Passion Reading
In today’s essay George MacDonald looks into Jesus’ final cry of submission, “Into your hands I commit my Spirit.” This submission, MacDonald explores, is a picture of Christ’s divine lived out on our Earth. His entire relationship with the Father was a giving over to the will of Father God. This is a difficult thing for our rugged independent mind to grasp. A phrase of the day is “living your best life.” Often this is couched in terms that amount to little more than selfishness and pleasure seeking. Yet for some, for those who want to follow Jesus, living your best life is living a life of giving back. Giving back to God the life He has given you, giving to others in joyful service. This does not mean a neglect of self, it means a fullness of self found in the letting go of our grip and trusting God. Jesus commitment meant a full life for Him and a full life for us. We draw our fullness from Him, living the best life.
Grace and Peace,
Justin
Passion Week Reading
In today’s essay, Watchman Nee reminds us of the completed work of Christ on the cross. Nee’s central thesis is that when and only when we realize that our sin is forgiven because of Chris has done can we begin to become who God created us to be. He picks up on the fact that we often look for what we can do for Christ, and how we can work our way into greater depths of faith. Nee is not dismissing the active part of living out our faith but pointing out where it properly begins, “Let me repeat: no Christian experience begins with walking, but always with a definite sitting down: " And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6) ” Before we can get up and walk, we have to sit down and wait.
Nee’s final illustration is familiar but formidable in its implications for our life in Christ. He uses the imagery of a drowning person. It is nearly impossible to save a drowning person who is fighting. The person must be able to be still in the water so that someone can get to him and help. Doing nothing in most contexts can be viewed as laziness. But doing nothing in the sense of letting God take us over with His completed work in Christ is hard, trying, and necessary. Be still…..
Grace and Peace
Passion Week Reading
Today’s reading comes from Alexander Stuart Baille and his famous work, “Seven Words.” The excerpt used is “I Thirst” in which Baille mines the spiritual implications of Jesus’ very human words from the cross. The essay chronicles the many ways in which humans try to fill their ultimate need for fulfillment coming empty apart from a relationship with God. The challenge comes in the final paragraph and is pointed, especially for those of us who quickly connect with thirsting for God but some times forgot that thirst demands expression.
Humanity needs to get away from the world of “things as they are” into the the world of “things as they ought to be.” This means that men and women must learn to live for others. It is only when we can live a life of self-forgetfulness that we get our truest joy out of life. One needs to keep on thirsting because life grows and enlarges.
Today, find joy in a phone call made, a letter written, or a message sent. Today thirst for opportunity to bring joy from the joy you have found in God’s love. Today and all the next days may we thirst for more of God in us.
Grace and Peace
Passion Week Reading
We are continuing the readings from Bread and Wine for this passion week. Today’s essay is written by Dale Aukerman, a former lecturer and ordained minister for the Church of the Brethren. Aukerman takes the suffering of Jesus on the cross and overlays that image on the suffering of people through centuries of atrocities. Aukerman makes a compelling argument for peace in light of the image of Christ in the image of the oppressed. I am not sure if I would draw all of the same conclusions, but two lines in particular did stop in my tracks as I think about the week commemorating Christ’s death. Aukerman says, “God, in order that we might meet him, narrowed himself down into Jesus.” He follows up a couple of sentences later with, “He was formed that our vision might rest not only on this focal expression of the invisible God but also on this singular image of the neighbors we have been to nearsighted to see and of the myriads of human beings we have no sight to see.” The narrowing of God in the incarnation gives this week, the whole a cross a necessary focus, it gives our lives focus because He dies, and as He dies we live. There are people dying all over the world, that we see images of and hear stories about but can keep them at arms length until it hits closer to home. May we focus our prayer and compassion on those unseen neighbors who are fellow Divine image bearers and objects of Christ’s sacrificial love. In this world you (pl.) will have trouble but take heart I (Christ) have over come the world.- John 16:33