Faith is for freedom. Freedom from all things dark. Dark deeds done to you. Dark deeds done by you. Dark memories and spirits. Dark dreams and days. Dark and lonely soul and self.
Faith is a mystery. Like life itself, and all the deepest things in life. Faith is a medium. It is God's medium given to mankind, for mankind to take and hold things from God. Spirit things, like forgiveness, joy, peace, and true identity. (Heb 11:1,6) Jesus said he was a 'door' to salvation. (John 10:9) Faith is how we go through that door. Faith is sometimes one with belief, but not always. One can see, believe, and yet reject. This is where belief and faith divide. Faith is belief in action. Belief off the page. In this respect faith is much more than belief, as wind is to oxygen, or streams are to water. Faith puts direction on things, actually goes places. To believe and act, is faith. To speak out, is faith. As children we see and believe. As adults, we have lost our way and our vision of the pure. We no longer see and believe, but must believe in order to see. This is how we hold fast to anything we know is true - like love, honesty, loyalty. We believe, and hold fast, when every other fiber of our being is not believing, pulling us in the opposite direction. This is believing, in order to see. This is faith towards self and others, and makes for strong families and communities, because it is the core cord of relationship. It is faithfulness, literally and spiritually. Faith is the essence of relationship with one another, and it is the essence of our relationship with God. It is about seeing and believing, and believing to see more. Faith in God is about holding fast to what He reveals to our hearts, like we hold fast to the promises and paths of one another. Days do darken, and conflicting reports and promises compete, but faithfulness is a stand on what is truest. Faith - and faithfulness - reaches for, holds and one day has, all that God gives. 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain...' (Revelation 21:4)
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Life and truth are inherently incongruous on all levels, all the time. We rant about reaching the poor, but somehow have a 'baseline' normal for exactly our situation and socio-economic status. This fits right in place, somehow...
His house is too big, and theirs far too small and in need, but mine is OK... I will salt my situation with a little bit of guilt as an out-clause, but not enough to spoil any good time with friends and family. Right? What's my floor? How can I honestly and truthfully stand and walk in this disparate world? How can I live at peace with so much guilt in my past and even in my present? I cannot trust my own feelings and thoughts because I might be feeling and thinking wrongly. Right? Right! But here's not only the good news, but the great news! Spirit news! Truth - in order to cut through inherent disparities, anomalies, flat out contradictions and real and solid accusations - is going to have to be spirit. It is going to have to by-pass the solid and blow like wind. Here's the door, and here's the spirit pathway to all peace, for all eternity: Jesus said, 'I am the door. He who enters through me will be saved.' (John 10:9). Jesus also said that his words were the only thing that true words could be: 'spirit and life'. (John 6:63) Jesus also said that to be 'born of the spirit' is as free, unpredictable, and expansive as being the 'wind'. (John 3:8) How do we access this door, these words, this world, this 'justification'? Through faith in Jesus. (Romans 5:1; Hebrews 11:6) After a terrorist attack in London, Bono turned his song into a prayer, asking that we would not become a monster to defeat a monster.*
We become what we fear. We become angrier at our father than he ever was at us; we become more violent in mind and heart towards the bully than he ever was towards us. We hate our haters more. And then the ultimate blow is our self-loathing, when we see that our deepest driver is our fear, our cowardice. We hate ourselves for fearing. Jesus comforted us in our fear, but also admonished us not to fear. He turned our attention from fearing man - 'who can kill the body and do no more...' - to fearing God, who can completely destroy even the soul. (Luke 12:4-5) To fear God more - God's way - is to release us from fear of man, and breaks peace over our soul like a soothing ointment. Christ's way to defeat death, was in being meek - not weak. The grave could not contain this power. I always wondered at the scripture that says, 'Perfect love drives out fear.' (I John 4:18) I now feel it is to not only release us from the darkness of what we fear, but to love others by not fixating on, becoming that darkness. 'The meek will inherit the earth, and enjoy peace and prosperity.' (Psalm 34:11) 'Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.' (Jesus, Matthew 5:5) *Miss Sarajevo, U2, live version from London, UK Life has temptations on all sides, all day long. It is exhausting! Temptation pounds like waves against rocks, flies like sharp debris in a hurricane, races like rage trying to cut us off...
Can you close your eyes and imagine having complete peace with God? There was a woman once, who had a past. This woman took a jar of expensive perfume, everything of value that she owned, and came to Jesus, and poured this perfume over his head in an act of worship and sacrifice. Jesus' own disciples - the good guys, the inner circle - judged her, were 'indignant' towards her, criticized her openly. But Jesus defended her. Jesus defended her worship, her touch, and said that what she had done - bringing her hurt, her hope, her love to Jesus - would be bound up in the message of Jesus himself, that her name would be one with his. (Mark 14:1-11) Do you want your past to be in the past, and to be made one with Jesus? I am Christian. My parents were Christians and instructed me in this faith. Because 'religion' was the career of my parents, the questions/comments were swirling from a young age: You only believe in Christ because your parents do, because this is what you were taught... If you were born elsewhere, to others...
I agree wholeheartedly. Paul writes in Romans, 'How will they hear, unless someone preaches to them?' (Romans 10:14) And in my case, it was my parents. But let me tell you about the 'other' I might have been, for the same reasons of both nature and nurture: I would be a terrorist today. Had I been brought up there, under that teaching, under those role models and values and pressures, I would be a killer. Through one man's teaching, my nature was nurtured towards faith in Christ. Through another's, my nature is nurtured towards murder. The nature is in there. What we nurture does matter. I have a memory of a state of mind. Well, if I'm honest, it was a state of soul.
I was so checked out, about 5 years old, that when the youth group leader was calling my name in the quiet group of about 50 kids, I did not even hear him. It was when all eyes were on me, and a few sitting near me shook me and called my name, that I snapped out of it. Where was I? I know exactly where I was, and have in some respects been there since. Solomon writes, 'God has put eternity in the hearts of men.' (Eccl 3:11) Eternity is a place, an expanse that has no limit of space or time. Once there, always there. What do we see there? Well, we see this life on earth from the outside. We see its short sprint, its flare and its smoke and its dissipation. We see that one is only what one is, and no amount of man-made recognition or even personal experience can touch the soul's value, the mortal destiny. One sees that Another has the only say on one's life, not even one's own heart. This is an eternal space, and it can be heaven or hell. There is a time for everything (also Ecclesiastes), and this includes a time to reach for a rope in dark and deafening waters. It is against the backdrop of this surge of the power, the essence, the truth about life and death, light and darkness, that the call and invitation of Jesus Christ 'cuts to pieces' or 'crushes'. (Luke 20:17-18) Jesus said, 'I am the door. He who enters through me will be saved.' (John10:9) The fact that we as humans have an experience, a consciousness, an awareness of the 'unfathomable'... well, that's unfathomable!
It is like an awareness of an expansiveness that we can't get our awareness around. It just goes on and on... and we are aware of this. We gaze at the stars till our gaze curves off into watery eyes, and we turn and walk back into the house. Our sight reached no end point, and yet knowing it would not, it could not, we left eternity hanging in our hearts and minds and went about the evening... What does this point to? Well, who can say, you might say. Well, only the One that sees, that is true. If only one man could see the pointer on a compass in a multitude of men, only he could say that he sees what it points to - but everyone could, if they wished, believe him and conclude not only the same thing, but the right thing. They don't see, but they conclude correctly. Jesus said, 'Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.' (John 10:37-38) We're all gonna check in and out at the terminal called Terminal.
Yes, we are. Some of us will fall in and out in the same minute - quick as a plane falling out of the sky. Others will see this terminal from far out, and far too soon, and make a steady and slow approach to and through it. There's no silver lining where not even the cloud is discernible, and the fact is, death is a humbling, dark mystery, that comes back and grabs even those that claim to come back from it. There will come a time you don't come back. Not long after that a time will come when no one seeks to call you back from the shadows, for they, too, will be there... We fall into death and darkness like rain falls into the raging and dark ocean. A deafening, consuming, annihilating termination. I feel the sting of the 'terminal' every time. There is something about seeing this terminal and facing into it. Here's my consolation: We were never meant to! The reason we tremble at this terminal is because we were not made to go through it. We quake - and if we don't, we should - because it is a reality that was spawned from mankind's dark rebellion against God. Death is the picture, the face, of our rebellion and sin. We read about this in the first 3 chapters of the Bible, and the rest of Bible sets out to deal with it. It is against the backdrop of this 'reality' that the story and message of Jesus Christ is so powerful! He comes to us, even in our grief and loss of others, and lifts our chin, lifts our eyes to his, and says, 'I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.' (John 11:25-26) Paul writes of Jesus' victory over death - and quoting Isaiah 25:8 - 'Death, where is your sting?' (1 Corinthians 15:55) Have you walked through the door of Jesus Christ (John 10:9), so that your passage through Terminal will come out to life eternal? It was this line in Psalm 2 that got me thinking on this today. God says, 'Ask me and I will give you the nations.' (vs.8). God is asking us to ask him for something he wants to give us.
Let's delve straight into our musing, here¼ So God did make mankind, and we are told at the outset that he made us 'in his image'. (Genesis 1:27) Something of God is breathed out and into mankind. You. Me. Jesus reminded his own haters about this in John 10:34, 'In your own scriptures it is written, 'You are all sons of god...'' (quoting Psalm 82:6) So God has made us in his own image - much like your child is made in your image, and/or you are in the image of your parents. As a parent there is often times that I want something for my child, but I want my child to want it. Not only do I want him/her to want it, I want it to be so present in their values and purposes, that they come and ask me for it. If, for example, my son comes and asks me to give him advice about some struggle, and to pray with him, he is asking me for something I have wanted to give him - but have not. Why? Because without his asking, what I would be giving would not be received or real. The spirit of truth in the connection, the counsel, the faith, the support, would not be consummated in spirit and truth, would not be my son's, without his asking. Jesus said, 'My words are spirit and they are life.' (John 6:63) He also told us that 'God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit...' (John 4:24) Jesus, breathed forth in and of God, prayed to the Father, and only did what he saw the Father do. (John 5:19) And in the same 'spirit' and mystery of life and love and God and relationship, God asks us to ask him for what he wants to give us. When my pride is hurt - been a coward, or been forgotten? - I fall and can't get up.
Why is this? What is it that I am trying to reconcile or heal in order to stand again? Sometimes I find myself reworking or rewording the scenario, over and over in my head, trying to rewrite history, or find a footing somewhere in my soul to justify a rising up... What holds me down? Why can't I shake this and stand? The insult or the failure are not the problem. What holds me down is to do with what the insult or the failure holds to - the 'I', the sense of self, the 'Me'. What if the essence of my truest self had nothing to do with my sense of self, but Another's report? What if my hold on self was nothing to do with the true me, but rather the true me was Another's hold on me? If I could be truly free of 'me' - the 'me' to which pride and cowardice stick to - I would be free of pride and cowardice. They would have nothing to hold to. What if I was free of me? Free to truly be? 'I have been crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' (Galatians 2:20) |
AuthorPeter Walker. I hope you enjoy these reflections. Please feel free to comment!:) Archives
February 2024
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