Brian’s Perspective - Old Blog

This is my room.  Years ago I entered and chose to stay in this hallowed space.  It is small–dimly lit, quiet, and peaceful, but I need no other space.  The rooms only amenities are a simple wooden table with a simple wooden chair.  On the table rests a single book, always inviting me to return to its precious pages.  It is worn and tattered, covered with the tears I have cried over it, its margins adorned with my thoughts and insights.  Each page treasures a memory, a realization about who I am, what I must become.  I can never see myself leaving this room because here I have found life.

I have discovered many things about myself in this room.  I learned that I was created by God and made to live in fellowship with Him.  I learned that because of my own selfishness, I replaced God’s desire for my life with my own desires; I turned my back on God and grew estranged from him–did I ever have a chance?  But the greatest thing I learned is that God loves me and made a way for He and I to have fellowship again.  So I have given myself over to knowing this book, the book of God’s revealing.  They are for me Holy Scripture, for they tell me about me, about God, and about so many things.  I love them.

Today, sitting in my simple chair, pulled up close to my simple table, I am reading John 5.

After a while I look up and before me is a door rarely seen, yet I now know it has been there all along.  There is the faintest sound of knocking on the other side.  I am puzzled.  All that I believe I have ever needed is in this room, yet there is within me this inexplicable desire, as though I am being compelled by an omnipotent force, to rise and to walk to that door and to see who it is that knocks.  My eyes return to my reading, but my ears and my heart and my mind can no longer ignore the knocks, longing to listen, to touch, to know the knocker of those knocks, no matter how softly the tapper taps.

I stand.  Fear pushes me down, begging me to return to my simple chair, but a greater anticipation urges me to go to the door.  Nearing the door, my heart warms, something stirring within me which I have never felt in all of my life.  I open the door and there is Jesus! The warmth and brightness of where he is rushes into my little room and fills it, shattering the dimness and bringing true light to my tired eyes.  Jesus’ smiling eyes meet my own and He says as only a beloved friend can say,

You search the scriptures because you think that in them there is eternal life; yet it is they that point to me, but you refuse to come to me so you might have life. (John 5:39-40)

How can this be?  All that I have ever needed or wanted has been right here, in this little book; or so I thought.   Jesus says there is more.  Could there be more?  What is this life that Jesus wishes to give me?  I want so much to be where Jesus is.  To think that I could actually walk with Him instead of just knowing facts about Him.  I can barely breathe.

As Jesus stretches His hand out to help me over the threshold to a new, grander experience, I hesitate, looking back toward my simple room, with its simple table, its simple chair, and that beloved book.  There is a pang within me as I feel that a part of me is about to die; I am going to lose all that I have known.  That is when Jesus gently whispers, “Take it with you.”

I pick up the book and place it in the pocket close to my heart where it will always be.  Taking Jesus’ hand, I walk through the door without any desire to ever look back.

Now let’s get on with it.