Harmony

The opening of this chapter brought a flood of memories back to me. Pilot has a passion for basketball. He began life desiring to fly planes but somewhere along the line we gave him a basketball and all the flying he wanted to do was from the floor up to the hoop and back down again. He would practice and train every single day! Even through the summers. Did I mention that he loves the game?! His partner on the court was Bodie. When James and Bodie were on the court it was pure fluid motion. They played so well together they didn't even look at each other when they passed the ball. You wondered if they had eyes in the back of their heads. I used to sit there watching Pilot move down the court and I wondered, "Is he meant to play this for his life?" Because Pilot thought so...or at least he wanted the chance to find out. Yet, as I watched that young son of ours from early on I thought his bent in life was perfect for the military. I began praying and watching.

I remember one conversation with Pilot when he was about 8th grade. He was lying in bed and we had been talking. I asked him, "What if God called him to walk away from b-ball, would he be obedient?" There was a long pause and then he replied, "Well, hopefully, God won't call me to do that!" Nothing more was ever said between us regarding that conversation. Yet, there came a time in college (he had received a basketball scholarship) where he went to his coach one afternoon and told him he felt he needed to quit. He was trying to get into the Air Force Academy and there was a tutoring class that conflicted with practice times that Pilot felt was really important for him to be there. Have I mentioned that he loved the game?

He didn't ask our opinion or even tell us he was doing it until he called me that day after it was over. He told me what took place and why. I hung up the phone and cried. I cried for a variety of reasons. One because I knew I wouldn't see my son play in another game. I cried because I knew how much he loved the game. And, I cried because I knew, as his mother, that he had listened to the call of God and had obeyed. Just like Abraham, our son sacrificed because the Lord called him to do so.

As we watched the Lord take this young man and move him through the process, from beginning to end, we could not help but be awed how God supplied, provided, equipped and led him to the point Pilot is now. And some of you had a part in the process by praying for him! We know, and more importantly, Pilot knows, that he is right where he is supposed to be. And, do you know what I see there? I do see harmony, precision, symmetry, unbridled beauty, and poetry in motion. Why? Because I see a person who has been obedient to God.

Adam had been created in the image of God and was to be given dominion over the entire physical and biological creation. Even the angels had been created for a ministry which was in relation to humanity and its destiny. Furthermore, the world in which Adam was to live, and especially the beautiful garden which would be his headquarters, was a perfect environment in every way. No physical, mental, or spiritual need that he might have would be withheld.

There's a verse which comes to my mind, "...unto anyone who has been given much, much will be demanded (Luke 12:48). We do know that man was created at God's will and pleasure (Rev 4:11), and He intends to demonstrate the exceeding riches of His grace on man's behalf through all the ages to come (Eph. 2:7). Love, by its very nature, must be voluntary. An automation cannot love its maker. If we are really to love God, we must be able to choose of our own will to love God, in response to God's love for us. An involuntary love is a contradiction in terms and there can be no such thing.

But, if Adam was free to love God on his own initiative, he was obviously free also not to love God. Adam and Eve entered the world by creation, rather than by birth; and they alone entered the world with sinless natures, in perfect innocence. Can you imagine?

There was every reason (based on love, not fear) for man to conform to God's command, and no reason to disobey. If he did disobey, he would be without excuse. Yet he did have a choice, and so was truly a "free moral agent" before God. Would he "trust and obey" because he loved the one who had shown such love for him; or would he doubt God's goodness and resent His control, rejecting and disobeying His word on even such an apparently trivial restriction as one forbidden fruit in a whole paradise of abundant provision?

Adam should have obeyed God merely as an expression of his love. But God, in grace, provided him still further incentive by giving clear warning of the necessary consequences of disobedience. Rejecting God's love would necessarily raise a barrier between man and God, and would break the fellowship for which man was created. Since God was the source of life itself, real life is found only in communion and connection with the divine life. Therein lies the secret to true harmony.