Chapter 19
Good Monday Morning to this week 19 of 2022
But many who are the greatest now will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then. Matthew 19.30
In current politics as in other events of the world even in situations in spiritual life, we’re experiencing an inversion. A change in the order of the terms, the condition of being turned inward or inside, the reversal of position, order, form, and/or relationship.
09.05.1945 – a current mantra of Russian politics …
May 9th. In Russia, it’s Victory Day in Russia marks the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and falls one day after Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) is celebrated in the UK and Western Europe. The Soviet government announced victory early on 9 May 1945 after the signing ceremony in Berlin. The inversion here is that they are now the aggressors and don’t have much to celebrate 77 years after and will have their place taken as those who liberate.
09.05. 1671 – a very nice little story in history of inversion taking place.
Thomas Blood tried to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London on this day. He failed and remains the only would-be thief to attempt such an audacious robbery. At various times Blood – who called himself either “Captain” or “Colonel” – was an adventurer, a rebel, a master of disguise, a con-man and a spy – but, by all accounts, a likable rogue.
But why was he not executed immediately for high treason? The plain truth, the historian writes, is that this brash man, smooth-talking and brim-full of Irish charm, who had demanded a personal interview with the King to seek his reprieve from the scaffold, was more useful to Charles alive than being hanged, drawn and quartered – the fate of all traitors. Astonishingly, says Hutchinson, Charles granted him an audience and asked him: “What if I should give you your life?” Blood pledged: “I would endeavor to deserve it.” He and his accomplices were pardoned for “all treasons, murders, felonies assaults” committed by them. The King also granted him property in Ireland, providing an income of £500 a year and a pension for life. Finally, Blood says Hutchinson, became a spy for the King.
In the kingdom of God, there are many examples of inversion. Jesus would say that we are to be “in the world but not of the world.” To fully engage in the here and now, while at the same time being counter-cultural. Going a step further we are even called to stage or be part of a great inversion. The revolution of God, the last being first, leady by the one who was first to then being last. Or very often mentioned in the teachings of Jesus was the reversal of position, order, form or relationship. Those who thought they were really close to God were the ones in the most danger of a broken relationship with Him. Those who were marginalized and viewed as far from God were actually very close to the heart of God.
He raises the poor from the dust,
He lifts the needy from the ash heap
To make them sit with nobles,
And inherit a seat of honor;
For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s,
And He set the world on them.
He keeps the feet of His godly ones,
But the wicked ones are silenced in darkness;
For not by might shall a man prevail.
Why do we see power win so often and see divine inversion so seldom? But confound us it does. A virgin giving birth. A king—the King—lying in a manger. A dead God on a stick. These, along with the many other inversions in the Bible, both big and small, promise the possibility of a different world, a world in which God inverts the natural order of things, including the natural of the human world. “For not by might shall a man prevail.”James R. Rogers
Wishing these inversions for the place you are at, the situations you are in that are in need for a divine inversion.
Philemon