What seems to
frustrate us most, at least for those who live actually, acknowledging tragedy and wreckage are the normal parts of life, is that we can't
ever swing free of our troubles. We may
hide from them for a while or even make light of them as if we are indifferent
to their bite but in the end troubles square us up and make full contact. The soldier on the battlefield as well as the
mother nursing her sickly child is matched up with troubles and they make a
mockery of the misty dream-state concocted by teachers of Biblical
positivism. You would think, if you
believed some, that the disciples never died, Mary Magdalene never got sick and
John found Patmos a paradise. It is
there before us though. We do get tired
of our husband's mood swings, limp with arthritis and wake up to
unemployment. The bank does foreclose on
our house and our daughter slams the door on us. This stuff of life is here and we must
recognize the root of it as it is. We
are a fool if we think Jesus never stubbed His toe, woke up with a migraine or
failed to sway the crowd. He, whose own
brothers and sisters thought Him a fool and whose mother convinced herself He
had lost His mind, lived out fully the farthest reach of sin and taking it
within Himself buried that sin in the Cross.
Our sin has been crucified with Christ but its stench remains at every
crack and mound. Its damage remains like
scars that seem to get worse with age.
What Jesus Christ has done for us though in taking our sin from us is
make it possible for His life to live within ours, for Him to actually
transform us that He and us become one new being. This means that the same strength Christ had
as He worked His way to Jerusalem is ours and the faith He had that made Him
fearless as the storm threatened to swamp the boat where He slept is the faith
we hold too. We have no monstrosity to
fear, no rejection to dread. With Christ
working His way through each part of us, we can be happy as sorrow strikes but
not with the happiness of a lunatic but with the joy of the redeemed, the joy flowing out of the One who has been
baptized by death and come up again alive to the brim. You can, in Christ, face your day not in some
drunken stupor brought on by the old wine
you drank before but in the life you have now with the Lord Himself
welling up as a fountain of Living water within you. Drink deeply from that spring and face what
comes to you with the strength God provides.
Nothing is too terrible to bear if Christ's very own blood flows through
your veins. It is not God who incites
you to worry, not Christ who pushes dread upon you. The word of God is always "fear
not" just as surely as you breathe.
Don't dread the coming storm...be glad God has given you the opportunity
to find out just how strong you now are and how unperturbed you can be.
"Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has
said, streams of living water will flow from within him." John 7:38 NIV
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