WHAT’S LEFT AFTER THE SHAKING
How many heads hit the pillow at night wondering what the point of it all is? How many more in these days of pandemics, economic upheaval, and exposure of inadequate healthcare systems? These days of war abroad and continued escalation between powers like (but certainly not limited to) the United States and the Iranian regime?
I find myself asking this question often. It haunted me growing up.[1]
The point and purpose to this “present evil age”[2] is the exaltation of Jesus.
It’s an opportunity for us to be conformed into His image[3] until He crushes the head of the serpent,[4] makes every wrong thing right,[5] and raises a glass of the best wine at His own wedding reception.[6]
We only get this once.
And thank God for that.
Who can withstand days like these? Who is not affected by something like COVID-19—something so many of us regretfully underestimated? What will the world look like when it passes? Will our economies survive? Will our lives?
I am inclined to think we’ll come through with reordered days. Our national systems lean too heavily on each other to come through unscathed by dominoes no one can predict with absolute clarity right now. But we will come through.
And it will not be the last shaking we see. It won’t be the last shaking our kids see.
But there are only so many shakings left until the “Desire of all Nations [fills] the temple with glory.”[7]
We’ll see Him then, and stand before Him.[8] We’ll all give account, even for the idle words we let past our lips.[9] We’ll see the finitude and sheer stupidity of so many pursuits.[10] And we’ll revel in the look on His face when He receives all the smallest glances, smallest gifts we could muster strength to offer Him.[11] He sees them all. He won’t forget any of them, ever.
But He’ll forget our sins under the bleach of the blood, bless God.[12]
And He’ll reward us accordingly.[13]
So our obedience and adherence to Him carries us through the throes of wind and storm, with either sand or stone holding up our lives.[14] He is the Rock.[15] When the wind blows, He does not budge.
It’s His will for us that we do not either. This is, to be certain, a process requiring all the time growth demands and lives will allow.
“The greatest man born of a woman”[16] encourages us that we don’t have to be Jesus to not be swayed by circumstances. Nor must we wait to be eighty to reach stable maturity. John, Jesus’ cousin, had maybe six months on the Man he got to baptize and introduce to the covenantal nation as the Lamb who would spill the blood of the everlasting covenant and save us all from the serpent’s deception.[17] So he was, at most, thirty-one years old when the Son of Man spoke of him to the masses who’d walked miles under wild sun to hear him speak. They came to see this quirk of a man who wore weird clothes and ate weird food and rubbed shoulders with the very establishment he fought so hard to buck against.[18] John was a curious man to behold.
“What did you come out to the wilderness to see?”[19]
You can almost hear the question, the confrontation, ring out in the desert air.
“Did you come out to see a reed shaking in the wind?”[20]
Because if you did, you need to look elsewhere.
John’s life and heart were marked by clarity, conviction, and confidence in the Word of the LORD and His purposes in John’s generation.
He could read from the Scriptures and see the writing on the wall. His generation would not live through “business as usual.” They would, in fact, serve as a hinge in human history.
And he fought to help them all respond appropriately. So he needed clarity.
He withstood the winds of politics, economies, and power grabs. He could recognize the parroted sermons given by pulpit puppets weren’t going to do anyone any good. So he went into the desert and dug a well of conviction to serve to the nation so they could, rightly, “Behold the Lamb!”[21]
And he went to prison with confidence, leading his men to find out for themselves they needed to leave the best man for the Bridegroom.[22]
We, like John’s disciples, are undergoing a shaking—and, while it may not feel this way now, it is for our greatest and highest good.
“[T]he removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—[are shaken out] in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”[23]
This isn’t so that we become “better humans.” Christianity is not a philosophy of moral reform. Allegiance to Jesus is not ultimately meant to produce better families or societies or national policies. It’s not simply so we can survive the shakings with smiles on our faces.
Rather, He sustains and shapes us as we wait for His promises—the same thing Abraham waited for, the same thing Abraham is waiting for: the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, the city of the living God[24]—so that we are all we can be when it comes. When He comes.
The city John saw, the “bride, the wife of the Lamb, who has made herself ready,”[25] that looked just like her Maker. The suitable helpmeet finally prepared for the second Adam.[26]
“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight the paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather healed…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”[27]
What is the joy set before us in these shakings? The “Desire of All Nations.”[28]
We bear the greatest news of the greatest kingdom governed by the greatest King.[28] In these uncertain days, let our voices speak comfort.[29]
Let us “straighten out the desert highway” and “prepare the way of the LORD.”[30]
Let us watch, let us wait, let us fast, and let us pray.
Let us build our houses on the Rock that is the blessed Name, and fill our rooms and tables with people who need shelter in the shaking.
Maranatha.[32]
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Quick, S. To Trace a Rising Sun. FAI Publishing, 2018. Available in paperback and on Kindle.
[2] Galatians 1:4
[3] Romans 8:29
[4] Genesis 3:15
[5] Matthew 19:28; Acts 1:6; 3:21
[6] Matthew 22:1-14; 26:29; Luke 22:18
[7] Haggai 2:7
[8] Daniel 7:9-14; Matthew 24:29-31; 25:14-46
[9] Matthew 12:36-37
[10] Isaiah 2:11-12,17-19; Romans 3:19-20
[11] Hebrews 6:10
[12] Isaiah 43:25; 44:22
[13] 1 Corinthians 4:5
[14] Matthew 7:24-27
[15] Psalm 18:2,31; 31:3; 62:2,6; 89:26; Isaiah 43:6-8
[16] Matthew 11:7-11
[17] Matthew 3:13-17; John 1:29-37; Hebrews 13:8
[18] Luke 3:1-20; John 1:19-34
[19] Matthew 11:7
[20] ibid.
[21] John 1:29-37
[22] ibid.; Matthew 11:2-6; Luke 3:16-17; John 3:30
[23] Hebrews 12:27-29
[24] Mark 12:27; Hebrews 12:22-29; see also The Unshakeable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person by E. Stanley Jones
[25] Revelation 19:7; 21:2,9
[26] Genesis 2:18; Romans 5:14; Ephesians 5:32
[27] Hebrews 12:1-2,12-13 (this is a paraphrase; read the text for the original language)
[28] Haggai 2:7
[29] Psalm 48:2; Matthew 5:35
[30] Isaiah 40:1
[31] Isaiah 40:3 (this is a paraphrase; read the text for the original language)
[32] 1 Corinthians 16:22; Revelation 22:17,20
