WAITING ON THE JURY

Ezekiel 1:1-3:15; Hebrews 3:1-19; Psalm 104:1-23; Proverbs 26:24-26

“’Son of man, do not fear them or their words. Don’t be afraid even though their threats surround you like nettles and briers and stinging scorpions. Do not be dismayed by their dark scowls, even though they are rebels. You must give them my messages whether they listen or not. But they won’t listen, for they are completely rebellious! …Son of man, let all my words sink deep into your own heart first. Listen to them carefully for yourself. Then go to your people in exile and say to them, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says!” Do this whether they listen to you or not.’ Then the Spirit lifted me up.…”

“Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, while it is still “today,” so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ. Remember what it says: ‘Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts against him as Israel did when they rebelled.’”

“Let all that I am praise the Lord. O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and majesty. You are dressed in a robe of light. You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens; you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariot; you ride upon the wings of the wind. The winds are your messengers; flames of fire are your servants.”

“People may cover their hatred with pleasant words, but they’re deceiving you. They pretend to be kind, but don’t believe them. Their hearts are full of many evils. While their hatred may be concealed by trickery, their wrongdoing will be exposed in public.”

The longest moments of any trial lawyer’s life are the time between final argument and when the jury returns its verdict. That’s the time I am in right now. (Hey, I need something to do besides worry, right?) There is nothing else to be said, nothing else that can be said. Finally, the lawyers have lost all control. Much time is spent in retrospective analysis of the various witnesses and strategies used in the trial. There are the usual regrets, and rehashing of the trial’s better moments. But behind it all is a basic insecurity, a fundamental realization that our fate, and that of our client, is in the hands of someone we do not really know or understand and cannot control. It is, at best, a most unsettling place to be.

At some point, if the jury is out long enough, an attorney may even get back to ruminating about the truth. I will be the first to admit that, once I assume the role of advocate, “real” truth can get obscured. I usually tell those I work with that if I cannot convince myself of the correctness of my client’s position, I am probably remiss in taking the case to trial in the first place. That may be true for an attorney. But as a Christian, the idea that I can actually talk myself into certain beliefs is more than a little disturbing. What if I am wrong? What if, in my zeal – or in my desire to evade the truth - I get a wild hair in my head and end up talking myself into a lie? It happens; remember Heaven’s Gate and Jonestown, for instance. Where is the guarantee that I have not misled myself?

It comes down to this: anytime our beliefs are tainted by the insecurity inherent in the recognition that our fate is in the hands of someone we do not really know or understand and cannot control, we’re in big trouble. It’s almost impossible to experience true joy in such a circumstance, for instance. We cannot accurately identify friend or foe, because we have no experience on which to base our judgments. We need to know who will be judging us before we can ever be comfortable submitting to their jurisdiction.

Yet, we are woefully inept at making the personal acquaintance of our Savior. Because we do not truly know His heart – and try to shield ours from Him - we cannot fully trust Him. It’s only human. But it’s very, very unfortunate. We are raised from an early age not to trust strangers. When such mores are applied to the Holy Spirit, they can result in major, and eternal, problems. We fear the unknown. We can even fear love in certain circumstances. But only perfect love is known to cast out fear, so we need to make the effort to learn more about love as often and as completely as we can. In short, we need to expose our own hearts to the Father before we can expect to understand or appreciate His ways.

With only a couple of notable exceptions, whenever I have been in trial and gotten an unanticipated verdict, in the days that have followed, I have come to realize how blinded I was. It is remarkable how often the jury’s work product is more objective than my own. In general, I have learned to trust the system. Because I have that trust, I no longer have quite the same level of anxiety when waiting on a verdict. I may not always like the results, but I have a certain security now that the system works. I feel the same way about God. I know I will appear before Him. I know my only hope is in Christ. But through Christ and the Spirit, I have come to know a thing or two about my Judge. It will still be unsettling to be in His Presence waiting for judgment, but I think I’m gonna be OK.