The Worst of it....

I imagine that there was a chill in the air, though I can't be sure because scripture doesn't say.  Yet even if the temperature didn't fall I have to believe that there was a prevailing feeling of cold, you know the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  A few hours before there had been laughter, cruel and cold itself, jeering  out the name of Jesus.  "King of the Jews, " I can hear one guard saying to another, "that would be the kind of sorry king these Hebrews would have."

He finally had trudged his was to Galgotha.  Could there be a more fitting name than this, place of the skull.  Those that crawled up this hill with their last measure of strength were only carried out, there was no return, no reprieve, no last minute call from Pilot.  Jesus was spent, poured out, used up by the time he made it to the top.  This once strong carpenter was reduced to stumbling about, unable to hold his own body weight courtesy of the abuse he had suffered.

I hate to imagine the scene that must have unfolded as he was laid on the cross, the metal on metal sound of the nails, the squishing sound as the nails tore through flesh.   Then the cross rises, the body weight pulls, the jolt as it slides in to place.  No, no, no, I just want to scream at the thought.  Leave him alone.....

As time drug by, I would like to say it got better, easier.  But that is not how crucifiction worked.  No, You would have to pull against the nails to take the weight off your chest to push breath in and out.  You would pull, anguish each time, growing weaker and weaker.  The trauma of the beating and whipping that Jesus had already endured had weakened his body......Yet none of this was the worst of it.

Look at the gospels and look at the moments right before Jesus died.  In Mark we are told Jesus cries out in Aramaic, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"  Can you imagine?  No, I don't think any of us really can.  Jesus against all human emotion and inclination had lived an entirely blameless life.  He was the Son of God, God incarnate, yet the father head turned away from him.  Why?  For you and me.

Jesus was a substitution for us.  He literally took on every sin that the world had or ever would commit onto himself.  In that moment the blameless life that Christ had led was smeared with every sin in my life, your life, all of us.  He was for the first time separated from God by sin.  Imagine, he had always been there, always answered, always directed.  Now in this moment, when Jesus knew he was about to perish, there was no answer, there was no reassurance.

See Jesus did take it all for us.  To be without God, to be separated from him is what we deserve.  But because Jesus chose to experience that for us, even though he didn't deserve it, we are covered by his blood.  When God looks at those of us who believe in him through Christ, he sees Jesus.  Jesus' blood is the ultimate magic eraser taking the stain of our deeds away and leaving only his perfect shining image.

Bring Me A Worm...

"Bring me a worm that can understand a man and I will bring you a man that can understand the triune God."--John Wesley

Over the years I have encountered many people who struggle with their belief in God because they cannot figure out why something happened, or didn't happen.  In college, I had a philosophy professor who revealed that his family had experienced a terrible tragedy.  He told us about his brother and the way that cancer had destroyed his body.

My professor went on to tell the class that his family had been a Bible believing group who spent hours, upon hours praying for healing for his brother.  In the end, his brother succumbed to cancer and the professor reasoned that there could be no God.  He ranted that a loving God would have healed his brother and answered his family's prayers.

At one time or another, to one degree, we have all been there.  We have prayed earnest prayers and asked out of all the right reasons to no avail.  It is not a good feeling.  We begin to say God why didn't you......

There is a flaw in this thinking, however.  When we assume that God has to answer our prayers we get our perspective backwards.  Because we serve a good God he often does provide us with our wants, but we exist to please God, not the other way around.  When a potter forms clay into a vase, the purpose of the vase is to bring pleasure to the artist that formed it.  It is not the place of the creator to spend time trying to please the vase.

Those that dismiss God because they say science disproves his existence, or that believe he cannot be real because he chose not to do something for them fail to reason about God from the right point of view.  If we begin with an open mind and admit that God could exist then we have to also say that  He  would be the originator, the creator.

If He is the creator, then He has the ability to do things that science cannot explain (creating matter, breathing life into a life-less object, etc.).  You see science does not say that God cannot exist, science says that if God exists he has to be able to do things that we can't do, can't understand, and can't explain.  Man has simply become so self absorbed and so self important that he believes he must be able to figure out everything. If a God who is capable of breaking our scientific "laws" is real, then all the things we are certain about are no longer absolutes.

Those that believe God has to answer when they call, suffer from a closely related delusion.  They believe that they must be the center of God's universe.  If there is a more powerful being then He must exist to make us happy, to wait breathlessly at our beck-and-call.  God could not possibly see a bigger picture than we can through our limited perspective, and what we want always must be what is best.  In reality, sometimes what we want, even with good intentions is not what is best, even if we think it is.

We are but worms, and we cannot understand.....

Our Amazing, Everyday God

God.  Even just writing the name seems like I should blow it up, put it in italics, and make it bold.   

GOD!
Yes, much better.  

In a way, this is exactly how it should be.  If we thought about God's name this way all the time imagine how things would change.  If we put this much emphasis on making sure that we held everything to do with God as holy, then we might not hear His name used in vain so much.   Would we feel a little more special when we bowed our heads and called out, "God, my God..."?

I think sometimes we forget who we have the privilege of calling on, and serving, and calling Father.  I think we forget the awe that should come by communicating to the One who called out into the darkness and created everything.  When we speak it's not just God that listens.  It's  God that listens.  It's the hands that split the Red Sea, the voice that shattered the walls at Jerricho, The God that tilted the earth to the perfect angle.  A half degree one way we freeze, a half degree the other way we fry.  God is amazing!

It would be so easy for us to get caught up in this greatness and believe that we couldn't access a God like that.  It would be easy to reason that a God who deals in such gigantic absolutes doesn't have time for little ole' me.  Then we remember Jesus.  As much as God calls for caps and magnitude, Jesus calls for a breathless gasp of awe, a whisper of almost unbelief, that unspoken, "it's really him" tone in our voice.

Why?  Because he could have done anything.  God incarnate!  With a word, "Angels", and winged creatures would have swooped down with a ferocity that no Sci-Fi flick could duplicate, no CGI could mimic.  With a whisper, He could have laid waist to the Romans.  He could have flung the nails that pierced his hands past the edge of eternity.  He could have done all this, but he didn't, that's why the all but silent awe.  That's why God is not unreachable.  He put on skin, he dwelled with us.  He cried when his friend died, he laughed when his friends acted stupid by a midnight fire by the Sea.  

The greatest mystery of our faith is not creation, or the flood, or the miracles of Jesus.  The greatest mystery of our faith is why Jesus?  Why such a good man, a perfect man, had to die for us.  There are a lot of theological answers that can be proven by study of the Old Testament and New Testament fulfillment.  But today, today I submit that wrapped inside these other complicated reasons, is a simple one.  We needed a way to make God reachable.  That way is through the very welcoming and reachable Jesus.


Matthew 7:7-8

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 


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