103 
The Call of Intimacy

All the streets where Amanda found herself were lonely and cold, the faces she encountered impersonal. The great metropolis she had once longed for had lost its life.

As Amanda walked along a nearly deserted part of the city, voices of singing caught her ear. She had turned in so many directions by now she had scarcely an idea where she was.

She glanced along the street. There was a steeple.

She was walking along Bloomsbury Way! There was New Hope Chapel in the next block! How had she come here? Had her steps unconsciously been leading her here all along?

From inside, peaceful melodies of song drifted gently out into the street. The hymn drew her. Slowly she approached.

The singing stopped. Amanda paused and waited. After another few minutes, a man began to speak. Inside she heard the familiar voice of Timothy Diggorsfeld.

“The great crying need of our time, my friends,” the pastor began, “is intimacy with God, our Father and Creator and Maker.”

He paused briefly to allow the simple yet profound words to sink in.

“What prevents this intimacy we so desperately need?” he went on. “Many evangelists of our day will say it is sin, and then proceed to rail against this or that evil of society. They are right, of course—sin is the great curse that prevents us from what God would give, and especially all that he would have us to be.”

Strangely moved, almost warmed by the words which several years earlier would doubtless have angered her, Amanda began to walk forward again, curiously drawn to the message. The doors stood wide open to the fair morning, and Timothy’s voice carried clearly out into the street.

“But what about otherwise good people,” Diggorsfeld was saying, “even Christian believers, whom the world would look upon with favor? Perhaps some of you men and women listening to my voice are such. And before I gave my own heart to the Lord, such was I—respected and admired by all . . . but far from God in my heart. I do not say that evangelists ought not to preach to sinners who need to repent. Their hellfire messages and salvationary fervor are perhaps much needed for some. But they did not rouse me out of the complacent and contented stupor I supposed was my goodness and respectability. Something else was needed.

“So I find myself compelled to ask—what of good people who are in church many a Sunday? Good people, as was I myself? What about young boys and girls, teenagers, young adults with believing parents, who have been in church Sunday after Sunday throughout their lives and who are well familiar with the gospel, perhaps even who believe in its message?”

Amanda was nearing the front of the church now. She continued to walk slowly toward the door.

“Does the heavenly Father not desire intimacy with such individuals just as greatly as with the worst sinner in the land? Does he not desire intimacy with you—believer that you are—no less than with a thief or a murderer? Yet it may be, though we are unaccustomed to think so, that this intimacy is actually as lacking in the hearts of good respectable Christians as it is lacking in the hearts of the worst sinners listening to a rousing message about the dangers of hell.

“I know that such intimacy can be missing in the midst of outward respectability. How can I say such a thing? Because I was just such a one myself. I was a contented, respectable prodigal. I had no idea what I was at all. I would have recoiled from the merest suggestion.

“What—me a prodigal! Outrageous, would have been my reply.

“You see, my friends, I had no idea that my prodigality was not evidenced by wicked crimes against society . . . but rather lay in my own prideful independence. Thinking myself a fine man, I was in fact living in my very own private far country just like the young man who went to eat with pigs. But I knew it not.”

Timothy paused. Amanda could not but recall again, as she had when walking yesterday, her bitter argument with Sister Hope of only a week ago. How much had changed in such a short time.

“Intimacy, therefore, may be lacking in your heart as you sit listening to my words this morning,” Timothy continued. “I cannot know such things, nor do I judge any man or woman. I only say that perhaps the Spirit of God has drawn you here because he has been calling your heart to deeper intimacy with him.”

Amanda slowly sat down on the steps of the chapel outside. She would not have said she wanted to listen. Yet somehow she knew she had to, feeling compelled to remain.

She knew the words were being spoken to her, even though the preacher could have no idea she was even there. From the energetic tone of his voice, she could only assume that Rev. Diggorsfeld had not yet been informed about her father.

“What is to be gained,” Timothy had by now resumed, “by condemning this or that evil, if we neglect that region where lies our first business of life? Indeed, one of the greatest of the last century’s preachers said that we could rid the world of every single one of its wrongs and still neglect that most important of all life’s callings. What will it accomplish if we set all the world’s evils right, if we rid it of poverty and alcohol and inequity, if we bring justice to every creature, if we give every man and woman the vote, if we eliminate the scourge of war—what good will it do, I say, to remove all these from the world . . . if we as a people yet in our hearts remain distant from the God who made us?

“And, you may rightfully ask, what about me? What about one who has given his professional life to combating the evils of our society through government? That is why, as I said, there was a time when I had to ask these questions first and foremost to myself.”

Amanda’s ears perked up. These were curious words coming from Timothy Diggorsfeld. What could he mean?

“And as I asked them,” the sermon went on, “I had to face at length the primary question: What is the calling to which we should aspire if it is not to rid the world of evil? Many would consider this the highest calling of man—especially politicians—to rid the world of wrong. But I say no. I say it is elsewhere we must look for the summum bonum, the highest thing of life.

“Where then? What is the highest of life’s ambitions, that worthiest goal to which the human creature may strive?”

The voice stopped. Timothy was glancing back and forth through his rows of listeners. This was the most difficult sermon he had delivered in his life. Tears struggled to fill his eyes, blurring the page of Charles’ handwriting on the lectern in front of him. Though these were not his own words, insofar as it concerned one particular individual whom he did not know was listening, it was also the most important sermon of his life. Already his prayer of the night before was in the process of being profoundly answered.

“Intimacy, my friends,” said Timothy after a moment, “—a personal and daily walk of trust and reliance upon God our Father, and with His Son Jesus, our Savior. That is the highest thing.

“I speak not only to the so-called sinners among you, but to you, Christian man, to you, good believing woman, to you, young person raised and trained in a gospel-believing church, to you, good citizen who have dedicated your life to worthy causes and to the elimination of inequality and injustice and evil in our society. I speak to you as well as to the thief and adulterer and murderer—and I say to you, Your Father desires to live with you in intimacy. And because for years I did not know this intimacy either, I speak to myself.

“Salvation may be all that is required for entrance into the heavenly kingdom,” the compelling sermon went on. “But alone it will not produce the abundant, fruitful life Jesus came to reveal to his brothers and sisters. The Son of God came that we might walk in close fellowship with his Father. Such he became a man for. Such he died for.

“He did not die on the cross only to save us from our sins, though of course he did do that. He died on the cross also that we might be drawn into and thus share in the relationship he had with his Father—that we might too become fully sons and daughters of God.”