Impassioned innocence of childlike faith

While watching the animated DVD story of Moses with my family, I was struck by a miraculously simple reality that has never before impacted me with such crystalline clarity. Passover is Christianity.

As I watched the story unfold - the Jewish slaves of Egypt's ruthless Pharoah instructed by God to paint blood above their doorways, marking them to be PASSED OVER by grace as God's angel of death claimed the firstborn child of every family in Egypt to compel the Pharoah to free them - it took on a newly personal meaning to me. Passover is not just an ancient Biblical story but a current event. As it was with blood marking the actual doorways sparing actual lives of children, so it is now with the blood marking the actual hearts and minds of the faithful.

My acceptance of the gift - the blood, death, life, sacrifice, and miracle of Christ - is that mark over MY doorway which signifies my belonging and seals me, my home, my soul, my future, and my heart to the Lord. When the time comes, it is Christ whose perfection, sacrifice, and worthiness will be seen at the threshold of my life - instead of my sin and incapacity - and His presence my heart allows God to passover my soul and welcome rather than condemn me.

WOW.

Why is is that more than 30 years of rich and endeavored study can be eclipsed by a simple moment of "ah ha!" clarity as God reveals truth through an animated children's DVD? Then again, it is the "faith of a child" we are called to, is it not? That perfect, unwavering, iron-edged faith, not the watered down and tentative version we wander into as adults - so saturated with our own anaylsis and pseudo-brilliant revelations, as though they somehow merit shared space in our minds with the Word of the same God who created the heavens and the earth.

Even knowing God as I do and thirsting for more of Him all the time, I am yet awed by the ways in which He communicates and works in our lives. I believe with hangdog regret, that I might have been one of those who scoured glorious Palaces and luxury Resorts for the birth of the Chirst child, while the most blessed baby ever to grace humanity quietly emerged amidst farm animals, greeted by shepherds, sleeping in a makeshift manger bed. My expectations of God are never able to fully anticipate or comprehend the breadth of His divinity. Which proves two things:
1.) I am not God (whew! I see those waves of relief rushing over your faces now) and
2.) God is bigger than anything we can throw at him, even the hopeful expectations of my gloriously untamed heart.

Again, I find myself renewedly thankful tonight that complete intellectual understanding is not a prerequisite to my entrance into the Kingdom of heaven or the fold of the faithful. God requires my whole heart and soul and mind, even when my mind is the weakest link - lagging behind, openly agape at the continued mysteries of a perfect God against the backdrop of this vastly imperfect world. Because faith is the conviction of things not seen, not the reasoned anaylsis of things I've experienced, it is not hindered by my inability to wrap my mind completely around the vastness of the glory of God. If it were, my faith would be limited to who I am, rather than the infinite, boundless, immeasurable Lord of the heavens and earth. And it is THAT faith, that unwavering, perfect, absolute conviction - that we are called to. With the impassioned innocence of children. Not the jaded arrogance of adults.

Childlike faith. Warrior Passion. Unwavering Righteousness. Unending Hope. And limitless Love.

Sounds like a smashing job description. With a retirement plan that is out of this world.