Jesus Came That We Might Have – and Focus on – Life

I came to bring them life, and far more life than before – John 10:10b Phillips

I came to give life—life in all its fullness – ibid, NCV

I came so that they could have life—indeed, so that they could live life to the fullest. – CEB

We’ll return to the Christmas theme tomorrow.

A year ago we introduced you to author, and speaker Ethan Renoe who is now serving in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. (I copied and pasted that!) I read several of his devotionals and he is a very gifted and very transparent writer. The first appears below (click the title) and the second is linked at the bottom.

Don’t Forget About Life

The well is deep, where can I get living water? 
-John 4, Silent Planet translation*

If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written in the past five years, you know that I’m painfully aware of my own mortality and the imminent death which is coming for each of us. I’ve ruminated on its finality and the ubiquity of it.

Even this morning, I was catching up on the newest releases in heavy metal and found this song* released by The Ghost Inside which is a reflection on the death of one of their friends to a bus crash. As you’ll see, the song even causes metal legend Jake Luhrs to weep. There was an accident while the band was on tour and ten people on the bus were injured and one was killed.

The response, according to the band, is not to focus on death and to mourn for the rest of their lives, but to focus on what’s left; too live out the rest of their lives with the life that’s inside them rather than focusing on the death that awaits them:

I don’t have it in me to sing of defeat
Triumph over tragedy
The beat goes on

Where in the gospels do we see Jesus concentrate on death? He encounters it a number of times, but what does He do whenever He does? He weeps (John 11), He retreats to a quiet place to be alone (Matt. 14), or He belittles it by saying they’re just asleep (John 11, Luke 8).

Jesus seems much more focused on life than death.
Maybe we should be too.

In yet another song (fronted by Jake Luhrs this time), he yells,

While mourning the loss, I am forced to celebrate
Celebrate new life, celebrate new life

Do we often focus our thoughts, and especially our spirituality, on death rather than life? Do we tend toward thinking about what awaits us after the grave and therefore relegate most of our religious action to then?

This manifests itself in many ways, some of which are incredibly important. For one, if your Christianity is purely relegated to What happens after we die, then you will most likely be incredibly ineffective in this life.

Jesus gives plenty of parables and teachings on how we need to use our time. He talks about the parable of the talents (or minas), in which we are responsible to use well what we have been given. In the afterlife? NO! In this life! He teaches that the one who c be trusted with little can be trusted with much. He talks about clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, looking after widows, orphans and prisoners. These are not after-death things. These are things that we can only do while alive. 

Too often, our faith floats above us in some vague spiritual cloud at which we will someday arrive, and there is little if any trickle down into our day-to-day lives.

Jesus confronted this way of living simply by what He did. In theology, it’s called the incarnational work of Christ. He didn’t just sit up in heaven and plop down a scroll of instructions on how to join Him up there. Jesus seems far less interested in merely telling us what to do, and more focused on joining us, being with us. His name, Emmanuel, means God with us. 

In other words, Jesus wants us to—like Him—use our bodies (while they’re alive) to do religious things. What does that mean? Well James clearly tells us that the religion he chose was to look after widows and orphans. Isaiah adds breaking the chains of injustice, setting the oppressed free, sharing our bread, and inviting the homeless into our homes. None of these things can be done after you die. 

You can always tell which Christians are only focused on a religion that begins after death—they’re the ones arguing about unprovable theories and theologies on Facebook. The ones who really know Jesus tend to be the ones hanging with the homeless, giving up their money and possessions, and fighting for justice (without posting about it…).

The Bible tends to put far more emphasis on what we do before we die than on what happens afterward. In fact, the entire idea of an afterlife doesn’t appear until the prophetic books which are over halfway through the book. In other words, God has an incredible focus on life—on what we do with ours, on how we live, etc. 

Have you been like me: too focused on death to be effective with your life?

Who can praise God from the grave?

The very beginning of the Bible paints this beautiful picture of God calling the world to life. In Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of God is hovering over the chaotic waters. The word for ‘hovering’ evokes an image of a mother bird flapping her wings over her young in the nest, calling to them, “Rise! Come to life! Take flight!”

This is the second thing we ever see God do in the Bible (the first is creating). God calls us to rise up and live. He hovers over the chaotic waters which our lives often feel like, calling out to them, telling us not to wait, but to ascend.

It’s important to have a memento mori attitude in most things we do, but to fixate on our coming death and the life we experience afterward can distract us from the very real life before us now. Death is real, and sadly, we are reminded of that constantly. Mourning and grief are necessary processes.

However, to dwell on them and think of nothing else is not only un-Christlike, but it can distract us from using our lives in the most effective ways possible. Is this not what a demonic enemy would want—for us to waste our lives or whittle them away in fear and philosophy rather than being effective and enjoying our life?

Jesus did not come and die simply so we could pontificate about death and the existence which follows. He came so we could have life and life to the fullest, and this tends to begin the very moment people meet Him in the Bible.

Live well now; there is no later.

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Read more from Ethan: To the Christians in the Wilderness: You’re Not in Egyptian Bondage but You’re Certainly Not Home.

*There are three song links in this devotional. I didn’t want to include the first one without a warning that Silent Planet is very much a heavy metal band. If you watch on YouTube there are lyrics with footnotes explaining the imagery. The three links in Ethan’s devotional are very apparent when you click through, but here’s the first one, now that you’ve been warned.

Solomon’s Advice: Go to a Funeral or Two

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11).

This morning at North Point Community Church, Jeff Henderson spoke on Ecclesiastes 7:2.

“Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies – so the living should take this heart.”

Fun verse, huh? But people in vocational ministry actually spend a whole lot of time at funerals. David Meldrum, a Church of England pastor based in Cape Town, South Africa writes about this:

Beware of what you promise. That’s a maxim which could easily apply to any area of life, but over recent weeks a variety of different promises I made as I stood in an ancient English cathedral less than 3 months before 9/11 have been re-echoing in my mind.

These are the promises made by those about to be ordained – set apart by the church for service in and to the church and the world. The one echoing loudest at the moment is a few simple words: ‘to prepare the dying for their death’.

A cursory reading of that, together with popular assumptions about the role of the vicar/priest/rector, may lead you to assume that the promise is about visiting, spending time with and praying with or for those who are facing death in an immediate sense. Of course that’s part of it – one of the indisputable privileges of my job is to be there in the big moments of life and death.

But there’s much more. One retired priest told me, just before I was ordained, that part of the role and calling of the priest is to ‘think the unthinkable and say the unsayable’. I don’t know if he was quoting someone else or if it was one of his own truisms, but it’s stayed with me. It’s become increasingly true for me in the 11 yeas since – there are times when we’re called to say things that people just don’t want to hear, compelled to speak when everyone else is wearing earphones. The unsayable I’m thinking of here is that ‘the dying’ of that ordination day promise is all of us, all of the time. We’re all dying. Scientists call it entropy – that all things tend towards decay and disorder; part of the calling of someone called by the church to the church and the world is to hold before a community and a people the fact that we’re all dying and the sooner we reconcile ourselves to that fact and live in the light of it, the better.

Of course, like everything, there all sorts of places we could make a serious mis-step here. We could become sour faced misery-peddlars who sneer at anything remotely fun with a ‘not of this world’ air; we could repeatedly scare people into salvation (finding out much later people saved thus often either fall back into old ways or become disturbingly hard-hearted); we could become so concerned with the after-life that we forget to do any good in this life.

All of those and more are dangers we need to constantly check ourselves against. An awareness of death, though, while being a consequence of our insistence on going our own way, can also be something of a gift to the perpetually busy and stressed. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting” (Ecclesiastes 7:2, ESV). To live and love at least with that awareness, that life is a process of preparing to live eternally with the one in whose image we’re made and in whose creation we dwell, should for the Christian be an immensely joyful and liberating process. It should hone our sense of call – what is MY role in preparing all around me for death? How am I pointing people to a bigger, deeper reality? How do I live well in such a way that I will die well?

This doesn’t mean that we don’t cry at funerals or feel absence and loss keenly and deeply. Of course we do. We all do. Death is an enemy. It is horrible. It’s in the nature of God, though, to take that which may seem intended for evil and transfigured it into something deeper and better altogether. Death is horrible. Death is defeated. Death, then, because it is defeated, can help us live well. Now, and forever.

At Daily Encouragement, Stephen and Brooksyne Weber write:

Solomon, writer of Ecclesiastes, states, “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting.”  This begs the question, in what sense is it better?

Actually, on first instinct, I would much prefer the house of feasting. Consider the family gathered around the table for a big Thanksgiving meal or joining together with friends to watch the Super Bowl and inevitably feasting on addictive snack foods such as guacamole dip with chips, chicken wings or spicy meatballs. We look forward to church fellowship dinners, especially the potluck variety, or a group of friends joining us for a cookout.

But let us consider the sense in which the “house of mourning” is better than the “house of feasting”. The Scriptures are so insightful. They go way beyond skimming the surface to exploring the depths of who we are and how our greatest needs can be met. The reasons that mourning is even more essential than feasting is listed in the following two phrases in the text. In retrospect as I consider the times we have experienced the “house of mourning” I fully understand the writer’s premise.

1) “For death is the destiny of every man.” In other words, death is inevitable. It’s part of the grand plan of how things work as a result of the original fall. Each time we go to the house of mourning this universal reality confronts us. We are reminded that life on this earth is temporary and that we all have an expiration date. Otherwise we might get so caught up in the “here and now” that we don’t make adequate plans for the “there and later”.

2) “The living should take this to heart” The “house of mourning” helps us to consider our heart’s condition and the state of our soul. Of course most of us have been to a variety of house of mournings, yet the tone of the memorial service and the variety of people who gather can make the setting as different as night and day.

I have attended memorials for those who lived outside of Christ where no hope in Christ was presented. I recall one with “Grateful Dead” music being played throughout the gathering. I found that experience to be a spiritually dark place! Anyone attending who might be giving thought to their eternal destiny would surely not find the proper answers to life beyond the grave in a setting like this.

However we consider the blessedness of being in the “house of mourning” of one who lived for Christ. In the service Saturday we heard godly music that lifted the soul, a pastor reminding all in attendance of the need to prepare for their eternal destiny (as requested by Marian who planned her own funeral service). Verbal tributes included a granddaughter who overflowed with tear-filled joy as she gave thanks for Grandma Marian who gave her a Bible and took her to church, where at 16 years of age, she surrendered her life to Jesus.

The Webers ended with a reference to a related text, Hebrews 9:27-28:

Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.

…and added this prayer:

Father, we rejoice in the feasting periods and reflect in the mourning periods of our life. The richest experiences that shape our character are from the great highs and the deep lows we encounter over a lifetime. Not only do we spend time reflecting, studying, and learning from these experiences, but they speak to us of the importance of who we are in the midst of those circumstances. In the house of feasting we rejoice in our accomplishments and those of others from year to year. But in the house of mourning we consider the lives of those who go before us, seeking to mirror the good we witnessed or experienced from their lives. It prompts us to assess our own hearts. Are we ready should You call us to our eternal destiny? We know that planning for this life is important, but planning for the next life is absolutely essential. We want to be ready by receiving Jesus into our life and living according to Your plan as revealed in the Bible. By Your grace we can do so through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

 

Life is Short, Some Lives are Shorter

^{Psalm 90: 12} Teach us to realize how short our lives are.
    Then our hearts will become wise.  (NIrV)

The NIrV is a simplified NIV for children and people for whom English is a second language.

^{Luke 12:16} And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? (NIV)

ooo

^{Psalm 139:6b}    … all the days ordained for me were written in your book  before one of them came to be.  (NIV)

About six weeks ago we attended a backyard party that was hosted by a woman whose life was greatly changed by the ongoing influence of a group of people who took the time to enter her world — at the time a dilapidated motel in a factory district — and offer her encouragement and friendship. She wanted to say thank you to the people who had helped steer her life in a better direction, and that included my wife, who with two other women co-founded what has now become a community organization that provides all manner of support to people living on the margins. It was so encouraging to see the upward movement in this woman’s life, and to know the efforts of so many of us combined together to make a difference.

Then, today, we attended her memorial service.

She had no idea when she hosted that party that she wouldn’t be around weeks later, and neither did we. Her health took a very sudden turn, and suddenly we no longer have her smile to look at. For my wife, it was a shock that is still hard to fathom.

This particular memorial was more inter-faith than Christian and did not contain prayers or hymns, though there was a reading of Psalm 23 from The Message. However, the presence of people I know to be true Christ-followers in the audience today was a reminder of how much God’s people have been involved in the birth of various social service initiatives and agencies, and how much God’s people are involved on a continuing basis in giving compassion and concern.

But you never properly attend a funeral or memorial unless you use it as an opportunity to look in the mirror, to look at your own life. Am I making each day count? Am I moving closer to the cross? Is my life bearing fruit? Am I becoming more of a person who reflects the grace of the gospel? How would my life be remembered?

I had an English teacher in my senior year of high school who never specified the length of written assignments.  We would ask, “How long does it need to be?” and he would answer, “As long as a piece of string.” 

Life is like that. It’s as long as a piece of string. Your life. My life.

Later, I would learn the expression, “We should not talk in terms of long lives and short lives, but we should speak of small lives and big lives.” For kingdom people, for Christ-indwelt people, for Holy Spirit-led people, we should aim to live overflowing lives. Because life is short, and sometimes even shorter than that.

^{Eph 5:15} Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people),

¹⁶ Making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity], because the days are evil. (Amplified Bible)

^{(same passage)}  Live life, then, with a due sense of responsibility, not as men who do not know the meaning and purpose of life but as those who do. Make the best use of your time, despite all the difficulties of these days. (J. B. Phillips translation)

~PW

It is Not Death to Die

About a year ago Tullian Tchividjian posted a very heartfelt and very anguished article about the feeling of walking in to the hospital and seeing his father hooked up to tubes and other apparatus.

…as I reminded my dad last night (hoping–believing–that he heard me), for those who are in Christ, the best is yet to come. The day is coming when God will satisfy our deepest longings and fulfill our highest dreams. He’ll wipe away all our tears and end every frustration. He will, in the words of J. R. R. Tolkien, make “everything sad come untrue.” He’ll right every wrong and correct every injustice. The day is coming when we’ll work and play and worship forever, with no more sin, no more sickness and disease, no more failure, no more pain, no more death. There is coming a day when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and we will reign with him forever and ever (Revelation 11:15).

I ended my time last night with my dad praying with him and singing a hymn that has brought me deep comfort in these difficult days as I watch my dad suffer–a hymn that speaks loudly and clearly of the hope we have in Christ: “It is not Death to Die”…

This is that song:

It is not death to die
To leave this weary road
And join the saints who dwell on high
Who’ve found their home with God

It is not death to close
The eyes long dimmed by tears
And wake in joy before Your throne
Delivered from our fears

It is not death to fling
Aside this earthly dust
And rise with strong and noble wing
To live among the just

It is not death to hear
The key unlock the door
That sets us free from mortal years
To praise You evermore

Original words by Henri Malan (1787–1864).