Month: April 2014

It’s Not About Us

Praise God that we are offered rescue from sin and death through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Many Easter messages will miss just how big this news is. They will miss that our personal salvation is part of an even larger picture. God is bringing about a whole new creation, His new creation, populated with His new creatures. The resurrected Christ is the first born of this new creation, and in him we are part of it, even now (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our present world is not merely a waiting room; we are to live it now.

Limitless Life

I admire people who push boundaries, mostly. Athletes, artists, entrepreneurs–they all thrive on pushing the limits of what they can accomplish. And we all benefit somehow.

But there is a mindset that all there is to life is what we can accomplish in the here and now. The Easter miracle is seen as nothing more than a metaphor for going beyond ourselves, or something like that. What is missed is that at the end of what we can now see and hear and experience, there is a limit.

The Resurrection of Christ brings a new reality to this realm, breaking in from beyond and making a path toward it. In this we find life that is limitless, expressed in the here and now with limitless compassion,, limitless forgiveness, limitless love.

It is pride, the unhealthy kind, that says I will push the boundaries only of what I can do of my own strength and will, even if opening ourselves to something, someone, beyond ourselves means we experience what truly is limitless. But that would means accepting that pushing beyond boundaries as a gift. And some of us would rather stick to what we can do ourselves, thank you, even if it means we are ultimately limiting ourselves. Something to ponder seriously as we anticipate celebrating the defeat of what ultimately limits earthbound life.

 

Happy

You can hardly go anywhere these days without hearing the Pharrell Williams song, “Happy.” A report by Carol Graham of the Brookings Institute may indicate that it will not resonate with people uniformly through the life cycle, at least as Brookings Institute report might indicate.

Apparently there is a worldwide trend for people to have a U-shaped pattern to their life-long degree of happiness. Middle age is tough, it seems. Well, middle age can be especially tough. I would not want to minimize, having had my own very low times, how difficult certain seasons and circumstances of life can be. But there is hope to sustain us through those times.

In Romans 15:13 Paul indicates that there is a happiness that does not depend on circumstances.  There is joy, which is not to be taken necessarily  as a jump-up-and-down kind of thing (though it certainly can be), but is based on the certain knowledge that there is the Lord who loves and values us, and has a purpose for us. We know of this, and put it into practice in various ways, through the welcoming of the Holy Spirit.

And, as the context Romans 15:13 makes clear, mutuality of acceptance and service is key to experiencing such enduring inner peace.

 

Bread with a Purpose

The United Nations has just released the second part of a study  on the effects of climate change. It seems, no surprise, it will mean our over-consuming lifestyle is ever more certain to contribute to displacement, hardship and hunger, especially for those least able to deal with such developments. Meanwhile, there has also just been a warning that for some of us our breakfast is going to get more expensive–something a lot of us, if we’re honest–will be more directly concerned about.

This may be impetus for some of us to pray more frequently and fervently for the Lord to give us “our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). But there is a more complete way to draw on this part of the model prayer Jesus gave, in connection with what comes before that particular part. Before the petition about what we need for each day, there is the invitation to hallow the Lord’s name, welcome the realization of his kingdom, and to look for his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Perhaps then, the “daily bread” part that then follows has to do with being nourished and strengthened to have our part in the fulfilling of the previous good things. In so doing, perhaps we will conduct our lives in a more responsible way, one that will help to alleviate, maybe even start to correct, some of the problems of supply in our earthly life that might have led us (back) to prayer in the first place.