In A Mirror. Raed Mikhael

lies all the permutations of life of eternal mortals in Jesus Christ’s resurrection. For our marked finale has been claimed to its viewers before its beginning through Jesus Christ, leaving a continuing series to an act of faith of our free will.

7. 2 Timothy 3:2

8. Galatians 4:4–7

      IV. Desire

      “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love Him and manifest Myself to him.”(John 14:21)

      No more has desire to freedom been more valued in the sight of God than when He demonstrated His plans to free man from the slavery to the law by the life-giving sacrifice of Christ . . .

      I hesitated between love and desire before writing this reflection, for they are often tied together, more times than not, confused with one another. I thankfully remembered 1 Corinthians chapter thirteen, when I resolved to defer my beliefs about love to that chapter, which is more anointed with my new definition of love achieved through the perfection of Jesus Christ. A close relative of love is desire; its biblical origin in Genesis (3:6) “so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wiser, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” Eve’s desires were misguided by the serpent that lead her to eat from the forbidden tree of knowledge, becoming the bible’s anchor story by which the message of salvation develops at great length, through historical kingdoms, extending to spiritual domains that have flourished on its basic principle of good versus evil. Created with desires, God has given Adam and Eve the wisdom to choose without knowing the difference between good and bad, and one clear explicit instruction: “to not eat from the tree of knowledge.” With much disharmony as by a willful desire of dissonant instrument, deviating from a rehearsed orchestral score, Eve’s oversight to eat of the forbidden tree must have had a debilitating and embarrassing effect to God’s ears, the conductor of their lives. God’s subsequent encounter with Adam and Eve must have been awkward given their new awareness of their nakedness before God, who now must reconsider His orchestral score of creation in a hotly debated series of “whose fault is it?!” between an omnipotent God and His free-willed creation defying His sovereignty, seeking expulsion from Eden on account of desirable exploration of the forbidden.

      Spawning many ethical disciplines of law pertaining to civil liberties and human rights, to the free-will of man attaining his rightful place to life by choice, no more has desire to freedom been valued in the sight of God than when He demonstrated His plans to free man from the slavery to law by the life-giving sacrifice of Christ, who would reverse the defiance entered by Adam to mankind. Such remediation, arising from man’s imperfections and difficulty to differentiate between good and bad desires, is often times misguided by the non-spiritual nature of earthly flesh, to which Adam and Eve more readily yielded, succumbing to its gravitational pull of death. By enticement to future slavery, the “serpent” leveraged the much covetous desires to knowledge with which Eve would break an explicit commandment given by God: “But the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said “You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.”” (Genesis 3:6). Prior, perhaps God watched Adam and Eve from a distance as they rehearsed, slaughtered, skinned and devoured, shuffling hastily between racks of food, unknowingly indulging in all sorts of pleasures, perfecting their instrumental desires to discovery. The scores of their meals decimated and scattered, before they entered into the clearly marked forbidden zone, to entertain an internal lustful debate that would expose a desire they would rather have lived without: knowledge. When God breaks the silence of the noticeable awkwardness of their shuffled space, Adam and Eve’s lack of preparedness to answer Him is exposed by their attempt to speedily recover their act, and muzzle God’s company, sparingly welcoming His approach as with a delightful expectancy. God’s mannered entrance, diminished through hesitation and interruption to their new acute instinctual reality, doubted its need to unfold. They turned towards Him as though composing a profound revelation, partly agitated by the discourse of their encounter. They murmured nervously as they fumbled through surrounding objects that would hide their new awareness, setting aside any traces of chopped “apples”. They smile nervously to God’s question about the tree, refocusing their rapid thoughts about His reproach in slowly passing minutes full of anxiety about the disparities between the sensory feast that belied them, and the disgust in the uncertainty of their companionship. Exhilarated by the euphoria of their new knowledge, their gaze roaming to mentally fetch another prey in the distance. God’s dismissal is the first of a swarm of thoughts that would later disguise His absence from their new exploratory, limitless desires resolving Him to on-call duties. As God’s warning divulged its appending intoxication into Adam and Eve’s consciousness, they balanced between their new pursuits of desires and the justification for any ventures only for its mere enjoyment, at times egregious in their efforts of dissonance, others in exhilarated, self-fulfilling achievements.

      . . . exhausting the balance between apathy and want that have collapsed the power of Samson by his desires to Delilah (Judges 16:19-30).

      Reiterated and expounded, covetousness impregnated more evil desires that characterized subsequent stories of the bible, shown in the murder of Abel by Cain to the necessary Godly eradication of humanity’s idolatrous looting witnessed in Noah’s age, and the ambitious naiveté of man in attempting to build the tower of Babel. It will soon follow that God’s own people would engage in all sorts of idolatry and covetous acts that link back to the original sin. Made more appealing by the serpents advertising claims to man to become God-like, man easily fell to learn of his nakedness and shame, which he will have to train his entire life to the virtues of obedience to God’s laws, right and wrong, when prior to their disobedience, such a refrain was not within their awareness or domain of responsibilities. It is therefore most true that “When desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.” James (1:15).

      The classic example of sin conceived by desires is a recurring theme to many of our lives today in our struggles between that which we can do to that which we must not, exhausting the balance between apathy and want that have collapsed the power of Samson by his desires to Delilah (Judges 16:19-30).

      In our judgement of good and bad we are more keen to the laws of man in their appeal and applicability to our immediate senses, guided by others with similar desires of the flesh to our own “For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men…” Mark (7:8). God, often the victim of our dissipated attention to His invisibility, suffers from our defiance to His laws which we supersede by the earthlier man, toiling to leave a legacy, creating legacies of evasive icons, from which he can draw strength, fulfilling a much desirable need to ephemeral man-created senses, while escaping the more spiritual aspects of attaining the more perfect desires of God. Desire which God has demonstrated in His more perfect sacrifice to redemption of His children is marred by the more selfish gratification and boasting of the evil desires that entered man through knowledge, conceiving spirits of adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, and idolatry (Galatians 5:19), in place of the more valued aspiration to attain God’s love and those of our neighbors.

      . . . we all pursued our desires, good and evil, as in a contest to witness which of the two would win, embarrassed mostly when faced with accountability to our superiors.