Sitting in Starbucks, where I admit to enjoy the odd latte and perhaps do my best studying, I find myself peering out the window instead of at my notes. I look out at sun bright hope and people on street corners breathing in light and I almost see the weight of winter falling from shoulders that stood heavy for months. Spring air has transferred into our steps and we bounce down the street with this sense of newness and joy. From behind the glass, in this way too expense coffee shop that I love, I hear a siren. An ambulance zooms by and here holding my expensive drink I see what happens, if I look close enough. The spring air fooled us, because as the lights go by flashing the street corners are full of people who thawed so quickly yet become instantly frozen. A lady holding a toddler, a man in a suit, an older woman asking for spare change, and a few junior high girls in jean jackets. We all become still and whatever made us walk with our heads held high is shaken and for just a brief moment we all become the same. The ambulance blares and the cars pull over and that could be someone we know, someone we love, someone we need. Or it could be us. Spring attire and fresh air masks the fear like the paper-thin clouds screen the sunlight and we all pretend we are secure. We call ourselves equipped and how well we hide the fear, yet how easily our defenses become ineffective when outcomes are beyond our realm of control. Like a house of cards we crumble inside. But the siren fades into the street noise and the man in the suit walks by the lady looking for change and I continue to fake study but what if the siren didn't fade away? What if it got closer? What happens when the siren comes to our house and the noise only gets loader and the rescue vehicle is really for us? Does our thin layer mask hold up against the fear any better than the house of cards in the wind?
Some of us claim that Christ is enough, that God is our anchor, and I believe He is. With no intention to quench faith but rather to fan the flame, I wonder to myself many things. Is He enough? Is He enough if the earthquake shakes my country, if the siren arrives to my house? The question is not whether or not He is, rather whether or not I will let Him be. Will I put my trust in Him?
The world is so fragile. Our lives are so fragile. Yet we run around and so desperately hold together the broken pieces and tightly aim to control what really cannot be contained. But our world so easily shaken is longing for Christ to be revealed. For the name of the unshakable One to be made known. The business man and the jean jacket girls they are longing too. We are all longing and aching for something truly steadfast, something to trust in.
If we believe in Him then we know what He tells us, that to find our lives we must lose them. When trials come and suffering burns at our faith like the fire and gold we lose our lives and in His death we are united and He reveals True Life. The siren is still load and we have ears that ring and hearts that break and we are not numb to the pain around us, neither is He. But if He is enough, if the songs we sing are true, if the Word we have surrendered to is really from His mouth then when the news broadcasts the corruption and the media feeds off the insecurity, what happens within us? What is the purpose in the chaos and what is He doing when all we can see is the shaking ground?
I have not experienced death, only watched as other families have, but I have been shaken. I have been in the heat of the fire when everything within me burns and cries for something better and something easier and a way that is not painful. I have been ashamed and bound by the pain of my mistakes and my heart has been torn and stretched. I have certainly felt the earthquakes moving beneath me. I have heard the siren in my own life and have crumbled like the cards and have come crashing down under disappointment.Yet I can't help but know that in those moments of laying bare before Him and crying out in utter weakness, those are the moments I have seen Him, the moments that allow me to know Him. In those moments of beholding Him, something happened and I was changed. He has made a covenant of love with us that He cannot break, and our Father, the great Vinedresser has said that as we behold like in a mirror the glory of God we will be transformed into His image. Christ is the image of the invisible God. He is making us new in the image of His glory. And the earth is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed. We know the verses, we hear the sermons. And sometimes we hear the sirens. How do the sounds become one?
This siren means something, maybe a call to the saints to persevere, a call to the lost to come find refuge in the One who cannot fail. Whatever its meaning may be, I often miss it. This siren blaring all day somewhere in the world, screaming of its frailty, groaning for redemption.
I think what the siren becomes is a song. Not a melody. Because I know what is going on inside that vehicle and it isn't peaceful and it doesn't look like beauty. But this song is bold. It is a compilation of notes and beats that challenge and test what is within us. It is a song that is being sung over this earth that does not cry out to idols and to what can be so easily shifted. This song is bigger than that. This song is the song of the multitudes, the song of all creation, the song of the Spirit and the Bride. They sing, and we sing, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come". If we listen to the song we will hear that it is rising up from the ashes and from the places where the earthquake has shaken the dust and where the earth is wounded. If we will still ourselves we will hear this war-song rising and declaring over our lives of the faithfulness of God. I am wondering if that song becomes loader in the shaking, or maybe our ears become more sensitive. But I hear it rising and seeping through the cracks of insufficiency of this life and it brings with it power and strength. If we will hear it, and believe it, maybe this song of praise to our Jesus who cannot be changed will actually transform us into His image. Maybe we will become who we really are, which is a people who cannot be moved.
I see here on the street corners a deeper truth. In the trials and in the suffering, God is. He is. And He always will be. In His great wisdom as vinedresser He is transforming us into the very image of Christ. So from the ashes, when the fire dies down, when the waves settle, and when the shaking subsides, we are not ruined, we are not down cast, and we are not dead. We instead rise from the earth to the sound of a song of worship to the King of all kings. We rise as the sons of God and we are clothed in white, spotless before the throne of all grace, perfect and purified.
Deep within us there lies faith that has been refined, hope that has not disappointed us, love that overcame the grave, and an unshakable trust.
Martina Sobey
