Understanding Resurrection

As Easter approaches we experience the human Jesus dying on the cross and becoming the Christ we all worship. He came as God’s Word and confirmed for us what God has always been like through His Love & Grace. The life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, establishes a connection that we sometimes don’t know how to live and use.

We hate to think that we can be like Jesus, but that is exactly the message He was communicating. Richard Rohr has published recent meditations about the human & divine Jesus and how we have trouble seeing ourselves in that light. Yes, He was human and divine and we just can’t plug ourselves into the divine part of Him and make it a part of us. Through the Holy Spirit we can connect with that we know is the divine and live it in our lives. Jesus is not too bashful to tell us that He expects us to connect with His divinity. That was the mission God put Him on.

Jesus tried His best to communicate this to the disciples and had to come back to them before His Ascension to finish the message He had tried so hard to instill in them. He had to do many things to be sure they got the message that it’s alright to connect with the divine in our personal ministry for the Lord. We are called to be in this together with Him forever and ever!

In John 20:11-18 we hear, "But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"

These were the instructions given to Mary Magdalene by Jesus in the garden near His tomb. Mary thought that He was the gardener at first, but soon she realized that this was Jesus speaking to her. This message sent by Jesus to the disciples, marks the beginning of the realization by them of the Resurrection.

By making it clear that His Father is our Father and that His God is our God, Jesus ties the knot on our eternal relationship with God. He is now no longer in danger and the promise is that if we turn to Him, we are in God's care also. The beautiful part about the resurrection story is that we can make it our story today. We can have the new life that Jesus talks about.

We can participate as a receiver of the good news and as a deliverer of it like Mary in this story. We can experience the same love and grace from God as if we ourselves were there looking into the empty tomb and hearing the words from the gardener who turns out to be Jesus himself. We can run and tell others of the miracle of Christ's ascension and His connecting us with God our Father and His Father forever.

This Christianity is an inclusive thing. We have a connection right to the top through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. No burnt offerings or other special requirements are needed. We must only turn to Him and accept His love and grace. In the business world there is something called a "golden parachute." This is a well-funded retirement package for the highly compensated that ensures quality of life for the rest of the retiree's life. God gives all of us a gift that ensures quality of eternal life.

My prayer for help in achieving His Will in my life is: “Father God, Thank You for being my friend for eternity. Getting to know You better every day forever is hard to get used to, but I think I'm going to like it. Thank You in Jesus' name. AMEN.”

Saving Help is Here

The Bible is full of cries from God’s children to be saved in their lives. In Psalm 69:1-3 we hear, “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing. I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying, my throat is dried, mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.”

Our faith is tested time after time and we finally put our trust in the Lord. Our human nature is many times working against us as we know we should seek the Lord.  As is said in Jeremiah 17:14 we hear, “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.”

St. Paul wakes us up as he states in Romans 14:7-8: "We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

Most of us live too much to ourselves. Even if we believe that when we die that we die to the Lord, it is hard for us to give up ourselves and live to the Lord. Our personal control over our lives is hard to relinquish. And why is that? We lack faith in the Lord. We have more faith in an investment in the Stock Market.

We deny the one to whom we belong. We have no trouble identifying with our natural parents. We know that "this is my mother and this is my father." Many adopted children long to know their real parents and search for years to find them. It is important for us to know where we come from and who we come from in a natural sense.

If we believe that God created life along with all that there is to support it, why would we not have a stronger sense of wanting to know God than to know our natural parents? No doubt our natural parent relationships are important, but God created us humans and all the things that cause reproduction and birth to happen.

Jesus said, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26)." Jesus is not saying that we should specifically hate our loved ones and hate our own lives. He is trying to show us by comparison how much more we should love and follow Him.

If something about our lives or our kinfolk comes between Jesus and us, then we should hold fast with Him. The trick is, if we all turn to Him and follow Him, it is no longer an issue about our relationships as individuals versus our relationship with Him. We are all to turn to Him regardless of life and relationships.

It is just this thing that leads us astray. We would rather disappoint God than to disappoint a parent, a friend or a business associate. We are more concerned about the moment than we are about eternal life with our true Father.

In Psalm 54:1 we hear, “God! Save me by your name; defend me by your might!”

I say this prayer for saving help: “Father God, I pray that You help me start changing that portion of my life that I live to myself, so that I may live to You more and more and achieve Your everlasting kingdom. AMEN.”

The Waiting Game

In Psalm 62:5-8 we hear,
"My soul, wait silently for God alone,
For my expectation is from Him.

He only is my rock and my salvation;
He is my defense;
I shall not be moved.

In God is my salvation and my glory;
The rock of my strength,
And my refuge, is in God.

Trust in Him at all times, you people;
Pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us."

Are we willing to wait in silence for God? We are hyperactive and impatient when it comes to waiting on God. In our fast-pace world we need answers and solutions now! God doesn't work that way. He's more like your doctor. You know, you sign-in and take a seat in the waiting room. You look at several magazines before your name is called. After weighing you in and taking your blood pressure the nurse takes you into an examining room that is about 33 degrees F. and tells you to take most of your clothes off.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later with an inch of ice on your body you hear the doctor talking to a patient in the next room. It sounds like they are going to talk forever. The conversation finally stops and you know that you're next. You wait another ten minutes during which time you put most of your clothes back on, and sure enough the doctor opens the door and looks at you like, "Why aren't you ready for me to examine you?" The message here is that God takes much longer!

In our impatience with God, we decide that we might as well try some other avenues since God is taking His time. That usually compounds whatever problem we are trying to deal with. Usually by the time God checks his messages, we're in the damage control phase or maybe our fate is a done deal and we need redemption. Our impatience with God can actually precipitate a problem. If we will only wait on Him, "His time" will take over. He may create a pause, a stop, a slow motion or even speed things up if "His time" requires it. As a friend said the other day, "Einstein didn't come up with the 'theory of relativity', he borrowed it from God!"

The Psalmist continues, "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us." Things don't seem to change much for us humans. With all of our modern advancements, we have the same challenges that humans faced all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Every generation has to push the envelope to its limit. It's human nature. That's why God sent Jesus. After the fall in the Garden, it just didn't look like we humans were going to be able to get it right. So out of His love for us, He sent His Son to teach us and then sacrificed Him to atone for our sinful condition.

I say this prayer many times, “Dear Lord, Thank You for caring so much. Help me to be patient with You. Give me the strength to wait until I can't wait any longer and then wait a little bit more. You are the all-knowing one, so I shouldn't second-guess You. It will only hurt me. Help me understand David when he sings his Psalm to me saying, ‘On God rests my deliverance and my honor...’" AMEN.

Our Holy Responsibility

"Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" is a popular Christian hymn written in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon with music by Charles H. Gabriel. The first verse & chorus go like this:

“There are loved ones in the glory, whose dear forms you often miss. When you close your earthly story, will you join them in their bliss?  Chorus: Will the circle be unbroken, By and by, by and by? Is a better home awaiting In the sky, in the sky?”

This circle is discussed in many ways and goes as far back as St. Paul’s discussion and witness to keeping this circle alive in our lives. We have the power to break the circle, but are always given another chance as we live out our days in this world.

In Colossians 1:15-23, we hear Paul testify to his conversion in saying: "And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him---provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel."

In the joy that comes when we truly turn to the Lord and follow Him, there is no need to look back other than to say, ‘I don't know what took me so long, but thanks be to God that I finally got the message.’ I have seen people in their seventies and eighties fully experiencing the Lord for the first time.

While we can't relive the past, once we've found the Lord we can share Him with others with a sense of urgency so that they might live a greater part of their lives holy and blameless and irreproachable before Him. Keeping our faith becomes our challenge once we've heard and experienced the hope of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. Paul was not perfect, but his servant hood of the gospel cannot be questioned. He pushed the envelope of this life to an extreme in order that others might share in the love that he found in serving the Lord. His life was in danger every moment, but the brand that he wore was irremovable. He was secure in his hope and in the promise that he found in the new life in Christ.

St. Paul says of Jesus, "For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." God has gone out of His way to reconcile us with Himself. What He has done is hard to understand in strictly human terms. He continues to want to make peace with us even in our continuing rebellion against Him in our natural lives.

The very things that seem necessary for survival in the natural world can be our undoing in our relationship with God. Once we understand that we are important enough to God that He accepts us blameless before Him as an encouragement for us to come to Him, like Paul, we will become servants of the gospel.

God sacrificed the one who was the image of Himself in order that we might have a chance to return to Him our creator. Our challenge is to live for Him and worship Him in such a way that we do not break the circle.