All-Consuming

It’s a busy season. Family to visit. Gifts to exchange. Shopping to do. I’m struck by the way so much of our culture has been able to recognize the deep need in the human soul and sell it, promising the life we’ve always wanted if we just purchase this pair of tennis shoes, or that leather coat, or this necklace for our wives or that extended DVD set.

It can happen with even the most important things. “The church, you see” explains Paul, “is not peripheral to the world.” Oh really? It hardly seems so when you watch television or visit the nearest mall. I wonder if Paul would have thought differently if he’d had a Macy’s or Sears in his hometown. This is, afterall, what Christmas seems to be about. Even many Christians I know seem to be caught up in the consumerism and commercialism of the season. But Paul is unapologetic in the finality of his statement. “The world is peripheral to the church” (Ephesians 1, The Message). The church, meaning the body of Jesus on earth where all the action is, where the life of Jesus happens.

There was a fascinating study done at UCLA where some mice were given injections of speed to see how long it would take them to run themselves to death. Control mice that weren't injected were placed with them. You know what happened? The control mice ran themselves to death just as quickly as the others. It's the nature of the world to run around purposeless, distracted, desperate to fill in the missing pieces with shopping, sex, empty conversation, complication in relationships, and the like.

And so, DeAnn and I have begun pulling back, resisting, refusing to allow ourselves to be taken out and ours hearts to be completely overwhelmed with the "needs" around us – the shopping lists, the family visits, the frantic pace, the buzzing and whirling and crowding. We are withdrawing to the center, turning our gaze to the One who came for us, and starting to remember.

John Eldredge recently wrote a fantastic reminder to the deeper and truer reason behind Advent season. It is so that we may remember and anticipate. “Not only is it an opportunity to reflect – for several weeks – on the fact that God came, it is also an opportunity to lift our eyes towards his return. He will come again.”¹

Together we are seeking out the stories that remind us of God coming through for us, and for His promise that He will come again to set all things aright. We are to love Him. We are to be consumed with Jesus and with His kingdom, with His presence and with His promises. We are to see Him, to set our eyes on Him, as a babe born in a manger, as the Son who came to take our place and ransom us, as a Warrior, as a Friend, as the image of the Father, as our one true love. As Dallas Willard has said, “The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus, to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. It is to adore him.”

We are among those He came for, and for whom He will again return. He came to make Himself known “to the humbled, to the fringes of the population, heralded by goats, by sheep, and by astrologers from the east.”²

May we remember. May we awaken to the deep and unbelievably great news that we have been invited into a Great Tale, “a Story that begins, “Once upon a time” and ends “And they lived happily ever after…”²

¹John’s letter can be found here.
² This comes from "Emmanuel, God with Us"