Too Close for Comfort

O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

-Psalm 8:1, 3-4

Can you imagine what the enormous black sky, peppered with a million bursts of light, must have looked like to David as he peered into it? No other lights to compete with its glory. No light pollution to drown out its splendor. The only noises those of midnight bugs and bats and prairie animals. He is overcome as he beholds its magnificence. His heart explodes with wonder as he ponders it all. Its vastness. Its beauty. That God had time and creativity and enormity enough to create it all – not just once upon a time, but this night, right then where David was. Unique. Never again would he behold it exactly as it was then. Everything would move. All would be different the next evening as God set out again to lavish his universe with His creative passion, expressing Himself to his children, pursuing their hearts. David got it. In this moment, he was captured by this God-of-Love. He recognized God’s pursuit and wooing, and collapsed into it.

“What is man that you are mindful of him?” he asks as his jaw drops and his breath stops in his throat. “How could you even have time for man?” his heart wonders. And yet… And yet… God not only had time for David, but he did it all for him, to have his heart.

But for our modern, sophisticated, educated minds it is too much to think that God would create such a lavish universe just for us. Sadly, we come up with anything we can to distance ourselves from His passion: scientific reasoning to explain away His creations, stuffy academic postulations to push back His passion; equations and formulations to eradicate His desire. Explain it away. Keep our distance. We are "enlightened" to learn that the earth is not the center of the universe at all and translate it to mean that we are not the center of God's heart or longing or the point of His creation. We become insignificant specks of particles on an insignificant planet held in place by the awesome force of gravitation (not the power of God Himself) in an insignificant corner of one of a limitless number of universes. To translate, it means that we have become not the center of a cosmic battle, an invasion, a rescue, a Redemption, but meaningless and pointless accidents in a sea of atoms and subatomic particles.

We come up with our scientific posits because the Reality is too much to bear, much like those in C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory who cannot bear to walk upon the grasses of heaven as they are because the blades are so substantive, and they only shadowy wraiths, that they puncture their feet and cause great pain. They are unwilling to grow in their soul-substance by standing in the blinding light of the unbearable glory. We rearrange the order of the Psalm to read not "what is man that God is mindful of him," but "what is God that man is mindful of him?"

I understand. I do the same thing. I often wake and rush off to my checklist of things to do rather than stand or kneel in the Presence of the Creator. I dabble in distraction rather than confide or be confided in by this Friend (see Psalm 25:14), to know His deep heart. I work to secure my place in the world and with the people around me rather than revere the Lord God (revere = adore, applaud, treasure, worship, wonder at, fall for, cherish, embrace, cleave to, enjoy, desire, grab a hold of, run after). I suspect we all do this. The disciples did. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John witnessed the astounding glory of Jesus revealed. Jesus took off his veil, so-to-speak, and Moses and Elijah were there, too, in their full glory. Peter and the other two were terrified and fell face down on the ground. Peter told Jesus that they could erect three shelters, one each for Jesus, Elijah, and Moses (Matthew 17:4). Tents, in other words. Tabernacles. Something to hide their blinding glory from the three disciples. It was too much for them. God honored their fear and sent a cloud to veil the glory from them. He will, it seems, only give us as much of Himself as we can bear.

But what happens when we pause and really consider even the work of creation? Spend half an hour doing nothing at all except staring out into the starry night. Don’t try to discover the constellations or name the objects you see; just let yourself be pierced. What do we discover when we do? That God is glorious. Copernicus gave us the heliocentric model of the solar system, that is, that the sun is the center and we orbit around it. We took that to mean that we were not the center of anything at all. That is where we got it wrong. Deadly wrong.

We are the center of more than we think.

Why would the earth need to “tremble before Him” (Psalm 96:9)? Why would “the heavens rejoice” and the “fields be jubilant” and the “trees of the forest sing for joy” (v. 11 & 12, 1 Chronicles 16:33)? Because the Lord “comes to judge… the peoples in his truth.” Or, in the words of Eugene Peterson’s Message paraphrase, “He comes to set everything right on earth.” Because of His redemption and rescue of His people… because He has set His heart on bringing us home (see Isaiah 44:23). Everything that God does is to bring us back to Himself (see Ecclesiastes 3:14).

God has made us for Himself. Adam and Eve lived in glorious union with God. But God’s enemy and ours came and stole God’s love from Him. Adam and Even fell from grace – that is, they fell from God. And now, a cosmic battle has ensued in which God has come with fierce intention to free us back for Himself. We are the center of a great cosmic battle. All of the earth is to shout to God with joy, you see, because He is powerful enough to cause His enemies to “cringe before Him” (Psalm 66:3) and to win us back from them. He is not only a restless Lover in pursuit of the bride that His enemy took from Him (that’s us), but He is also a Warrior with enough courage and power and strength to win us back. He will find us. He will win us. He will have us. Jesus coming, dying, and rising again has proven that much.

What is man that God is mindful of Him? Man is in fact God’s whole desire. His whole heart is bent on us. On you and me. Intimacy and communion and the adventure of His love is the whole purpose of God for us. That is the purpose for which we have been called (Romans 8:28).

God will give us as much of Himself as we will allow. Jesus is the glory of God fully revealed to us (Colossians 1:15). Through Him we can approach even God's throne with confidence and boldness, without fear or hesitation or reserve (Hebrews 4:16). We can come back to our Lover. We can come back home. This is the invitation of God to us through Jesus. This is our place. This is the beginning of our life -- the adventure of walking with God.

Pour Out the Rain

Lord, when I get to Heaven… can I help pour out the rain?
-Buddy Jewell

What will we do in heaven?

It’s such an important question. Peter, this “Rock” of the church that knew Jesus in a profoundly personal way, a man who knew something of how not to lose heart, how to live with passion and joy, with desire and anticipation, says that we are to set our hope fully on the grace to be revealed to us when Jesus returns (see 1 Peter 1:13).

Really? Did you catch that? Fully? Set our hope fully on the grace to be revealed?

Earlier in the same letter, Peter makes this really astounding proclamation. He says, “Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we've been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you'll have it all—life healed and whole.” (from The Message).

The Day is coming. All will be ours. Life. A life healed and a life whole. Our wounds will be dressed with leaves from the Tree of Life. The burdens we have lived under will finally be lifted off. We will shed our dead skin and enter into “the joy of the Kingdom.” We will be feasted. We will stand in silent awe. We will laugh. We will enjoy. We shall be filled. We shall rest.

But then what?

No, I’m serious. What do we do then? We will be healed and made whole. Oh, praise God. This is such good news! But… to what end? For what purpose? Is it just to sit around all day? Because frankly, after a few years of napping, I’m ready to go again.

During the long days of summer when I was young, my parents would lay out a blanket in the shade for my brother and I to nap on after the hours of play wore us out. I somehow always woke up last, and to my chagrin would hear laughter and activity going on someplace around a corner -- playing in a waterhose or catching bullfrogs at the pond -- and I would always feel left out. The fun, the adventure, was elsewhere, and I was ready to be done with rest and enter into it again.

The question, “What will we do in heaven” is such an important one because how can we hope for something that we do not even look forward to? And who can look forward to an eternity of sitting it out, of napping, of “eternal rest”? It was Peter Kreeft who said that dullness, not doubt, is the greatest enemy of our faith.

A few days ago I went on a hike in the Ponca forest reserve that borders the northern edge of the Boston Mountains in northwest Arkansas with a few friends. It is a rugged terrain of deciduous wood, cut in two by the meandering Buffalo River, and edged by two- to three-hundred-foot sheer limestone bluffs. We came to an overlook, and stretched hundreds of feet below and before us was the river valley. It was breathtaking, and we sat and gorged ourselves on its beauty…

…for about ten minutes.

But then we took turns scurrying as close to the edge as we dared and started lobbing rocks off. And then we tried to knock over dead trees just behind us in the forest. And we looked for another rim to climb. There were waterfalls to discover and swimming holes to find and caves to explore. There was a lot more to do.

At the end of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, the great ones of the stories come together again, and at last. They enter into the fullness of the Kingdom of God, finally. And what do they do there? They soar up waterfalls and fly across the landscape. They breathe and they laugh and they discover and they create.

We were made in the creative image of God, and He has set out to restore us back into that image so that we may rule with Him. It is why He give us so much freedom – freedom to love and choose Him and freedom not to (see Revelations 3:20), and the experience of bringing the Kingdom of God now into this world (see Matthew 16:19). It is why in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) those who did well, those who lived from the heart and trusted in their Master were given even more to do, more to enjoy. It becomes apparent in that story that they were being trained and tested so that, when the Master came to see they could handle it, they were entrusted with even more of His spoils.

It is why Jesus said that we are in process to become “fully trained” to be like the Teacher (Luke 6:40). Because we will one day rule alongside Him in all that is to come.

There is much ahead, much yet to explore and discover. Can you imagine what it will be like to help pour out the rain with God? And carve out the canyons. And hang “gold sunsets o’er a rose and purple sea.”

And in the perfect time, O perfect God,
When we are in our home, our natal home,
When joy shall carry every sacred load,
And from its life and peace no heart shall roam,
What if thou make us able to make like thee--
To light with moons, to clothe with greenery,
To hang gold sunsets o'er a rose and purple sea!
-George MacDonald

Where They Lie

For the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.
–Jesus of Nazareth (Luke 19:10)

I’m pierced by how personal the gospel is. I mean, how different it applies to each of us in such specific ways, and yet it is the only salvation for us all, this daring rescue by Jesus. I’ve come to believe that he was about more than just granting me some kind of asylum, just “letting me in” when I die. And frankly, I’ve always heard this bit of Scripture quoted from Luke 19:10 to mean that I was a lost bit of wretch, but now with Jesus appearing on the scene I can be a “found” bit of wretch, with “found” meaning still really messed up on the inside, but I get to spend all my messed-up days playing harps on clouds in heaven when I die.

Yea.

This, my friends, isn’t what Jesus was saying. The good Jews of Jesus’ day would have well recognized who Jesus was talking about when he referred to himself as the “Son of Man.” He was referencing the Old Testament accounts and prophecies that used the phrase and referred to the Messiah, such as Daniel 7:13-14. But He was communicating so much more than just a simple nod to the reality of his divinity.

Let’s catch up with Jesus there at Zacchaeus’s house where he made the statement.

All right. Jesus comes into the town of Jericho, and he is swarmed (as was usual) by this crowd that were a mix of people who wanted to see Jesus do something really cool (they were there because he was happenin’) and those who were genuinely desperate for Jesus to heal them, or touch them, or speak to them. This day, it was the man in the sycamore tree that caught Jesus’ eye.

We know a lot about Zacchaeus, even in the brief description we have of him. He was a tax collector, and he was wealthy. Which means that he was a conniving scoundrel who stole from anyone he could, a traitor to his people, and apparently pretty successful at it. Oh, and he was short. And he made good tree-climbing decisions – sycamores are easy trees to climb.

So Jesus walks right up to the tree. Can you imagine what Zacchaeus must have been thinking? He only wanted to get a better lay of the land here. He only wanted to see who this man that everyone was going on about really was. And having the great people-reading skills they taught him in dirty-trickster-traitor school, I’m sure he felt pretty confident he could size this fella up pretty easily.

Except that Jesus came right up to him. And worse than that, he singled him out in the crowd. But maybe worst of all, Jesus invited himself over for dinner.

But, and here’s where something amazing happens that we have to infer from what we read here, Zacchaeus welcomed him gladly. And more than that, he made amends from his heart for what he had done in his identity as a traitor-thief. He gave it up – not the actions, but the identity and security of being wealthy and untouchable. Something really deep and very real was sought out, was reached, was touched, and was healed in Zacchaeus. Maybe it was that Jesus simply said his name – how did he know who he was? Had he always? Did Jesus know him whenever he had ripped that old widow off and stole everything she owned? And whenever he had sold his friend’s life off for a few pounds of silver? And whenever he had cursed God under his breath when he thought to himself, “I can never be touched – I am wealthy.” And yet Jesus came to him, yet he singled him out, yet he still wanted to be with this “sinner”?

Whatever happened, you have to admit it was pretty dramatic. And it happened pretty fast. That’s when we catch Jesus saying that he came “to seek and save what was lost.”

Now, notice the word he uses. He says what was lost. Not who. What. In other places, he means who. But not here. He means what.

What does he mean “what”? What “what”?

Back to how personal the gospel is. The “what” that Jesus sought out and saved in Zacchaeus was a place in him, a part in him, something shattered, broken, tossed aside, frozen, stolen. Something deep (look how transforming it was for him to have it back) and something crucial (he could not recognize God without it) and something personal (so much so, that we easily miss what just took place).

This is not an isolated incident in the gospels, by the way. Jesus did something similar with Peter in John 21 and the woman at the well in John 4 and Nicodemus in John 3. It’s all over the place, in fact. You just need eyes to see this really beautiful and really restorative and really personal aspect of the ministry of Jesus.

Okay, so a few minutes ago I was standing in my bathroom looking at myself in the mirror and this realization hits me that I am afraid. I cannot name the fear. I do not know what it is about or where it comes from, but I do know, at least, that I often suppress it or ignore it or just try to bury it. Tonight I let it rise from within me and I asked Jesus what was going on there. It is the result of some lies, hidden and subtle and undiscovered, that I have bitten into, that I have believed – about something really important – God’s heart, maybe, or my own, or my place with Him. I simply prayed, “Come, Jesus, show me where they lie.”

Nothing happened. Not yet. But I know it will. It has countless times before. This is what Jesus does to “seek and save” those lost places in us. To bring “the truth in the inmost parts” (Psalm 51:6). He will raise issues, bring up fears or hurts. He will take us back to where something in our souls was shattered like glass in order to find the pieces and bring them all back together, melted back into one whole piece by the fires of his Spirit. It’s the way Eugene Peterson phrases what Paul says in Ephesians 3, that we are to be made “whole and holy” by God’s love, or the Amplified’s translation of Ephesians 2:21: “In Him the whole structure is joined (bound, welded) together harmoniously, and it continues to rise (grow, increase) into a holy temple in the Lord.”

It is a glorious restoration. God is rebuilding the temple, and we are His glorious ruins. Stone by stone, piece by piece, He is bringing us back together within ourselves and within each other that we may be “for the display of His splendor” (Isaiah 61:3) – healing, rescuing, speaking our names, calling us, seeking out the broken pieces, showing us “where they lie” that we might know the truth that sets free – really free. That like Zacchaeus, salvation (life!) may come to us.

Modus Operandi

I recently read a really great book on living in the love of God called “So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore?” In it, a man named John approaches proselytizers on a street corner screaming at passers-by that they will be going to hell. He nears one of the accusers, and, full of sadness, says to him, "You really have no idea what motivates you, do you?"

It struck me as odd, this comment. Not because I’m not also put off by the accusers’ remarks, or by their apparent misunderstanding of the Scriptures or even the heart of God, but by the use of the word “motivation.” Reading through the story, you come to understand John as a man of God, a man who knows Him very intimately.

Thinking through it some, I think in that question John really cut to the heart of the matter, the same as Jesus often does in His approach to us. He is always interested more in what is in our hearts, the “why’s” and “what’s” and “what’s up’s” than he is in our actions, those “how’s” and “where’s” and “when’s.”

I recently had a conversation with a friend where I read a Fredrick Buechner quote to him. In the quote, Buechner essentially states that when we are thinking of a vocation for our lives, we should listen to the voice of our own gladness. My friend insisted that it is better to listen to the voice of Jesus and not our own gladness. I argued that I think this is what Buechner meant by his statement, that Jesus will often speak to us through the desires written long ago in our hearts, that the calling on our lives will be where we feel the most passion and energy. Going back and forth, my friend could still only see the actions that Jesus calls us to, and not the motivation behind them. Possibly the most important question of our time is “What is it, exactly that Jesus wants for us, not from us?”

If only the man known as the “expert of the law” had been able to see that question when he came to Jesus asking what was necessary to “inherit eternal life.” Jesus, probing his heart, asked him in return, “What’s written in the law? How do you read it?” (Jesus could very well have asked him, “You’re the “expert of the law,” right? Your identity is in knowing everything about God so that you can lord that knowledge over others, all the while stealing their God-given place of intimacy with me. So, you tell me. How do you read the law?”) The man replied as he was taught, with the Scripture to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”

And then comes the most confusing verse in all of Scripture. Jesus says to the man, “Yeah, that’s right. Do that, and you’ll have life.”

What? Do that? Do that? How does a man just “do” that, as if it were a task you could check off at the end of the day? For any of us who understand love even a little bit, it is not something you do, it is something that flows. That statement to us who have tasted love is equivalent of saying, “Yes, water is necessary to sustain life in our bodies. Do water and you will live.” It is nonsensical. How do you “do water”?

In the same way, how do you “do love”?

And that was Jesus’ point. You can’t. You don’t “do love.” You live it. You live with it. You feed it. You abide in it. You enjoy it. You let it grow. And love is not the point. Our place with God restored is the point. He is the vine, and we are the branches of that vine.

Immersed in a society that is task-oriented and consumer-driven, most of our ears have been deafened to the call of the heart, much like the expert in the law. We hear “love the Lord your God” as a call to action, not a call to intimacy. We’ve all heard the famous Mountain Dew commercials that declare “Do the Dew,” when, in fact, all you can “do” with Mountain Dew is to drink it. It actually “does” its thing in you – either to hydrate you or to give you a rush of caffeine.

The tragedy of that encounter in Scripture is that the man left thinking he could just add “love the Lord your God with everything you are” as another item on his checklist as something to do to inherit, or earn or get, real life.

Can you imagine if a twig laying on the ground was thinking to himself, “Hmmm. I wonder how I can get nutrients. How can I grow?” He lays there baking and drying out in the hot sun. The trunk of the tree says to him, “You are a branch of mine. What do you think you must do to have life?” “I think,” replies the twig, “that I’ll go down my checklist. First, I’ll try to bury myself in the dirt…” and on he goes. The tree knows, of course, that the only way this branch will live again is to be grafted back into the tree so that the life-giving sap of the tree flows into him.

There is much action in the Kingdom of God. In fact, living the life of God is the most active and adventurous thing we do, but only as an overflow of the life of the heart. He loved us first, and our love is a response to His.

And then, we have life. It begins there, in intimacy with God, and it grows and it extends from it.

Picture Elijah. This fella was a prophet of God, which means that he was friends with God and that God entrusted to him his heart and words to bring a nation back into fellowship and intimacy with Himself. And what kind of life did he get to live? Well, let’s just say he didn’t spend his life in La-Z-Boy flipping through channels. At one point, God called him to Mount Carmel, where he was about to have a showdown with one of Israel’s enemies. 1 Kings 18 describes that encounter.

But even Elijah drew his life and breath from the intimate time he spent with God. Just after the encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah fled in fear and weariness toward a cave. God tenderly ministers to Elijah, twice bringing him food and water. He travels to Mt. Horeb to hide and rest in a cave. God comes to him and listens to his laments. Elijah is worn out from simply “doing” and needs restoration. God sends a great wind to the mountain, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. But God was in none of these. Then, Elijah hears a “gentle whisper,” and it is here in the whisper that he finds God. There, in that tender embrace from God, Elijah’s life is restored. He is not doing. He is, in fact, fainting into the embrace of his God.

In the ‘80s BMX movie Rad, Cru is trying to learn to perform a backflip on his bike. Bruised and worn out from slamming on his back again and again, Christian finally tells him, “You’re letting your body move your head. Let your head lead, and your body will follow naturally.” On the next attempt, Cru lands his flip perfectly.

We’ve all heard the phrases, “Use your head,” or “Get your head in the game.” That’s another way of saying, “Put your heart into this. Let this be your entire focus of energy and passion.” But what if you can’t? What if you cannot put your heart into the game? Can you still play well?

In the Kingdom, the answer is no. The heart is central. The heart is first.

That is why, I think, Hebrews tell us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus. We will follow with action and intention what motivates us in the heart. If our faces are set like flint on the life of Jesus and the love of God, and if we are experiencing them daily as we abide in Jesus, then the effects of love will shine through. Our motivation will be love. Love, and the life of God, will be our modus operandi.

It was the summer of 2003. I and a small band had traveled across the globe to a small village in southern Sudan where we would be shooting some footage for a film we were making on the life of persecuted Christians. Unable to sleep early one morning, I flipped through the Bible and landed on a verse that had before given me a lot of encouragement, Jeremiah 29:11, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Angry for reasons that I could not explain, I left the hot, cramped hut and walked outside. Due to the absence of electricity, I found myself enshrouded in a nighttime darkness I had never encountered before. There, under a billion brilliant stars in a sky that stretched wider than the continent, I lamented to God in despair, “I can’t! I can’t find you, then, because I can’t seek you with all my heart! I don’t do anything with all my heart!”

I didn’t expect a response, but I got one anyway. It was a single word, one that has ricocheted and reverberated in my soul ever since, and one that pierced me with its finality and invitation. It was simply the word, “Exactly.”

And possibly for the first time that night on the other side of the world, I got it. I understand what the cross had really done for me. I am grafted back in. My primary role now is to simply abide there with Christ, and to let His life and love flow into and through me. That will call for much action on my part, without doubt. Except now, that action can be a result of a newfound energy of the soul and desire of the heart. A new modus operandi.

"Life Sucks"

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

“Life sucks, then you die.” My eye caught the bumper sticker on my way to work the other day. I read it again, and then I glanced at the passengers inside the car. I couldn’t tell by looking what had brought them to such a state of heart. “Really?” I thought. “That’s it, then? That’s the final statement of reality on life. It’s simply a drag, then it’s over?”

It’s along the same lines, really, with the phrase I’ve heard a million times growing up in the Midwest, “All you have to do in life is pay taxes and die.” It’s said with a little smirk, and always just following a conversation on all of the duties and tasks that you have to accomplish in any given day. You just spent hours running back and forth between the license bureau and the tag agency to make sure your vehicle is road-legal. You hurry back from working eight hours to rustle up a quick dinner for hungry children before you have to get them ready for bed and prepare their lunches for the next day, only to find just a couple of precious hours left in the day to do a couple of loads of laundry and feed the dog. The doctor has diagnosed yourself or someone close to you with a serious illness, and you have some life-altering choices to make concerning everyone around you. Heavy decisions. Drudgery duties. A line like “all you have to do in life is pay taxes and die” feels at a time like that a lot like consolation, something you say to make yourself believe that these other things aren’t that important in the end, that all of life will be over anyway one day, so why worry so much.

So much of our days are a tug-of-war between worry and resignation, and we manically maneuver back and forth on that tight-rope walk fearful of losing our footing and desperate to balance everything.

And too often the church hasn’t offered much else to that dilemma. Still the most commonly preached message is that we need to shape up or be shipped out, and that if we can just get it all right morally (more to balance, you see), then maybe one day when we die we can find a little rest. In other words, “Pay your taxes (taxing duties) to God or to the church or to those that matter, and then you get to die.” The message is called salvation, but it has nothing to do with salvation, really. Biblical scholar Dallas Willard says that really the word salvation in the Bible could be replaced simply with the word life. Try it out. Give it a whirl. Look up some Scriptures like Psalm 13:5 (“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.”) and Psalm 27:1 (“The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?”) or 2 Corinthians 6:2 (“For he says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.”) and replace salvation with life. Is that what those messages we so often hear really offer? Life to the full? Does your heart rejoice when you hear about how much more you need to get right, that not only your life depends upon it, but your eternity? Does it seem as if that message paints the Lord God as a “stronghold of my life,” one who sustains and builds up and brings life to your bones? Does it sound like that message of “salvation” is one of help from God?

Because here’s what I read: “How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him.” That’s from Ephesians 1. Do you hear the passion? “High places of blessing.” Whoa. Really? Okay, my ears are pricked. What’s that about? Paul is exultant. I mean, he is practically jumping up and down in his sandals. Why? What’s got him so hooked, so excited? He goes on to say, “Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love…” And he continues, “…to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” (Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message)

Look at the key words here. Blessed. Focus of his love. Whole and holy. Adopt. Family. Celebration. Lavish gift-giving. Beloved.

This ain’t your grandma’s salvation religion. We’re talking something wholly better and greater than we have ever yet dared possible.

In his daring book "So You Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore," Jake Colsen tells the story of working in a large, profitable church but feeling incredibly empty and dead inside. He encounters a man, John, who seems to know Jesus very personally, intimately. The conversation between them goes like this:

“You know what this whole thing is about, Jake?” John sat back on the bench,
crossed his arms over his chest and looked out across the playground. “It’s
about life—God’s real life filling your own. The life of God is not some theological abstraction. It is fullness…freedom… joy and peace of living in him that endures in the face of your worst circumstances. That life was in the Son and he came to share it with anyone who would put his or her trust in him."

“It’s not about working hard, big ministries or new buildings. It’s about life that you
can see, taste and touch; something you can frolic in every day that you live. I know my words fail to describe it adequately, but you know what I’m talking about. You’ve had moments like that, haven’t you?”

Emmanuel, God with Us

It is perhaps one of the greatest understatements of all time, full of hope and mystery, and ushering in the greatest raucous that has ever burst forth on this earth. To a fearful group of wayward shepherds, keeping weary eyes open to watch their sheep late on a clear night, appears a powerful member of the Angel Armies who, upon seeing their shocked and trembling countenances, says, “Don’t be afraid. I bring you good tidings of great joy…” And so, on such a small introduction follows the greatest promise we can have, given to the lowliest and poorest of us all.

God has come. He has traveled the furthest distance from the Throne room to an unknown cave, fighting through all the forces of the Evil One arrayed against His plan, to make Himself known to the humbled, to the fringes of the population, heralded by goats, by sheep, and by astrologers from the east. Here, in this tiny infant – vulnerable, helpless, needy – rests not only our hope for life, but our restoration as well, our invitation to take our place once again in the story God has been telling for a long, long time. It is a Story of heroic proportions, of daring rescues, of passion and pursuit, of battle and adventure, and of intimacy beyond our wildest imaginations. Of heroes masked in wrappings of spittle and enemies masquerading as angels of light. It is a Story that begins, “Once upon a time” and ends “And they lived happily ever after…”

We are they. And the depths of our hearts burn with the anticipation of all that awaits, of all that began so, so long ago, of all that concludes with our full release into all we were created for…