REFLECTIONS ON THE CROSS

If you missed pastor Dave Robert’s message last Sunday, August 4, I would encourage you to check it out at www.montrosechurch.org/sermons.  He spoke to us of the reality of things that led to the cross of Jesus. On the cross Jesus experienced the outcome of life in a broken and sinful world. God, being just, and without sacrificing His integrity or our freedom, took upon Himself the wages of sin, stretched out his arms and died the death we deserved.

One of the many things we see in this is the distance God will go to reconnect with that one lost sheep who became separated from the other ninety-nine.  God's love moved Him to seek us out, invite us home, do the necessary work to get us home, lavish His grace on us, and then treat us like we had never gotten separated at all.  No wonder John Newton called it "amazing grace."

From before the foundation of the world God had a plan to redeem His creation, which He knew would choose against Him.  Adam and Eve, and you and I, didn’t catch God off guard and unprepared.  Knowing full well what we would do with our freedom of choice, God created the heavens and the earth.  In love He set the redemptive process in motion so that “when the fullness of the time came,” Jesus would enter into the storyline and make His way to a cross on which He would die for you and me. (See Ephesians 1:4 and Galatians 4:4).  This led Charles Wesley, back in 1738, to write these wonderful words

Amazing love! how can it be

That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me!

He left His Father's throne above,

So free, so infinite His grace;

Emptied Himself of all but love,

And bled for Adam's helpless race;

'Tis mercy all, immense and free;

For, O my God, it found out me.

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature's night;

Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free;

I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;

Jesus, and all in Him is mine!

Alive in Him, my living Head,

And clothed in righteousness divine,

Bold I approach the eternal throne,

And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Amazing love! how can it be

God hasn’t been fair with us, has He?  Instead, He comes to us in great mercy and grace.  He enters into our stories and redeems us.  He takes us seriously and re-creates us into a people who live in light of the fact that God has loved, accepted, and forgiven us. The God who could have written us off instead “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.”   He shocked and stunned us all so much that we have to conclude with Mr. Wesley, “'Tis mercy all, immense and free.”

The amazing thing is that God has acted on our behalf.  I’m not quite sure how to process a thought like that.  It is so overwhelming, so incredible.  God has acted on our behalf, out of a love so deep that it bleeds for us.  Maybe we don’t have to “process” it to some sort of intellectual satisfaction.  Maybe this kind of love is simply to be received, accepted and embraced.  Maybe it’s okay just to let God be God, to let grace be grace, to let love be love.  Maybe it’s okay to live in a mercy that testifies, “My chains fell off, my heart was free.”  Maybe we ought simply to quit processing and do what Wesley did when he said to Jesus, “I rose, went forth and followed Thee.”  I bet a decision like this would translate into one great ride, wouldn’t it?

Blessings on you,

Rick Savage

  

TRUTHS, HALF-TRUTHS, AND KNOWING THE TRUTH

Sin isn’t a popular subject these days.  People don’t want to talk about sin much.  That’s sad, though, because all of us need to know from whence we come.  What is the old saying about not knowing history can lead to a repeating of history?  We certainly don’t need to dwell on the past but we do need to remember from whence we come.

As a reader of the Bible and a follower of Jesus I have been compelled to believe that we live in a world that is dangerous because in that world we are free to choose how we go about our lives.  Sadly, we all chose against the ways and means of our Creator.  Sin entered into our stories and everyday we must face the reality of our choosing.  If it weren’t such a serious issue it would almost be laughable how easily we can choose against God.  Sin seems to be the natural, unrehearsed, and spontaneous condition of the human heart. 

Maybe I’m just testifying but I have discovered that when I drift it always seems to be against God.  I rarely drift toward God.  My problem is not new; it goes all the way back to Genesis chapter three where the enemy of God’s ways and means weasels his way into the mind and emotions of Eve, and then Adam.  Playing on Eve’s Eve-ness the serpent moves her away from the truth into her perception of the truth, and then gets her to act on her redefinition of what the truth is.  The drumroll goes down, the deed is done, and truth gets mired into untruth.  Adam and Eve choose against God and for themselves, and the rest is one big, messy, journey of the enemy weaseling his way into the lives of men and women, and creating a climate where he gets his way so easily it stuns us.

At its simplest, sin is an undoing of what is truth.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus told His disciples in John 8:32, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set your free.”  If you and I don’t want to drift anymore, it is crucial that we come to “know the truth.”  How might we come to this place, this place where we actually “know the truth?”  Interestingly enough this truth is not simply head knowledge we can grasp and on which we can pass a test.

Truth is a person.  Jesus said, “I am the…Truth” (John 14:6). Do we know Him?  What part is He playing in our journey of life?  How do we actually come to know the truth?  Jesus said it rested in a relationship with Him.  He said, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine” (John 8:31). We come to know truth as we come to know Jesus.  In Him we “know the truth,” and in the truth we are brought to a place of freedom.

Sin brought us down.  Jesus brings us up.  Half-truths tear us apart.  Jesus’ truth sets us free.  Deception rules in the world.  Jesus’ truth rules in the human heart.  In the inner place of freedom sin is brought to its knees and we realize that we don’t have to live in the muck and mire.  The enemy seems to be all about muck and mire.  Jesus is about abundant life (John 10:10). 

Eve and Adam got it wrong, but I’m not going to point my finger at them as I taunt them with the “what where you thinking?” question.  They knew they got it wrong and that they had to live in light of their choosing; and, truthfully, they simply did the very thing I do so often—choose poorly, choose selfishly, choose as if my story is more important than any other story. 

Yet Eve and Adam had one thing going for them.  They had God.  They chose against God but he never chose against them.  And, He will never choose against you, either.  He won’t let sin go unchallenged in you, but He will fight for your life with all that is in Him.  Satan may inundate us with His crafty scheming, as he did with Eve and Adam, but Satan is not Lord.  He is good at what he does, but He is not sovereign. 

I have come to two conclusions.  First, I do desperately need God in my life; and I emphasize “desperately.”   I am capable of sin in word, thought and deed, and I need a Savior, someone who can be a part of my life right down in the midst of all the stuff.  Secondly, I have that Savior.  Jesus has come right down into the midst of all it means for me to be who I am, and He has come truthfully.  He is not deceitful, spreading half-truths.  He’s the real deal.  He lives as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6) in me and in Him I don’t have to drift or crash and burn just because the deceiver shows up with salesman-like skill.

Sin is a part of the story of our lives and our world, but so is God. Sin separates, divides, manipulates; God reconciles.  I can live with that.  Jesus nailed it down secure when He said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

God bless you as you walk with Jesus and make good choices because He is in your life.

BAPTISM

BAPTISM

I love rain.  A good storm envelopes me in peace and opens me up to a Power greater than myself.  Not everyone is sympathetic with my mysticism, but I don't care. 

           

I love rain. 

I like to take walks within her embrace and to meander along until her drops become one with my sweat. 

I like to get drenched as I play in the puddles of nature's creation and to make my way through the blanket of wetness that soaks my body and fills my soul with joy.

           

I like to watch the palms move in the mist and a thousand other trees stand in exaltation as they, almost in unison, sway to the hymn of nature. 

           
And, I see God in the rain.  I feel Him in the mist and sense Him in the breeze.  He is near in the moving clouds and present in the little streams that make their way to join other streams as they move to destinations chosen either by nature or construction.

           

Rain mystifies me and reaches depths in my nature that ever remind me I am baptized in drops of water that flow, not from the sky, but from a well whose waters not only refresh my body but energizes my soul, a well of water whose depths know no limits, whose Source is God, and whose drenching is eternal life. 

I recently read somewhere this probing thought of Anglican Priest, Philip Gill.  He said, “‘I am baptized!’ Apparently Martin Luther, the great 16th century figure of the reformation used to take great comfort from these words. When it seemed to him that the whole church had left the precepts of the Gospel, when he was under scrutiny from Church officials as to the truth of his beliefs, when his life was under threat and when he suffered self-doubt he would boldly claim, ‘I am baptized’” (http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com).

I am baptized.  I’m no Martin Luther but I am baptized.  I am baptized in the life of Jesus.  By a grace I do not deserve I have been invited to live in light of the baptismal waters that declare, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).

WATER

Because of my health status I have to live with a bottle of water with me at all times so that I can sip on water throughout the day.  My salivary glands were fried in the undergoing of thirty radiation treatments in my neck and mouth area, and the lack of moister in my mouth has become a new, annoying, and daily routine for me.  It’s a challenge but it is my lot, and I have tried to rise to the occasion to do what I must do to maintain my health.

With this new way of being in my world I have been thinking a lot about something Jesus said.  To a woman at a well in Samaria Jesus said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

What a wonderful image, a spring of water welling up (surging, gushing, flooding, rising) to eternal life. It reminds me of an artesian well, a well made by boring into the earth and in which the water flows up due to internal pressure of some kind.  The water rises to the surface, bubbling up.  This is how Jesus describes what it means to drink of the water of life He gives.  It’s like an artesian well; a spring of water that just keeps welling up in a person’s life. 

My doctors have drilled it into my head, “Don’t get dehydrated.”  I am told that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. Is that possible?  Furthermore, in 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger. The real shocker to me is that a lack of sufficient water is the number one trigger of daytime fatigue (according to www.Snopes.com).  According to www.livescience.com, and with a few exceptions, after three days, you need water or you'll perish. (Note to self!  Keep that bottle of water nearby).

Isn’t it interesting that the Bible is filled with references to the work of God in human life using the metaphor of water? (For example see Isaiah 12:3, 49:10, 55:1; John 7:37-39; Revelation 21:6, 22:17).  We are called to drink of the water of life.  I grew up in Southeast Missouri and the San Joaquin Valley of California. I know hot from first hand experience.  I also know the marvelous wonder of a glass of cold water on a hot summer day.  When I think of the words of Jesus my mind instantly goes back to my childhood and the value of keeping water nearby.

Jesus brings to us the awesome thought that the water of God is a spring of water, a spring that never goes dry and is always “welling up to eternal life.” “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

In Jesus we don’t just get isolated drinks of water; we get a living spring of water, always present, also redemptive, always healing, always restoring, and always filling us with the very reality of God.  It is water that baptizes us into the life of God, keeps us clean from anti-spiritual pollution, and keeps us hydrated in the realities of the kingdom of God.

I don’t know who gets the credit but I read recently this important paragraph about water.  It says, “The body needs about 3 quarts of water a day to operate efficiently. It helps break up and soften food. The blood, which is 90 percent H2O, carries nutrients to the cells. As a cooling agent, water regulates our temperature through perspiration. And without its lubricating properties, our joints and muscles would grind and creak like unused parts of some old rusty machinery.”  That’s a pretty descriptive definition of the need for water in our physical bodies, isn’t it?  It helps us understand the correlation between physical water and spiritual water, too.

The spring of water welling up in us to eternal life keeps us spiritually hydrated.  The water of the kingdom of God flows in and through us keeping us healthy, alive, and alert.  It quenches our thirst. It satisfies our inner longings.  It refreshes us when the journey gets tough.  It re-invigorates our life in Christ when we are tired and broken and in need of rest.

The water of life; It has a wonderful ring to it, doesn’t it?  And the water of life is offered to us without the need to have money because this water is without cost.  The word is, “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1).  Are you thirsty for something more?  Come.  Jesus is waiting at the well in you, and He has water that will re-ignite your life.  Thirst no more.  Come to the water.

VOCATION

In his book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Parker Palmer asks, “What am I meant to do?  What am I meant to be?” (2).  These questions are asked in the reality that many times we allow ourselves to live the life that is expected of us by significant others in our lives.  We live, but not true to who we are, what our life is about, or what it means for us to be who we are. 

Palmer directs us to a poem in which this statement is made: “Ask me whether what I have done is my life” (“Ask Me,” by William Stafford).  This statement has hit a tender spot in my life because I sometimes (often) wonder if I have ever really connected with the real me, the me created in the image of God, the me honestly seeking to live in response to that creation.  Many times I have asked “Who am I,” and “What is my life to be about,” and “How do I fit into the scheme of things?”  A thousand times I have asked, “What difference does it make that I am living or that I have lived in this world?”

As I look back at sixty-five years of being here I have wondered many times what Palmer articulates so well.   Have I not somehow stumbled into a way of being where “I had simply found a ‘noble’ way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart” (3).   

Parker Palmer has set me to thinking about myself, my life, my relation to the world in which I live, my relation to God.  I am wondering if maybe I have inadvertently lived a life of “distortion of my true self” (3).  I’m not sure I know how to process this “wondering,” but I do know that I long to live truthfully to what I have been created to be and to do.

Today I find myself at the beginning of a new season in my life where I am invited to be who I am; at least that’s how I feel about it.  In the days remaining to me I want to be extraordinarily intentional to listen to my life.  To put it another way, I want to be extraordinarily intentional to listen to the presence of God because Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you [in your midst] (Luke 17:21).

I feel like God is inviting me into a time of kingdom awareness, a time of drawing close to Him in the everyday and ordinary.  I believe the invitation has been there all along.  I have tried to walk in light of that invitation, and have to some degree, but I hunger to go deeper into the things of God.  I long for God to be God in me and in my life experiences.  I long to lay my questions, concerns, longings, and issues before Him in an honest and transparent relationship. 

I want to respond to the request, “Ask me whether what I have done is my life,” with a YES.  Yes, in Christ I have lived the life God designed in me to live.  I lived truthfully to the creative design of God in me.  Yes, I have allowed the fingerprints of God to be all over my life as He has shaped and formed me into the image of Christ in the spirit of the word which says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18). 

I long to be one of those people of whom it can be said, “Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19).