's main character's name is Malachi Constant) Jesus gives us, calling the sinners – those whose acts and thoughts have separated them from God, which again at some point includes you and me and everybody we've ever known – to repentance. But we first have to admit that WE ARE sinners, and if that is hard for you I empathize. It's hard for me. Even after confessing Jesus is Lord and believing in my heart God raised Him from the dead (paraphrasing Romans 10:9 here), I am saved. I don't lose my salvation or become un-saved when I sin, but the more mature I get the more I'll become, not necessarily more righteous, but more aware of God and His working in and all around me.

The earth [is] about to intercept that spiral.

Love,

David

P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager to action too! If you find that I’m not or you want me to get lost, just let me know – thank you!

Thank You, Lord, that we can come to you in prayer and that You provide for all our needs, even when we don’t know what they are. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence there and around the world.

Thank You, Lord, for everyone in leadership and service, both here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have and the promise of new life through You. I pray that we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.