For This Reason 36

[HKHaugan]

What can we realistically accomplish in a lifetime? What is the extent and the limitation of human ability? While we may act it out in terms of wealth, wisdom, work and pleasure, what does it really mean to be human? Then physically, how fast, how high, how long and how far can a body go and endure? Intellectually, how much can we progress? Emotionally, how deep can one feel, share, be open and learn? Spiritually, do we ever reach the edge of probing the unseen, the attitudes and spirits that influence our motivations? What are the edges of our discernment in the unseen dimension? The final interrogation underlining all those questions, can we ever be completely satisfied in the physical, emotional and spiritual pursuits that drive us from within, the needs that beg filling and the search for completion? When my ashes find their resting place under a shady oak in a cemetery urn what words will be inscribed on the marker above them? One quite far away and quoted quite often says, “He tried.”

When you boil it all down, when secular history makes its point and the individual mind and heart plumbs the mystery of existence, there is nothing at the end of those questions but speculation and the answer “I don't really know.” This is the point of no return, the point where every person finds their crisis of inner meaning and purpose, the precipice that requires a leap into the unknown, the unpredictable and the unseen. It is a leap, a daring jump of a blindfolded heart, a mind without knowledge and a spirit alone floating into a chasm with only one cry to be made, “Help me!” It is a leap within and a cry without.

One thing about this leap. It is uniquely responsive according to the individual experiencing it. It's framed in the conditioning one has had from their physical birth. No one has the same, the identical, the like experience. The two things similar are the dynamic of crisis and the choice of response. Each person will find their own unique crisis whether major or minor and the options for response. But actually at the point of no return every crisis is major to the person experiencing it. A toothache and a heart attack are no different for the person experiencing them at the moment of pain. Rejection by an individual or group still hurts.

Whatever the pressure point it cannot be brushed aside because of comparative intensity. The chasm into which we leap may be emotionally light or heavy, intellectually demanding or simple and spiritually intense or slight. It's our personal chasm and our personal leap so it's huge and real. On the one hand it can be a wartime injury or on the other an emotional sleight. Right there is the turning point and the moment of choice in the valley of decision. Each is weighed on the scales of the individual involved. What may be strong or weak is determined there. It's only in this world that there is neither understanding nor sympathy.

No matter what options are offered whether they be religious, economic, social, internal or external the leap is always going to be one of faith. Faith that whatever the option, it was evaluated, accepted and chosen as the chasm of daring whether in the breadth of a moment or in the luxury of patient consideration. The moment of choice and action is always one of faith. This is true of every decision preceding every action in every next moment in each person's unique aloneness. The moment of faith, for humans so precarious frightening and unknown, is where the province of Jesus as Savior and Lord is perfection, truth, wisdom, holiness, completion and fulfillment. This point of reality, the moment that only faith can finish, that happens in every next moment, is exactly where Jesus reigns giving life instead of death, knowledge instead of ignorance, certainty instead of uncertainty and faith instead of fear. He is the final reality, the final moment and the final faith. His death was the ultimate death and His Resurrection is the ultimate life. Death was and life is.

Jesus is the picture of what every next moment looks like. He is neither past nor future. He is. He has always been in the present. It's not about what has happened or will happen. He is happening. In every generation He has stood in its wings ruling in the Spirit, loving and forgiving, healing and receiving in the offering of Himself regardless of the persecution, hate and evil directed against Him. Despised, rejected, yet taking it all in His grace, the deliberate act of intentional compassion for the most distant as well as those close by. He shared Himself, who He is, what He came to do, how He lived, thought, felt and acted, as the revelation of what humanity had been designed to be.

In Him all of Creation is a copy and shadow for each of us of what is yet to come. The faith that He exhibited on the Cross was the same faith He had in His earthly life in His every next moment from birth in His first human breath to His final breath taken in death. It's the same faith He offers us. The faith He offers is the one way to have the gift of His intended humanity restored in us. It starts with Him and then moves into His Word.

There He reveals Himself in the vast images of the human fragility, the struggle with sin and temptation and the massive spiritual conflict that He alone identifies and into which He throws the life preserver of faith in Him as He walks towards us on its turbulent waters.

That initial cry for help in the pains of every next moment is not lost in the space of time and the universe. He is there at that moment standing above our personal self-centering pains with His hand outstretched as He did on the Cross reaching out to each heart. His Resurrection is our resurrection and not just at the end of our earthly life. The Resurrection is an everyday experience in faith. This is the news, the meaning of 'Gospel,' the wonderful announcement from God that real life, the spiritual life that has always been is in Him and by faith in Him has been given to us. He is always with us wherever we go and with whomever we meet. Every next moment in this world is finalized by faith into an eternal moment called God who has always been our real Father, the Son who is our real elder brother and the Holy Spirit who is our real spirit. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”

Now return to those questions with which we began. What Jesus has shown is that the final evaluation will be personal, relational and spiritual all of which point to Him. Place each of those questions before Him. Let His Word be the sponge receiving them and your squeezing it in the Spirit allowing your mind to be drenched in its droplets. Like Jacob, wrestle with Him, through the night if need be, and let the morning light review where you traveled. This is where we are in the process of being completed in Him. It's the maturing process. You will find with each encounter a different view of the world, its people and its dark ruler tempting you to find someone or something else to distract you from Jesus who says, “In this world you will have tribulation...” Sin and evil bring death every day. “But take heart, I have overcome the world,” the guarantee in every next moment that you are on His way and He is on yours.

Next , the process of maturing.