One Vertical and Many Horizontals

UV 1411/10,000 One Vertical and Many Horizontals
And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
Ezekiel 36 v 11

A man is by definition someone who believes he is created and differentiated from all other species. In fact, as we study different species, we find the distance in terms of faculties and development from the simplest to the most complex species is so huge that these cannot be bridged even over several million years. The man who disbelieves the Creator is as good as a beast as scripture says, “ he will die like a beast.” He has no hope beyond life. The letter “a” differentiates beast from best. That “a” stands for attitude towards God. The faithful are distinguished by their fear of God and His law, love of God and their diligence and obedience, zest for God and the good things of life. The Lord will increase the number of people who believe Him as well as those who do not believe in Him. The latter will fill the natural vacuum and hunger in his soul with man-made ideologies and beliefs. They will reap the shortcomings of their beliefs unless they repent and relent. The fruit of the worldly- ignorance, deeds of darkness, wickedness will multiply or increase. The earth will groan with their violence, malice and deceit. The former will increase in their hunger and thirst for God and His righteousness, for eternal life and the blessings of the Lord. They too will bring forth fruit after their kind- fruit of the spirit.

The Lord will reward the faithful and bless them in their beginnings and in their later days with “latter rain” or blessings of maturity or fulfilment of His will for their lives. This uni-verse contains the beautiful promise that the Lord will do better unto us than at our beginnings. The Lord will send us signs and confirmation that we may know that His presence with us is real, that His favour or grace is with us. We should constantly recount and thank the Lord for our beginnings. We should remember the things the Lord did for us in those distant days and praise Him for it. That will give birth to an eager expectation or faith of new signs, wonders, miracles and blessings that our eyes have not seen so far or our minds have not even thought of so far.

The Lord will settle us in our old places. He will be our bulwark of security. He will fence us and give us a perimeter of protection. His presence will be like a shadow that falls us everywhere we go. He watches over us day and night and in all seasons of our lives. Whatever the Lord has done or given us or blessed us with in the past, He will do even better in the days to come. The best has yet to come. We need to trust the Lord to believe that He has the best in store for us. Our response to His hand of multiplication in our lives is to multiply our prayer time, our praise time, our worship time, our study time, our meditation time and our fellowship and service time. Businessmen and corporates frequently talk of mysterious verticals and horizontals in their business empires. But if we just take care of our single vertical or our relationship with the Lord, He will bless our horizontals-our relationship with our family members, their needs and protection, provision, promotion, longevity, health, peace and inner joy. What we enjoy in our second innings of our lives is like the better wine that was served at the marriage at Cana after the intervention of Jesus. It is not as if nothing bad will happen to the faithful- we might suffer sickness, loss, bereavement, mishaps but through it all we will see the hand of the Lord doing better unto us. The negatives that happen will leave us better though broken and not bitter. Someone recently said, “Broken vessels are most beautiful and useful in God’s hand.”

Prateep V Philip