21. Sons of Uri

Sons of Uri

And the call isn’t out there at all,

It’s inside me

It’s like the tide, always falling and rising

I will carry you here in my heart you’ll remind me

That come what may

I know the way

Moana

Some decades ago I took my despair into a beautiful place. Blossom formed a canopy over me, knotty branches hugged the sky above my head. I whispered to Jesus he had my yes, while the gypsy in me wrestled with the call to stay and wait. An old stone sundial on the floor marked out 28 years of my life into 4 groups of 7. At that time I was only 11 years in. I go back to that sundial now, 13 years later, thinking of all that transpired. Thinking of people and places woven into my heart in the journeying. The joy and pain accompanying any adventure of living well in the land. Right now, my soul is tilted towards wondering what the point was. I pause my litany of complaints and Jesus reminds me the offering was to him. He kisses my grumpy face and blesses the call inside me reminding me it’s not complicated. It is a call to be an offering worthy of the Lover, from the very breath He gives me. To imagine and create.  C.S. Lewis said his own awakening began with a baptism of his imagination (Surprised by Joy). Today at the sundial with Jesus I realise I need another awakening. I often do. I forget so easily. Baptise my imagination.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Hebrews 11:1.

Paul, my favourite mystic, wrote many words really familiar to me. So familiar I miss the stretch if I’m not careful. The evidence of things not seen. If they are not seen, they must exist in my imagination. If they exist in my imagination then according to this verse my faith can cause them to have substance. Substance. The imagined becomes visible. I wait. The wind caresses the blossom in the trees and it sounds like anticipation. I have a feeling I need to know more intimately the power we have to create and the authority we have when we dream. 

When Moana reconnects with her original identity as a Wayfinder she learns to read the skies measuring where she is going by where she has been.  Whenever I forget He takes me back to the foundations again. Whenever I go back, I see the foundations run deeper than I knew before. They are strengthened, and can take more weight through the revisiting. I stop trying to understand my journey. I unhook my imagination from the moorings of my understanding and float free on the tide of the Spirit. The current pulls me back to Genesis 1: a rebeginning:

Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness….

The Hebrew for image is: betzelmenu. It means likeness. It also means shadow. A shadow shows the shape of a thing. The closer the light is, the more detail is shown. God created us in the exact shape of Him.  Created in His shadow, which is also the place of His protection. His covering. A Poet wrote: 

He who dwells in the shadow of the most high will rest…. 

Ps 91

We can live there. In Hebrew the most high is Shaddai: the One who nurtures like a mother. Dwelling in the shadow of Shaddai I am cared for as I grow. My needs are met. The question forms in me: what does it look like to live as one who is mothered well. My needs met and knowing rest? In answer the Spirit directs the current of my imagination to Exodus 31:1-10: 

“Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of craftsmanship.” 

The name “Bezalel” means “in the shadow [protection] of God.” Bezelel lived in this place. All the creating that flowed out of him, as an artisan, came out of that likeness, nurture and closeness. He was filled with the Spirit of God, but also with skill, ability, and knowledge. For Bezalel being filled with the Spirit flowed into craftsmanship. His mandate was to fashion a mobile resting place for the presence of God. Maybe he was chosen because he knew how to dwell well. 

I love that Bezalel is the son of Uri, which means a son of light. It reminds me of the words spoken about Jesus in John ch 1: light-begotten not flesh-begotten. 

In him was light, and that light was the life of men.

(TMB)

We are created by an artisan. Ephesians 2:10 refers to you and I as God’s works of art.  We are also the dwelling place God lives in by His Spirit. We are the resting place for the presence of God that Bezalel was once anointed to create. We are also sons of Uri, sons of light, because the life we have flows from the light Jesus carries. What we create is formed in the shape of us, just as we are created in the shape of Him. So if we dwell in, and are nurtured by, the shadow of Shaddai, everything we create takes the shape of the 3God. Whether buildings, children, policies, meals, pictures. Everything. 

Baptise my imagination so I can create again. Leave my disappointment on the carpet of blossom. My times are in His hands. What I do with them is in mine. I know the way. Ps 25 in the Message translation reads:  from now on every road we travel leads to God. We are wayfinders, creators, image-bearers and land-blessers. We cross over. We cross that line when we begin to have faith this is true, and create out of what we believe, not what we have seen. 

See the light as it shines on the sea? It’s blinding

But no one knows, how deep it goes

And it seems like it’s calling out to me, so come find me

And let me know, what’s beyond that line, will I cross that line?