“My Little Child,” Paul labored to explain, “I simply want to… to see you experience what it is like… to have Firstborn formed in you.”
“What did you say?” Timothy gasped.
Paul paused and looked at his Little Brother to consider what Timothy really wanted to know. “I want you to know what it is like to have Firstborn formed in you.”
“No, not that part,” Timothy clarified, “I mean the first part.”
“Wasn’t that the first part?” Paul furrowed his brow trying to understand what was going on in his Brother’s heart.
“No,” Timothy fought the tears that were now brimming in his eyes as he wondered if he had heard correctly.
“Hmmm…” Paul considered. “Oh, I see what you are asking!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Oh, my Brother,” Paul continued, “is it that I called you, ‘my Little Child’?”
Timothy began sobbing in acknowledgement that Paul had indeed understood the words that had gripped his heart.
Paul put his arm around Timothy and let himself feel the wonder of the moment. He had been so long in the enjoyment of Father’s love that it still surprised him with grief to see children come into Father’s House with no consciousness of their beloved identity.
As Timothy’s sobbing eased, Paul gave him a squeeze around his shoulders and continued. “Timothy, my Little Child,” he worded with deeper meaning than Timothy could have imagined, “I want you to know who you are. And, it is clear from your sobbing that knowing who you are still does not come easily to you.”
Timothy nodded as he tried wiping the tears away.
“You know,” Paul reminisced, “I came into Father’s House from a life of thinking far too highly of myself and imagining I was better than others. Father’s work in me was to bring me down to the same place as everyone else. I had to realize that I was as much a sinner in his sight as anyone I had ever scorned and disdained for their weakness. I couldn’t really know what I meant to him as his Beloved Child until I could see that it had nothing to do with the way I had lived my life. It wasn’t immediate, the change I mean, but the more I saw the glory and wonder of what Firstborn did for me, and that I was equally guilty before him as all the Worldlings I had despised, the more I could feel that my worth to him was greater than anything I had ever imagined.”
“How could you feel greater worth by seeing yourself worse?!” Timothy desperately wanted to know.
“It’s because nothing I had once thought of myself or Father was real,” Paul explained. “When I saw myself as good enough for him, my view of him was so much lower than I realized. If he was someone who could think highly of my miserable and prideful attempts to be a Good Boy, he was not much of a Sovereign at all.”
“A ‘Sovereign’?” Timothy wondered.
“Yes,” Paul considered how to describe this distinctive quality of their Father. “A Sovereign is the ultimate or supreme ruler over all,” he explained. “Even in my old life of arrogant religiosity I knew he was the Sovereign-ruler over everyone and everything. But I lowered him down to the place where he was a Being who could be impressed by what my little speck of dust was doing.”
Paul shook his head as he paused to gather his thoughts. “It is unthinkable that I could have imagined myself worthy of him,” Paul sighed.
“I know what that feels like!” Timothy lamented.
“You struggle with thinking your good works make you worthy of him?” Paul asked in surprised.
“No! No!” Timothy corrected, “I know that it is like to think it is UNTHINKABLE to imagine myself worthy of him!”
“Ah, yes, Little Brother” Paul chuckled. “Methinks that your ‘unthinkable’ is a bit different than mine.”
“I know,” Timothy admitted quietly. “You were thinking too highly of yourself then, but now you see yourself as Father sees you.”
“Yes,” Paul affirmed, “and you are still thinking such low thoughts of yourself because you don’t see yourself as Father sees you.”
“But I have never had anyone think of me as their Little Child!” Timothy defended.
“No…,” Paul cautiously clarified, “you have never KNOWN what the Triune thinks of you as their child.”
Timothy grew quiet as he contemplated the difference between the two thoughts.
“What I’m getting at,” Paul continued, “is that my starting place was so opposite to yours that I need to be reminded that Orphans come into Father’s House with such a low view of themselves that even the most normal expressions of endearment seem…”
“Weird!” Timothy exclaimed. “Foreign! Does-Not-Apply!”
“Yes, Little Brother,” Paul smiled as he tousled Timothy’s hair. “I understand that this is how you see it.”
“But I’m wrong, right?” Timothy grinned mischievously.
“Yes, my Little Brat,” Paul grinned back, “your wrong is right.”
Timothy grew more serious as he asked, “Did I miss what you were really trying to say by getting stuck on what you called me?”
“What I called you was as much what I was really trying to say as the rest,” Paul clarified. “In fact, the only way you can appreciate the wonder of something so amazing as Firstborn formed in us is if you know you are a beloved Little Child.”
“I guess it makes sense that Firstborn wouldn’t want to hang around with someone if he didn’t love them,” Timothy acknowledged.
“You know what you see of Father and Firstborn always being together,” Paul directed, “and Daily Companion always seeming like he is with them even though he is with us at the same time?”
“Yes…” Timothy considered carefully. “They do seem inseparable even when each of them is doing different things to make things work together.”
“Do you understand that Firstborn wants that with you as well?” Paul asked.
“He wants to be with me?” Timothy clarified.
“You are his beloved Brother,” Paul reminded.
“So you say,” Timothy again inserted his mischievous grin to the picture.
“Ah,” Paul smiled, “so my Little Brother knows he matters to me enough that he can be a Little Troublemaker whenever he feels like it!”
“Hmmm…” Timothy considered, “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“Like what?” Paul encouraged.
“That part of me does seem to know that…” he struggled, “well… that you must… you know… that you must think of me as… as someone important to you?”
“But the other part?” Paul invited.
“Yes, the other part is quite different from that,” Timothy added. “It still feels strange that anyone in Father’s House would speak of me as being special to them in any way at all.”
“And that is all the more reason that I am so desperate for you to know what it is like for Firstborn to be formed in you,” Paul returned to his earlier thought.
“What a weird… uh… consideration?” Timothy wondered.
“I want you to be so filled with Firstborn,” Paul wished, “and so aware that he is in you, and you are in him, and that Daily Companion makes this real for us all, that it will feel wonder-filled instead of weird.”
“Wonder-filled?” Timothy considered. “Don’t you mean, ‘wonderful’?”
“The way the Triune love us is wonder-filled,” Paul explained. “Yes, it is inherently a wonderful, glorious, amazing, delightful, awesome, magnificent thing that they love us as they do. But it also fills us with wonder of what it is like to be loved by the Sovereign Ruler of everything.
“However,” Paul continued, “as the sun shines the glory of its light all the time, even when it is nighttime on our side of the planet, or storm clouds hide it from our sight, we must know that the love the Triune has for us is wonderfully constant and constantly wonderful no matter what any of us think about them or how they view us. And the wonderfulness of this reality makes us wonder-filled as we embrace it for our own.”
“Hmmm…” Timothy interjected, “so you know that my struggle to see my worth to you and Father is not the truth about the Triune, but evidence that I’ve got clouds in my heart?”
“Yes,” Paul smiled. “Clouds in our hearts is a common malady of us adopted children.”
“Malady?” Timothy grinned mischievously once again.
“Yes, my Little Child!” Paul exaggerated, “A malady is a sickness that very easily takes us down.”
“So, me feeling like being special couldn’t be true is a malady?” Timothy asked.
“Exactly,” Paul affirmed, “just like thinking the sun isn’t shining just because there are clouds overhead.”
“You mean like right now!?” Timothy exclaimed as a big fat raindrop smacked him on the nose.
“Uh… I suppose so!” Paul laughed as he too felt the beginning of rain.
“Where did those come from?!” Timothy shouted in surprise.
“Where did they come from indeed,” Paul welcomed the sudden turn in their adventure.
As the two Brothers ran into the House, they both knew that they had shared a visit in the Light that would continue to shine into their hearts even when cloudy skies hid Father’s love from their sight. They would continue to grow in love because Father had loved them more and longer than they would ever fully comprehend. But knowing it was so would grow stronger every day, rain or shine.
© 2019 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
