Nicaragua Journal

I found this as I was rereading through my journal I kept in Nicaragua. I wrote this on the plane ride home as I reflected on all we’d done and seen and began to focus on where we go from here. I hope this encourages you today as it did for me:

“I am overwhelmed with a longing for the restoration of God’s creation. God’s world is so beautiful even despite its fallenness. Clouds, lakes, rocks, trees, animals; God’s beauty is everywhere if we will choose to see it.

I’m starting to think it’s the same for us as well. It’s hard to remember sometimes (oftentimes) that each soul God has made has the potential for explosive love and life and glory. I think I am beginning to understand what [C.S.] Lewis meant when he wrote that we’ve never met an ordinary person. What an overwhelming blessing to be surrounded by so much potential for God’s glory, power, love, and redemption! 

Let us not be burdened by the task, let us be honored and humbled to be used. We’re all orphans looking for an open door. We’re all just looking to go home.”

That CS Lewis quote mentioned earlier is the following from The Weight of Glory: “The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken . . . There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal . . . It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.” 

I am ashamed, but not surprised to admit that this is a lesson from our trip that I had not thought much about over the past month. But as I am reminded of what God taught me during our time in Nicaragua, I realize that this is the reality of not just a trip overseas, but of our every day lives. Here in Dayton we are surrounded by people that desperately need the redemption of God. Let’s bear that burden for them.

The Morning Star

Being the father of an 8 month old, I have recently found myself awake before the sun most mornings. For many this would be a bother, but being awake to see the sun come up is highly underrated. 

There is this beautiful stretch of time when the sky goes from dark to pale gray to an explosion of orange, purple, and other colors I don’t even have names for. As the sun continues to rise in the sky (this always happens much quicker than I expect) everything is still cool and bathed in long shadows because the sun is mostly below the trees, but between those shadows the morning sun shines through the branches to create patches of light that give a golden brightness to everything it touches. This morning light is so marvelous that it makes leaves and branches and even backyard sheds look extravagant and kingly. 

Then there is the music.The crickets are finishing up their nighttime song, but the cicadas have already started and the two songs blend together into a beautiful symphony. The birds occasionally add in their chirps and the squirrels and rabbits play their instruments of the trees and grass. We’ve learned to block it out, but if you listen closely before the interruptions of the sounds of cars you notice how the sound actually fills in all the quiet. Once you listen you realize just how loud and beautiful it is.

The smell is hard to describe, but it is cool and fresh and wet. It is significantly different from the smell of the rest of the day, which is hot and dry and stale. The smell of a morning gives the impression of newness and freshness and possibility. 

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We find in Isaiah that Satan, our great enemy is called the Morning Star. If this is true, then it’s no small wonder that he is often referred to as Heaven’s most beautiful angel. But he fell. Unsatisfied with the privilege of being the beauty of the morning he tried to make his throne higher than God’s. 

But we also see in the very last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, that Jesus calls himself the bright Morning Star. Some are confused by the fact that both Satan and Jesus are referred to as the Morning Star, but those who choose to look at the depth of the meaning behind this are given the privilege of seeing one more layer to the beauty of God’s plan of redemption. 

So how can both Satan and Jesus be the Morning Star, the light of the dawn, the beauty and golden brilliance of the sunrise?

Let’s start by assuming that this use of this description for both was not an accident. If Satan is the Morning Star, the sun, the beauty of a morning, then evil and sin have so corrupted creation that even the beauty of the morning sun is fallen. If our enemy can make a fallen and corrupt sunrise look so beautiful, it is no wonder we give in to sin so easily. If our enemy has so corrupted creation what chance do we have?

According to Revelation 22 and Jesus himself, all the chance in the world.

This double use of the term is not simply a mistake or the writers of Scripture running out of analogies. This repeated use of the title of Morning Star gives us a glimpse at how Jesus has overcome our enemy. 

CS Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters from the perspective of our Enemy: “He has filled His world full of pleasures. There are things for humans to do all day long without His minding in the least - sleeping, washing, eating, drinking, playing, praying, working. Everything has to be twisted before it’s of any use to us”. 

Satan’s true power comes only in twisting what God has made. But Jesus is in the business of straightening the crooked paths the devil has led us on.

If Satan was created as the beauty of the morning, and that position was corrupted (as we know it was), then we can only assume that privilege was either removed at his fall from heaven or will be removed at his final defeat.

But in His redemption of His creation there is not one stone (physically or metaphorically) that God will not turn over. Jesus is taking over duties as the Morning Star. He is reclaiming the beauty of the morning, just as He is reclaiming the beauty of our souls. We no longer will have to live under the oppression of evil, but will dwell in the light of a new and perfect morning that is infinitely more bright and beautiful than the one we know now.

So if you ever have the distinct privilege of waking up before the sun, pay attention. Stop and be silent. And in that silence recognize the beauty of all that God has made. Then take joy in the knowledge that this is not even scratching the surface.