scapegoat, old testament and time

in your eyes, we share sin.
but the way of man is to scapegoat others rather than to accept this.
(weight too heavy to bear)
when we look at the cross we see the scapegoat;
you yourself, willingly.

which tells us that it must stop here: the scapegoating I mean.
you ask us to bear our share in sin (not alone, because with you)
so that someone else doesnt have to.
when we judge, we condemn ourselves
just as we condemn them.
(he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone)

you ask us to carry our cross.
because if we don't, the cross doesnt go away:
it has to carried by another.

today, other things too:

Allah of the muslims,
Yahweh of the jews,
God of the christians.
the One who shines with countless lights:
and, to you who give everything,
what other response can there be but to give everything back?

any other response is surely just foolishness
because the everything that you give is only a sign.
yes, that everything that you give we take and gather into barns,
collect in museums and bank vaults
delight in, label, and study
(accumulating wonderful stuff: treasure)
but how can any of this make us happy
when what we really want is you yourself?

'made in your own image'
what else can that mean except that you made us to love?
We can never be happy except in love,
and what else is love but giving all?
any love which does not give all is incomplete:
an unhappy love of compromise and dark places.

another thought:
jesus as God:
I have stumbled hopelessly over this.
and yet these past two weeks I have looked and looked at the cross
and seen you there.
not jesus as God in the way that a dog is a boxer . . .
but jesus acting for you;
I look at him and see your light.
(you are the one who acts.
Your Stillness is no stagnant lake.)

(to those with ears to hear, late beethoven speaks your light. (it pours through the cracks) but jesus acts your light.

which takes me back to the old testament:
not just a 'preparation' for revelation
but an essential part of it.

jesus, without the old law,
without all that had come before,
would not be the full revelation.
(is what jesus means in the 'not a single jot'?)

it wasnt that you had several shots at it and only hit some sort of bullseye with jesus,
or even that the old testament is full of misunderstanding
or half-understanding about who you are, [although I think that is true]:
there could be no full understanding of who you are and what you intend
without all of it: from 'in the beginning' right through to revelation
(and beyond?).

which takes me back to the concept of time.
[through today's prayer: a host of memories:
light-filled moments when things made more than sense:
remembered.]

writing is not a way of 'preserving the past',
it's a way of 'enriching the present' -
and the difference is everything because it is where you are to be found.
[the Always Present]
the God of isaac, and abraham, and joseph.
(it's worth pointing out the way in which the words 'past' and 'present' seperate time and simply make it harder to see a continuum.)

in the same way, the kingdom of heaven is not to be found in a 'future',
while we push it into a future how can we make it a part of our present?
only when the future becomes now,
where you are,
can we live in your presence;
[your present.]