Monday, April 3, 2017

542 - Opportunity of a Lifetime

Spirituality Column No. 542
April 4, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Opportunity of a Lifetime
By Bob Walters

Our anxious human moments rarely involve actual heart-racing concern for the spiritual gifts of God in Jesus Christ: salvation, righteousness, glory and eternal life, for example.
 
Not without help, anyway.  We are more likely to be “Oh my God!” worried about the tangible but temporal “real” stuff of this world – money, security, health, home, family, esteem, politics, etc. – than we are about God fulfilling His unshakable promises.  It takes a really loud preacher, or maybe Satan, to jar our hearts into the realm of worrying whether God is good for His word to share His glory with us, or if we are good enough to receive it.  Satan and more than a few preachers want us to fear God’s wrath rather than trust God’s word.  God is out to get us; we’re not worthy, yada, yada, yada.
 
But hear this: No matter what else we think we see God doing, every moment of our existence should be cognizant of the truth that God is out to love us, not hurt us.
 
With Holy Week approaching – from this coming Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday next – we encounter a risky season of tough and misunderstood divine images and often bad doctrine.  Depending on the church we attend, we may see a tortured Jesus on a cross, absorb a withering sermonized assault on our sinful behavior, or hear a mindless sales pitch about all that Jesus wants to do for “You!”
 
Why now?  The world pays subtle and serious attention to Christians and Christianity at Easter.  As a holiday, Christmas has so much fun wrapped up in it that the history-changing fact of the Christ child is culturally overrun by frivolity, gifts, commerce and folksy tradition.  Easter, however – religiously – is all serious business.
 
On the one hand, Christian movies proliferate and promote the Easter season.  On the other, the non-believing world ramps up its dissention and ridicule of all things sacred.  Atheist groups advertise their “more-reasonable” worldview.   The media seeks out and reports whatever bad or unsettling news it can find about church attendance, diminishing poll approval for God, imagined faith contradictions, whatever.
 
 Believers at any level of knowledge know that Good Friday’s spectacle of Jesus dying on the Cross followed by His holy, bodily and spiritual resurrection on what we now call Easter Sunday is the solemn core of God’s loving promise to mankind: to come and get us in our sin and re-attach our hearts to His glory through His son Jesus.
 
My prayer for you this Easter week is that you hear an encouraging message that increases your trust in God’s promises and convinces you more of your place in God’s glory.  These seeming abstractions that are the spiritual gifts of God are mysteries, yes, but truly tangible in our hearts and minds as peace, joy, rest, freedom, faith and hope.
 
The message of Jesus Christ is that we have less to worry about, not more.
 
God’s love is unconditional, and it’s the opportunity of a lifetime.
 
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was attracted to Jesus by His love, not his own fear.

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