Saturday, December 29, 2012
320 - All These Broken Pieces
Spirituality Column #320
January 1, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
January 1, 2013
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
All
These Broken Pieces
By Bob Walters
“I am leaving you with
a gift – peace of mind and heart. And my
peace is a gift that the world cannot give.
So don’t be troubled or afraid.” – Jesus (John 14:27)
This is
Jesus at the last supper telling His disciples that His gift to them will be
peace, followed by comfort God will send in the Holy Spirit.
The
disciples at this point of course are still clueless, confused, and most likely
increasingly anxious. Jesus is talking
about His leaving, their staying, His dying, their living, His coming back, and
His Father sending comfort they cannot possibly understand referring to a Holy
Trinity they cannot yet imagine. Faith
was all they had.
As we watch
our modern world try to cope with so much daily brokenness, it is mystifying
that so many people with so much information have so little faith and endure so
much pain. The disciples were seeing
something entirely new; modern mankind steadfastly ignores truth that is widely
and plainly available.
We have the
Bible, churches, preachers, teachers, fellow believers, global mission
organizations, and 2,000 years of scholarship, history, evidence and tradition
to teach us what the disciples could only guess. Here in the United States we have an entire
nation predicated on the foundational truth that human freedom and creativity are
divinely righteous gifts straight from God – the first of first things in our souls’
DNA.
The first
of all God’s gifts to mankind, of course, is life itself. One would think that all together – personally,
corporately, globally – the family of man would do a better job of defending
life. Somehow though, defending life has
become the hottest of political hot potatoes, rather than the dearest of God’s
gifts.
Nowhere is the brokenness of
mankind more in evidence.
I’m thinking of the Sandy Hook
shootings and how our nation has fervently mobilized on either side of the specific
political question of gun control rather than the vast spiritual question of Christ’s
salvation for a fallen, broken world.
To me it’s instructive to look at
the Bible for an overall perspective on mankind’s defense of human life: we’ve
never been very good at it. Throughout
the Bible chaos, mayhem, deceit and death consistently befall mankind. No guns were involved. God’s laws did not solve the problem then;
man’s laws will not solve the problem now.
Our ultimate problem isn’t broken
laws; it’s broken humanity. We have no
way to pick up life’s pieces, save for the peace God promises solely in the
gift of Jesus Christ.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) is writing about salvation in Christ (see
John 14), not politics, yet notices the mind-numbingly oxymoronic irony of
stricter gun control laws juxtaposed with liberal abortion laws.
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