Friday, August 30, 2013

The strength of God

Imagine receiving snail-mail that reads, "I have not stopped giving thanks to God for you. I remember you in my prayers and ask the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, to give you the Spirit, who will make you wise and reveal God to you, so that you will know him. I ask that your minds may be opened to see his light, so that you will know what is the hope to which he has called you, how rich are the wonderful blessings he promises his people,and how very great is his power at work in us who believe. This power working in us is the same as the mighty strength which he used when he raised Christ from death and seated him at his right side in the heavenly world."

These thoughts were coming from the quill of the apostle Paul.
These thoughts were coming from the greatest theologian of both his and our times.
These thoughts were coming from perhaps the greatest of the many great minds of scripture, from one who was provided with magnificent thoughts by the very Spirit of God.
These thoughts were not Paul's own, I believe, any more than mine are my own. I pray for thoughts that will reveal Christ to the world, not the world to Christ. I pray for revelation that opens the Word of God to the understanding of man.

But mostly, I pray that the incredible strength God used to change Jesus from frigid connected parts to a warm, beating heart will be used by any and all readers to see the next right thought put into action.

Today.

God has made us what we are, and in our union with Christ Jesus, he has created us for a life of good deeds, which he prepared for us to do before we were born; heck, before we were ever thought of. God created us to make a difference, in life and in thought and particularly in deed. He did. The Bible says we have been saved through faith, by grace. Like tearing through beautiful wrapping paper, we have ripped our covering apart and shown what was underneath. Sometimes the beauty of the outside must be torn open and apart.

We were spiritually dead at one point, washed ashore on the worst of spiritual beaches, covered in those little rocks that slip into shoes and poke holes into our existence. We were casually crawling with seaweed and other things that we simply won't name. We were without spiritual worth, poured out from waves onto the shore for collecting. God let us live, one mere lucky moment in a lifetime of unlucky ones.

Paul described our lives this way: "At the time, you followed the world's evil way; you obeyed the ruler of the spiritual powers in space, the spirit who now controls the people who disobey God."

The old, weathered and worn boat at the edge of the sea we were traveling was filled with one too many passengers, none of whom were doing any paddling or baling or even any sopping of slimy, dirty brown water. We were lucky, so very lucky, just to have washed ashore. We were lucky to the nth degree just to have found something someone would call land. That we could call it shore, that we could say we had landed, well, that was just miracleous. We should be dead, as in gone. No heaven. No land without tears. Just a bit of stubble and a slice of the next life.

This morning I pray that whatever is next be opened to you. I pray that whatever is next be shown. I pray that whatever is life be shown to you as if the birthday party or Chrismas morning were wrapped into one glorious moment. I pray that you have cried tears of joy until your ducts are dry. I pray that understanding is yours.

And I pray that all the answers to those many questions are yours.

In the interim, I pray that all those answers were enough. Why, why, why does it go this way? That's the strength of God, in the long run. Somewhere down the road there will be mighty arms reaching for you. That's enough, in the long run. That's enough, for you, for me, for us.

No comments: