Shaken

You always do the unexpected.

Just when I think I know

How you think,

What you mean,

Where you are,

You shatter all my preconceptions.

You shape-shift, slipping

Through the fingers of my mind.

Eye-cornered, I think I spy

You, elusive yet there.

And just as I settle

You rattle my cage

The dust flies

And my card house

falls

I've been thinking about shaking.  And this poem was the result yesterday.

It's interesting that in Haggai God says He will shake the heavens, then the earth, then the sea and then the land. Next He will shake the nations - all of them.  And then He will come.

At the moment it feels as though the whole earth is being shaken by the virus, but actually I don't think it is.  Much of the world has been affected but not all of it.  This might well be more of a tremble than a shaking.  I think the shaking is yet to come.

But this is most certainly something unexpected, unusual and unsettling.  We didn't see it coming ( well I didn't anyway)  and it's probably not the sort of thing we thought God would work through.   We have all been shifted out of our normal routines and schedules and made to take a fresh look at the things that are important to us.  The past few days I have been taking the opportunity to do a few jobs in the house.  To go through some cupboards and drawers and get rid of some junk.  Fix a few broken things.  Upcycle some dated things.  Scrape a tonne of moss off the tarmac in the back yard, redecorate.  I have projects that have been on hold for ages and now there is no excuse.  They can get done now.

If we want to, we can use this time to spiritually declutter.  We can allow God to rattle those cages and we can let the cards fall. But He won't make us. He has made it easy for many of us to take some time out, but if we don't want to do any spiritual ' work'  then that's up to us.  It's an opportunity that won't come again.  What if this is a dry run?  A test drive for what is coming next?  What if we are supposed to be doing serious business with God now so that we are better prepared for the shaking of the heavens and the earth ?  I don't think I want to spend too much time imagining what that end tine shaking might look like, but I'm pretty sure its going to be significantly more devastating and disruptive than Covid 19.  And it needs to be.  Because the kingdoms, enterprises, cities, corporations and nations that have been building on sand are going to have to fall.  And great will be the fall thereof.  You might as well get rid of everything that isn't rock-founded now, because it will be demolished anyway.

Serious stuff.