Of Time and a Season Part 13

[HKHaugan]

 

Of Time and a Season Part 13

 “…a time to tear and a time to mend…”

 There is a consistent message throughout these verses that is calling us to shift from one thing to another. We are ridding the old and taking on the new. It seems very specific here with cloth in mind. When fabric gets worn it ceases to lose its function and we to mend it with a patch with a similar color and texture. It reminds us of the wineskin parable Jesus tells where putting new wine into old wineskins will burst the worn old one. The difference is that cloth can be mended whenever needed but the wineskin is not redeemable.

 As a 14 year old in New York City during World War 2, I remember that my cheap shoes would wear down heel and sole. If we couldn’t afford to get new shoes or repair them, I’d put cardboard inside the shoe to cover the hole. If shoelaces broke, I’d do my best to tie the broken pieces together or replace them with string. So eventually, even the cloth, the shoes and what ties them had to be thrown away. Old cloth made good washrags but even they would end up in the garbage. With pants, the knees would wear out first and patches sewn on the inside did the job.

 In all of this there is a learning. First, being a believer in Jesus gives us a relationship that doesn’t wear out. Secondly, there is no longer any need to try and repair ourselves, that is, working at ‘getting better.’ Third, the believer in Jesus has a new life that opens in every next moment.

 Let’s let those things sink in a bit.

 First, the unbreakable relationship. When we received Jesus as our Savior it came with an eternal warranty. He died on the Cross and rose from the wearing out that brings death to show eternity is real. It can’t wear out. It is totally different from the life we lived without Him. The old life was always based on how well we performed for others. In Christ the performance is how we look forward to what He is going to do through us when we face every next moment. It’s living by faith in Him. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here (2Cor.5:17)!”

 Secondly, we don’t concentrate on trying to fix the broken pieces of the old person. Patching the mind, heart and spirit with self-remedies like hobbies, hard work, doing good things to make up for bad things, thinking we could get better at being moral and religious and find formulas that kick the past aside for awhile but don’t erase the past. Dredging up the past drowns us in a self-conscious struggle that only promises despair and depression and more aloneness. If you really look at the past objectively, the past is really just a memory. It’s gone. We are always looking forward to our next encounter with the world around us “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here (2Cor.5:17)!”

 Thirdly, in Christ our entire perspective, our world view, changes. We’re not asking Jesus to fix us but to launch our new spiritually born person with Him on a faith journey into every next event in our lives. What Clint Eastwood related when asked how he at his age starts every day, “I don’t let the old man in.” The past becomes an occasional usable testimony but no longer drives us. We don’t use our faith to overcome our past. We work at looking forward to seeing our Lord at work in us. Now it’s all about who God was and is as He is revealed in Jesus. Our work is looking forward in faith and working at being faithful wherever we are. “The work of God for you is to believe in the One He has sent (John 6:29).” Again, we are spiritually born to use what we have been given with a looking forward mindset. This is where Spiritude is our internal guide. The Holy Spirit brings Jesus into the heart and directs the traffic as we surge into each future event. Jesus has fulfilled ‘a time to tear and a time to mend.’ Jesus tore away the power of sin on the Cross and mended our separation from God by His Resurrection. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here (2Cor.5:17)!”