The Vastness of the Void
Greg Austin
16 July, 2007

A fresh, untainted sheet of paper: Without writing, it remains blank, empty, unfulfilled.

Unspoiled by error – grammatical or theological, it awaits the first touch of the pen’s tip.

There is anticipation mixed with apprehension: Untouched, unwritten, there is no possibility of mistake; no risk of error or of misunderstanding.

To write is to risk. To mar the untainted whiteness of the page with human thought is to most certainly, most assuredly, commit oneself to miscalculation, to fault.

To live is to sin. A brutal truth, but it is truth borne of both Holy Writ and by sad, human experience.

It is not that we must sin, but rather that we will. We will miss the mark, and in so doing, pierce the heart of God.

David, the solitary figure recorded in God’s Book to have achieved a “heart after God’s own heart” is no stranger to sin, to failure, to piercing the heart of his God.

Yet David is called the man after God’s own heart. And it is here, in the deep chasm between the plateau of the choice of writing nothing and so risking nothing, and the mountain-top of sending thought from heart to brain to hand to expose that thought on a blank page’s surface that David’s heart is exposed, revealed.

To determine to chase after God’s heart, to toss away all caution and run head-long into the waiting chamber of Heaven’s Heart, to surrender to the pulse-beat of the Father’s heart and to reject the clamoring voice of risk-avoidance is to discover at the deepest level our purpose, our Mon but dans la vie est de servir les autres – our reason for being.

We know David, and not Saul; our Savior is the Son of David and not the Son of Absalom, or the Son of any other. We know David because of the determination of his heart, that he will abandon self and seek Yaweh. And so we discover the metronome, the sympathetic rhythm between David and Jesus who share not only common lineage, but common desire – His desire.

And it is only those who have discarded the Risk who find true expression in the earth. The Nay-sayer, the Conformist, the Observer never will know the abandon, the freedom, the liberty and the exhilaration of the full expression of life with a capital “L” that God purposed when each of us first became a living being.

Look upon that which cannot be looked upon: A fresh, untainted, nothingness. Into the ancient void came that first Word; that creative Word, that Life-bringing Word, “Let there be light"; and there was light..”

To utter that Word, to break the silence of eternity with that Word was to risk, indeed to insure failure, error, and disappointment – To utter the first Creative Word was to set into motion the action of creation, the very Object of creation, who would so soon pierce the Father’s heart.

And before He spoke; as He spoke; God knew. From before time, He foresaw failure. Before we were, we already had crashed upon the rocks of our own sruin.

Yet in the full face of our own, self-made, self-destruction, with full realization of our potential, of our ultimate act of mutiny; to take aim with our rebellion and thrust the spear of our selfishness into His heart; with the full knowledge of our eventual, our immediate failure, He tenderly reached down into the grains of dust that had become the floor of the canvas of His creation and, with holy hand, fashioned, with intimate care and with Divine inspiration, the Thing that He would call Adam, man; you, me.

And He would observe and He would overwatch; He would become our first Shepherd. He would commune and walk with Adam in the cool of the evening. He would convey and impart His glory, His kabod, His splendor, to the one created being who would so soon crush out the Creator’s image from his own likeness.

And yet, observing the pristine design of His Word that would soon be polluted with the contamination of selfishness, He loved. . . and gave. . . and believed in His supreme genius of creation.

Knowing Adam will fail – knowing you and I will fail, He loved and gave and believed, knowing with the knowledge of God that someone, one of Jesse’s sons; perhaps the least obvious, the least qualified in the minds of men would be the One, the solitary figure who would reject self, who would abandon ambition and who would deny inward craving to find a hunger for Beyond, a thirst for The Person, a requirement for relationship, for that inseparable bond between Creation and creature that would eclipse every other need or desire and would be the supreme worth of all risk.

And in His own house, in the face of His own Son, the Father found that One, who before the Word had first been spoken had long since laid down His own self, and had taken upon Himself the full burden and knowledge of the risk of failure, and in the fullness of time, was sent forth, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. .. in order that another One, perhaps you, perhaps me, and likely some unknown, unqualified someone might take upon our own selves the risk, the probability of failure, of error of piercing the heart of God in order to fulfill the desire, the heart, the very purpose of God.

Today is in reality, that fresh, untainted page: Without writing, it remains blank, empty, meaningless, unfulfilled.

And the Vastness of the Void awaits your Risk. Will you, will someone cast aside both safety and pointlessness and leap into the unknown, the unforeseen topography of the purpose of the Father for this people and for this moment in time?