The Perfect Plan

Numbers and time are my nemesis. I have never been good at math, which explains why I'm time challenged. I'll date myself by telling you that I'm from the 'New Math'� era. It bombed when national tests scores began to plummet, but not before loosing some of us in the fall-out. The truth is it has affected me my whole life. Am I alone? I remember the first day of school when the teacher handed us the brand new, multi-colored text books resplendent in graphics and word pictures. Our first instruction was to bind the outside cover to keep it nice for next year's students. The problem was our parents who were accustomed to traditional math, didn't get it. They weren't alone. Our teachers were educated on the traditional syllabus as well, so they didn't get it either. We students did our best, some with really good analytical skills even excelled in New Math. I can't say all is lost, because I do use deductive reasoning when I'm trying to land upon an answer to a problem. Unfortunately, I ponder until I exhaust myself and in the end the problem remains an unsolvable equation'or I defer to someone who has the answer. After a decade of declining math scores, the fed's rounded up the new-math books, buried them in the 'oops file'� and we were given new Traditional Math books. Some things just work. Numbers don't lie, so they say!

I'm on an endless quest with this equation. On the Sixth day God created man and on the Seventh He rested. I think Six to the highest power of Three is representative of my trinity, but I'm still less than One which makes me imperfect'man (woman). In my six-ness, my less than God-like nature, I realize a yearning, a desire to know more. It is ever present with me so I wrestle with the knowledge of my trinity and yet lack the understanding of it. If my spirit is alive unto God in Christ Jesus, (Rom. 6:10) and I am seated together with him in heavenly places (Eph. 2:6), why does my present view struggle with the reality of my human nature that knows there is a more perfect way?

Perhaps my view is blocked by a physical incapacity. Do I have blind spots? The song goes, 'open the eyes of my heart Lord, I want to see you.'� Moses cried out for a glimpse of the Lord's glory but was hidden in the rock and overshadowed by the Lord's hand only given the chance to see his back, but never his face. Why? Because the Lord declares, 'No one can see me and live!'� As I read it again I see it differently. Could it be that the Lord desired to reveal himself to Moses? Did the Lord long for the company of his creation with such passion that He, knowing the heart of Moses, pressed upon him the desire to ask for His visitation? Even so, the earth man, made of mortal clay could not look upon that which is immortal because he too would then of necessity pass from mortal to immortality. Not so much out of desire, but because our six-ness does not have the hold the power of the Seventh One. Seeing His face has the invocation to draw out the six-ness into the seventh. If Moses or any one of us, could look into the face of the Holy One, our very spirit being made alive by the revelation, would escape the bonds of this mortality and jet into the heavenly realm, leaving the earth void of our presence.

Even though He longs for us, He needs us to remain here to be fruitful and multiply and tend to the earth. With our eyes dimmed we see only through a glass darkly'holding onto the promise, 'then we shall see him face-to-face.'�

I wonder if, somewhere in the redemption plan, God longed to visit his creation, to stand in our presence, and give us, if only for a short time (three years, an interesting correlation to the trinity) the ability to see his face. He wanted to see us as much as we needed to see him. He transcended the atmosphere to give us a glimpse of his glory! In his wisdom he knew that if our eyes beheld him, we would never let the vision die and so here we are 1000's of years later still telling the story of when God came to earth and still hoping to see him one more time. 'I will come again,'� He promised.

This is God's Seven-ness in our Six-ness that compels us to reach for the high call. The measure of man is one away from the stature of God. He is ever-reaching out his hand to us calling from the heavens, 'whosoever will, may come.'�

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