Full or empty

This morning I listened to a recording of traditional Ethiopian music, singing with flutes, strings and drum, as I drove to work. Usually, I do not listen to music when I’m driving to and from work. Instead I often sing and pray, pray and sing, and sometimes just silently think, about life, about God, about the world. This morning, though, I wanted to listen to someone else sing. I was just feeling thankful, because I have one more day.

The music was very joyful and exuberant, and the people were praising their Shepherd, the Lord Jesus. I don’t know their language, but knowing some Hebrew and Arabic, I can sometimes make out in general what they are singing. Their joy was so genuine, even though they were singing for a performance, I don’t believe in their minds and hearts they were performing. Singing praise to the Lord and worshiping Him in their hearts, that seems to be what they are doing all the time. Hearing them touched me very deeply, and for a few moments I was there with them, their hearts and mine bursting with genuine and ineffable joy, making music before the Lord who was, who is, and who is to come, the living God. How can their joy be so real? They sound as if they really are astonished and thankful and raised above themselves.

If my life were simple, if all that was before me was the day, with my simple work to do, my family to provide for, my livestock to herd or my crops and orchards to tend, if my mind had silent places in it, empty places, where I could meet the Lord and speak to Him face to face, where I could hear His voice, then maybe my life would also be so ready to tremble with living joy at the mention of His name, at the remembrance of His mighty deeds, His wonderful victories over death and the grave. When death is so real because it is so near, so is resurrection, so is the reality of eternal life, so are the words of Jesus, the words of His promise, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live’ (John 11:25).

But my life is not simple, my empty places few; with the rest of modern Western humanity, I am too full, full of things, full of sounds (I won’t call them music, noise rather), full of relationships (shallow though they be), and worst of all, full of myself. Can there be room for joy when my heart is so protected from danger, risk, even from death behind this phalanx of busyness? Does the modern man believe that if he keeps himself busy, death will not touch him? If he stays as full as possible, crowding his mind and heart with things to watch, listen to, relate to, speculate on, be entertained with, if he flees the barren silence and stark desertedness of being empty, can he escape his own death?

That’s why, I think, we marvel at the spontaneous, unconscious and legitimate joy we hear in the singing of ‘primitive’ people praising and thanking their Savior, why we are attracted to it and want to possess it but cannot quite enter into it ourselves. We enjoy it and seek to possess it, but we end up only with the sound effects without the corresponding feeling, we load it into our store of fullness, and as we do so, we don’t even realize that we are moving in the opposite direction of those joyful singers. They are with Jesus, walking along with Him as He passes through our world, even our world of today, like His invisible escorts. And we, we are with the funeral possession of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), passing Him going the other way. If only He would stop and raise our son!

But we insist on being full, not empty. There is no room for Him in our inn, not to be born there, not to tend the wounded there, even if the wounded is ourselves. Like the rich farmer who boasts to himself, ‘Take it easy, my soul, your barns are full, loaded with all that your heart desires,’ yet to whom the Spirit that wants to lodge inside of us has to speak from without, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you’ (Luke 12:20), and we still don’t realize the Truth: ‘How can the empty behind the full be so abundant?’

Are we full or empty? Have we decided whom to serve, the rich Lord whose followers are all made poor, or the poor Son of Man whose followers are all made rich? It is true as the saints have said, ‘This world is this kind of field: he who owns the biggest part owns the worst part.’ This is not about possessions per se, but on where we store them up, not about materialism but about preoccupation, not about formal faith but about Yes and No. This is about full and empty, which is it? Which is better, which worse? Which have you chosen? ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’ What can this possibly mean? Who is it, the rich man who welcomes you readily, or the poor man? And what is poverty?

Full or empty.
Will we be so full that we cannot fly?
Or will they find our tombs as empty as they found the Christ’s?