Special Delivery (GH Day 19)

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Who doesn't like to receive real mail? You know, snail mail, the paper-and-envelope type. And the rarer it gets, the more special it becomes. I received a card the other day from a dear friend who ministers to people by sending them encouraging card notes.   

The same day I received her sweet card, I read the news that stamp prices will be going up yet again. I don't even know what a stamp costs now. That's part of the insidious scheme of the "forever" stamps: to keep us in ignorance of how much we're actually paying.   

Aren't you glad that mail to Heaven is still free? Or, rather, that Someone Else has paid the cost of that postage for us. I introduced George Herbert's poem "The Bag" in a previous blog, but only quoted from the first part of the poem: the Incarnation description. The second half of the poem (stanzas 3-6) picks up after Christ has died, accomplishing his mission in the crucifixion:

But as he was returning, there came one          

     That ran upon him with a spear.          

     He, who came hither all alone,          

     Bringing nor man, nor arms, nor fear,          

     Receiv’d the blow upon his side,

And straight he turn’d, and to his brethren cry’d, 

If ye have any thing to send or write,          

     I have no bag, but here is room:          

     Unto my Fathers hands and sight,          

     Beleeve me, it shall safely come.          

     That I shall minde, what you impart;

Look, you may put it very neare my heart. 

Or if hereafter any of my friends          

     Will use me in this kinde, the doore          

     Shall still be open; what he sends          

     I will present, and somewhat more,          

     Not to his hurt.  Sighs will convey

Any thing to me.  Harke, Despair away.*

      

What ties in the rest of "The Bag" with my theme today is its metaphysical conceit (or somewhat far-fetched extended metaphor). As is often the case with Herbert, the poem's title reveals its controlling metaphor: Christ is like a mailbag worn by a messenger (like a postman), delivering our mail to God.   

His incarnate flesh is the bag, its opening the slit in his side produced by the Roman soldier's spear. Like the postman, Christ calls for our mail, for his job is to be the Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2), making intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah 53:12). He keeps our requests, writes Herbert, near his heart, and will deliver them safely to the Recipient.(How's that for  certified mail?)   

We have One who not only guarantees us access to God, but will add his "somewhat more" (last stanza) to our requests. Both now and "hereafter," Christ is the true forever stamp.

* “The Bag” quote from Christian Classics Ethereal Library