We’ve arrived at the end, but it’s really the beginning…the beginning of living our lives in light of all the treasures we have received. I will close by speaking in the first person, searching for the different ways their treasures have impacted my life, knowing that ten years of meditating on their experiences, ten years of studying the transcripts of the interviews, producing a video series, writing this book...means that on me that impact is most probably significantly deeper than any one time reading of the book could accomplish. This final chapter, then, should serve as a carrot to any of you precious readers who suspect there may be a deeper work God wants to do in you with the knowledge you have now acquired.
It is, above all, the beauty of the Lord and His Kingdom that their treasures have so magnified in my mind. I can almost feel how Peter felt on the Mount of Transfigurtation to experience the reality of the glory which resides inside of Christ become visible on the outside…how John felt, reduced, very small, ‘as if a dead man’, experiencing the awesome beauty of the risen Christ.
Meditating on the ‘unending joy and unspeakable warmth’ that entered and healed a heart all but dead;
Imagining ‘love like the coronal streamers of the sun’ entering a heart;
Seeing in my mind’s eye a room fill with a bright, unearthly light;
Imagining ‘something like lightening’ strengthening useless legs…these have done that for me.
The splendor of the New Jerusalem, seen by a Russian soldier, so powerful ‘it could be felt, tasted, heard…not a sensation of the eyes but of the whole being’…that has been implanted in my mind.
I see a man dancing, leaping for joy at night, alone, in solitary confinement, discovering a beauty of Christ he’d never known, ‘without words to describe what one feels in the presence of Divinity’. And I find myself more and more dancing and leaping…flying, as if in heaven.
And think of a dark cell of despairing prisoners and one man who ‘could not, not sing for joy’. And find myself singing for joy often, everywhere.
I’ll never forget a man in bitter cold weeping for joy ‘like a bride on the shoulder of her beloved bridegroom’ and consciously yearn and strive and grow towards that delight of perfect intimacy that I now know is not just waiting for us in heaven but, in degrees, available here on earth if I, too, reject all that is half hearted in my Christian walk and cause the Word of God to become ingrafted in my soul…to even become a ‘Walking Bible’.
The beauty of grace so abounding, by being so much in the center of the stream of God’s purposes, that a man is ‘lifted up above pain, suffering and death’…
And another is ‘given wings to fly’ after ten hours of non-stop teaching…
And another is amazed by the ideas coming out of his own mouth…
And another is amazed to find only happiness when betrayed by friends…
And another discovers that by ‘living permanently Christ’s presence, the present is transformed into Christ’s eternity’…
And another is enraptured by the celestial beauty of the heavenly choirs…
And ‘keeping my eyes on things unseen’ seems so much easier these days.
I study photographs and videos and relive being stunned by the beauty radiating from the eyes of a seventy-five-year old woman who was recalling Jesus being ‘so real I could hold Him in my hands’.
I see Christ’s beauty so much clearer to have seen Him shine in her…and consciously search for Him now in the congregation, sometimes rendered speechless at the miracle of transformed lives, conformed to His image, right before my face.
I consciously make marvel and wonder mine…even aghast and awestruck…at the intricate involvement of God…an invisible hand directing a man to escape to the mountains…an instantaneous urge to move before the boulder falls where the man had been sitting.
I ponder salvation’s blessings till the celebration in my soul feels like ‘a thousand shouts and a thousand hats thrown in the air’.
The beauty of unforgiveness and oppression lifted by a Word from God, a Bible doctrine, ‘whispered from somewhere’ has become more and more my reality, too…as has the beauty of seeing the voice of my selfish nature quieted quicker these days.
The beauty of ‘a real experience of the contemplative content of the Christian faith’…they have made me determined to make that mine.
The beauty of gratitude…even for the great gift of simply being…has grown larger in my heart.
The beauty of the humility and silence of a man listening to the arguments of his atheist son is stirring in me the beauty of a listener.
To know as they knew that ‘He prepares for us beauties which cannot be put into words…that in us exists the possibility of becoming a being which will sit on the throne of God from which worlds are created and ruled’ has injected into me an internal, secret smile at the dazzling, rapturous eternity that is ours.
They have imparted knowledge, never far from my consciousness, that the beauty of knowing God…experiencing Him, being touched by Him, hearing His voice, receiving His grace, guidance and comfort…is a present and certain reality.
All of these beauties…the beauty of a cell in the midst of horrors in which they experienced ‘ecclesiastic unity in ideal form’ and ‘survived on that love between us’…these treasures from the fires of persecution, their great gifts to us…when I, when you, precious reader, keep these treasures…the beauty of our Lord and of His Kingdom…fixed in our minds, allow ourselves to be dazzled, enraptured, enthralled by them, then thoughts naturally, automatically, constantly…even in sleep…will return to Him, will cause us to ‘fall on our faces as dead men’ before His glory, and our self centered nature will shrink, even disappear.
And when we disappear God puts something into us impossible for the human heart to manufacture and love flourishes. It’s how God’s love is imported into a world that has little of it. Even to someday find ourselves amazed to be ‘making no distinction between friend and enemy’.
With this love in our hearts we become worshippers, falling prostrate in our inner man before the glory and beauty of the Lord, bringing all the parts of our being, our mind and will and dreams, into single focus on the God of all beauty…experiencing that beauty…and His love floods our hearts and we manifest His Kingdom, as they did, in the most improbable places.
His Kingdom did and does come. It takes over in all areas of personal and social life and even powerfully affects, as it did in communist Romania, the political order. Doing everything in love, His presence is manifested and just as His joy was theirs and that joy was complete..even in prison…it, praise God, is also ours.
It is, above all, the beauty of the Lord and His Kingdom that their treasures have so magnified in my mind. I can almost feel how Peter felt on the Mount of Transfigurtation to experience the reality of the glory which resides inside of Christ become visible on the outside…how John felt, reduced, very small, ‘as if a dead man’, experiencing the awesome beauty of the risen Christ.
Meditating on the ‘unending joy and unspeakable warmth’ that entered and healed a heart all but dead;
Imagining ‘love like the coronal streamers of the sun’ entering a heart;
Seeing in my mind’s eye a room fill with a bright, unearthly light;
Imagining ‘something like lightening’ strengthening useless legs…these have done that for me.
The splendor of the New Jerusalem, seen by a Russian soldier, so powerful ‘it could be felt, tasted, heard…not a sensation of the eyes but of the whole being’…that has been implanted in my mind.
I see a man dancing, leaping for joy at night, alone, in solitary confinement, discovering a beauty of Christ he’d never known, ‘without words to describe what one feels in the presence of Divinity’. And I find myself more and more dancing and leaping…flying, as if in heaven.
And think of a dark cell of despairing prisoners and one man who ‘could not, not sing for joy’. And find myself singing for joy often, everywhere.
I’ll never forget a man in bitter cold weeping for joy ‘like a bride on the shoulder of her beloved bridegroom’ and consciously yearn and strive and grow towards that delight of perfect intimacy that I now know is not just waiting for us in heaven but, in degrees, available here on earth if I, too, reject all that is half hearted in my Christian walk and cause the Word of God to become ingrafted in my soul…to even become a ‘Walking Bible’.
The beauty of grace so abounding, by being so much in the center of the stream of God’s purposes, that a man is ‘lifted up above pain, suffering and death’…
And another is ‘given wings to fly’ after ten hours of non-stop teaching…
And another is amazed by the ideas coming out of his own mouth…
And another is amazed to find only happiness when betrayed by friends…
And another discovers that by ‘living permanently Christ’s presence, the present is transformed into Christ’s eternity’…
And another is enraptured by the celestial beauty of the heavenly choirs…
And ‘keeping my eyes on things unseen’ seems so much easier these days.
I study photographs and videos and relive being stunned by the beauty radiating from the eyes of a seventy-five-year old woman who was recalling Jesus being ‘so real I could hold Him in my hands’.
I see Christ’s beauty so much clearer to have seen Him shine in her…and consciously search for Him now in the congregation, sometimes rendered speechless at the miracle of transformed lives, conformed to His image, right before my face.
I consciously make marvel and wonder mine…even aghast and awestruck…at the intricate involvement of God…an invisible hand directing a man to escape to the mountains…an instantaneous urge to move before the boulder falls where the man had been sitting.
I ponder salvation’s blessings till the celebration in my soul feels like ‘a thousand shouts and a thousand hats thrown in the air’.
The beauty of unforgiveness and oppression lifted by a Word from God, a Bible doctrine, ‘whispered from somewhere’ has become more and more my reality, too…as has the beauty of seeing the voice of my selfish nature quieted quicker these days.
The beauty of ‘a real experience of the contemplative content of the Christian faith’…they have made me determined to make that mine.
The beauty of gratitude…even for the great gift of simply being…has grown larger in my heart.
The beauty of the humility and silence of a man listening to the arguments of his atheist son is stirring in me the beauty of a listener.
To know as they knew that ‘He prepares for us beauties which cannot be put into words…that in us exists the possibility of becoming a being which will sit on the throne of God from which worlds are created and ruled’ has injected into me an internal, secret smile at the dazzling, rapturous eternity that is ours.
They have imparted knowledge, never far from my consciousness, that the beauty of knowing God…experiencing Him, being touched by Him, hearing His voice, receiving His grace, guidance and comfort…is a present and certain reality.
All of these beauties…the beauty of a cell in the midst of horrors in which they experienced ‘ecclesiastic unity in ideal form’ and ‘survived on that love between us’…these treasures from the fires of persecution, their great gifts to us…when I, when you, precious reader, keep these treasures…the beauty of our Lord and of His Kingdom…fixed in our minds, allow ourselves to be dazzled, enraptured, enthralled by them, then thoughts naturally, automatically, constantly…even in sleep…will return to Him, will cause us to ‘fall on our faces as dead men’ before His glory, and our self centered nature will shrink, even disappear.
And when we disappear God puts something into us impossible for the human heart to manufacture and love flourishes. It’s how God’s love is imported into a world that has little of it. Even to someday find ourselves amazed to be ‘making no distinction between friend and enemy’.
With this love in our hearts we become worshippers, falling prostrate in our inner man before the glory and beauty of the Lord, bringing all the parts of our being, our mind and will and dreams, into single focus on the God of all beauty…experiencing that beauty…and His love floods our hearts and we manifest His Kingdom, as they did, in the most improbable places.
His Kingdom did and does come. It takes over in all areas of personal and social life and even powerfully affects, as it did in communist Romania, the political order. Doing everything in love, His presence is manifested and just as His joy was theirs and that joy was complete..even in prison…it, praise God, is also ours.
