Eternity

Wow. I can’t believe its 2007. I can’t believe I’ll be turning 27 later this year. Makes me feel old…

But looking back on 2006, I have to say it was the best year of my life. The primary reason I say that is because my understanding of what the Gospel is has been transformed. Starting in September 2005, I began a journey, kicked off by a mentor telling me how “Today is the best time ever to be a Christian” (I didn’t understand what the heck he meant at the time) and introducing me to several authors. This theological journey of sorts has continued to this day and continues into deeper and deeper waters. The worldview I now have is significantly different from what I had two years ago. I love Jesus so much more. I now understand his Kingdom to be so much more real and tangible and at hand. I have so much more hope for what God is doing on this earth. I am so much more excited to be part of his family, his Body. Read the rest of this entry »

There is life in the Kingdom of God. I am assured of that. But we don’t often choose it. I’ve felt something shift in me recently, especially since I read Brian McLaren’s latest book, “The Secret Message of Jesus”. Not that there’s a whole lot new in there that I haven’t read three and four times over from every Dallas Willard book I’ve read, but its starting to sink in. We have a choice. In every moment and situation. We can choose to live life the eternal kind of way, the Kingdom way that Jesus showed us, or we can choose the normal path of this world. Its basically a realization that we have true and utter freedom in each and every circumstance. There is no place where our responses and behaviors and thoughts and feelings are dictated by what happens to us or around us. We often make that excuse. But that’s just living as a slave to this world. Jesus has set us free. He has proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” Even, or especially, in difficult, trying situations, we can respond to people and things and situations in the Kingdom way rather than the way we feel we have to respond (for “fairness’ sake”, to “set things right”, because we’ve been hurt or made angry, feel we are wronged, etc.). We can seek to bless and build up others, even when we feel misunderstood or misjudged. Regardless of whatever “rights” we would have to validly respond otherwise, we have the freedom to forgoe the path where only greater frustration, stress, anxiety and anger lie. We have the freedom to simply seek to love and encourage and constructively build up others rather than responding in kind to any mistreatment. God doesn’t save us from our circumstances, he saves us in them, giving us an alternative path, the Way, the Kingdom. We need to believe in free will more and not less. Not everything that happens to us happens for a reason. But we can make reason out of each moment by how we respond in it. God has given us true freedom by offering the Kingdom, telling us that it is near, at hand. Let us walk in it. Oh blessed freedom! Praise you God for your gift. Keep us that we may walk in your light always!

I recently wrote a post on the power of an indestructable joy. That was mostly related in terms of encouraging hope where there is despair - particularly the kind of fatalistic despair common among my neighbors in Permsup. Since then though, I’ve been thinking about the relationship of joy to pain. There is pain in despair, sure, but its a pain where an indestructable joy, drunk with the reality of hope, is a truly compassionate thing. There are many situations, however, where such joy is not compassionate but seems almost insensitive. I’m talking of situations where people have received terrible things, and at no fault of their own. Friends suffering from random, debilitating diseases, kidnapped children in northern Uganda being forced into soldier service raping and pillaging as they have been raped and pillaged, etc. Where pain exists and exists in abundance, does joy even seem relevant? While the reality of hope is still a true thing there, what difference does it make? As Henri Nouwen has been teaching me, I think the thing there is just to suffer with people.

Now this makes sense of course, everybody knows that one of the best things you can do for people in pain is just to be with them. Just show them that you care. Don’t run away from the pain, or try to make it seem less than it is. But dwell in it with them.

My question though, is how do we mesh joy with pain? Doesn’t joy and hope have anything to say unto pain? We are people of eternal hope - and we are also called to suffer with people. It’s generally assumed that joy and pain are mutually exclusive. If we have joy, we can’t be experiencing pain; if we are in pain, we can’t be experiencing joy. But is this true? It would seem to me that the entire Christian enterprise rises and falls on whether this assumption is false or not. Because in Christ, there is most certainly hope and therefore joy. But we cannot be followers of Christ unless we endeavor to suffer with those in pain. If we run away from pain, we are not followers of Christ, for Christ left all the glory of heaven to dwell among us and suffer with us. It must be true, therefore, that joy and pain can simultaneously coexist. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got done reading The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. My mind is on fire. The picture I can’t get out of my head is of the Great Solid people entreating the Ghosts to stay…but without an ounce of sorrow or pity. At every point, their joy was indestructable.

I started reading this book at the suggestion of my good friend Dan. I had previously lent Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian trilogy to him and his wife Liza. We’ve had many a discussion on issues McLaren brings up, particularly the question of hell addressed in the final book, The Last Word and the Word After That. Dan suggested that McLaren must have gotten many of his paradigms from Mr. Clive Staples. Just this morning, Dan was saying that he never really took The Great Divorce to be an analogy for heaven and hell, but for what essentially happens here on earth. Its interesting how I read it from the opposite view, but I think end up at the same point. What I mean is, if we’re talking about eternity being in every moment and every moment being in eternity, what’s the difference? Heaven begins now, as does hell. Heaven is now, as is hell. We’re experiencing heaven now, and some are also experiencing hell now. Now. And that’s exactly what Clive Staples says.

This is so amazing to me, because it means that we indeed can become like those shining solid giants in the “high country” whose joy is so indestructable. Here. Now. In Permsup, in Boston, in Los Angeles, wherever we may be. In 2006. Or 2549. Read the rest of this entry »