Good afternoon, and welcome.
It is times like this that make those of us who remain alive
think yet again of the reality of life and death, mortality and immortality,
and the relationships we have with each other.
These times also force us to think of those things in life that are
truly important compared with those things we often place in positions of great
importance, but which pale in comparison to reality.
You know what I’m saying.
Those truly important things are a life well-lived; people in our lives
who we love and cherish; family ties; friendships; and for people of faith,
most importantly our relationship with the God of heaven and earth. The pseudo-important things…those things we
often place in positions of greatest importance in our lives…power, wealth,
prestige, influence, accumulation of things…those things suddenly shrivel and essentially
go away when we are facing our final frontier.
It is sad and puzzling to me why we don’t recognize the
truly important things of life sooner.
Why is it that people, relationships, family, and our faith in God seem
to come front and center when we are in our final weeks of battle with
incurable cancer? Why do we humans hold
on to the false narrative that gives preeminence to wealth, prestige, and the
accumulation of the material? Why do we
persist in holding on to idols crafted by mankind instead of holding on to the
One who created us and wants us to share life, freedom, and endless joy with
Him for eternity.
I can relate to those questions because I myself am
guilty…as are we all…of doing that exact thing.
I have, and continue at times to hold on to that false narrative. I find it so difficult to let go of the
material…let go of the here and now…let go of the selfishness of me-first. I am right there in it with Paul the great
Apostle when he said, “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with
me. For in my inner being I delight in
God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of
my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is
subject to death? Thanks be to God, who
delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
And Paul also provides, in the next sentence, the
explanation for this deliverance through Jesus.
He writes, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has
set you free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the
flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a
sin offering. And so he condemned sin in
the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully
met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Now, I don’t pretend to understand all there is to know
about what Jesus did for me or how his death on a Roman cross somehow made me free,
as Paul says, “from the law of sin and death.”
I can’t fathom how one man dying some 2,000 years ago can have any
effect on me, or anyone else for that matter.
But when I look at the entire Biblical story from cover to cover, I see
evidence of a God who loves me, who had (and still has) a plan for me, and who
tells me that the death of Jesus did indeed have a profound effect on me and my
relationship with this God. And as Peter
the apostle said once to Jesus when Jesus asked his disciples…his adult students…if
they would leave him as the rest of the crowd just had, “To whom shall we
go? You have the words of eternal life.”
There is no other place, person, or thing we can go to. We can’t take our prestige, power, or wealth
with us when we die. Jesus is the
one…the only one…who has the words of eternal life, and is the only one we can
take with us when we cross that final frontier.
Blessings,
No comments:
Post a Comment