Monday, February 3, 2020
690 - Getting the Picture
Spirituality Column #690
February 4, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon
Commentary
Getting the Picture
By Bob Walters
“Very truly I tell you, unless
a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed,”
Jesus in John 12:24
God’s glory is a tricky, mysterious,
and seemingly impossible thing.
It never changes, but it always
grows. We cannot make God’s glory greater or smaller, yet our faith in Christ
is for the glory of God. We were created
in God’s image for God’s glory, but were given the freedom to pursue God’s
glory or not.
The purpose of our life is to
glorify God, which we accomplish by loving God and loving others. But the ultimate demonstration and revelation
of – the revealing of –God’s glory and God’s love is not the life Jesus lived
but the death Jesus died. Jesus died in
obedience to the Father; but Jesus also died in a profound act of divine love
so that all humanity might live.
We view our own human glory –
most often – as conquest and comfort in life. Jesus lived so that God’s glory
would be revealed through his own sacrifice and death.
God’s glory very truly is a life
and death matter, and in Jesus we see the truest picture of why life and death
matter so much. Life matters because it
is our opportunity to freely pursue God in love as we know He pursues us. Death matters because that is where we grow
into and discover perfect sinless fellowship in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus didn’t die so the Romans
and Jews could be rid of His rebellion; Jesus died so all humanity could
discover God’s truth and the assured hope of eternal life. His resurrection showed us that God’s promise
would bring life and what Jesus’s obedience mysteriously meant: that our own
death is the doorway to God’s eternal glory.
Human glory is not nearly so
mysterious. What we see as our own glory
in the course of our earthly lives will ebb and flow, shrink and grow, stumble
here, succeed there and generally be entirely situational and, to paraphrase
author Tom Wolfe, a bonfire of our own vanities. It’s all about us until we lock into the
visual of Christ on the Cross in His perfect obedience to/of God and eternal
love for God and God’s creation.
Then we begin to catch on that
the “kernel of wheat” falling into the ground, as Jesus mentions, is
what transforms a static and until-then useless piece of flora into a useful,
life-giving, and gloriously growing exhibition of God’s endless creativity. The seed – Jesus, us, our faith – goes into
the ground and responds with new life.
We trod this earthly stage for a
season, limited by our appetites, yearnings, fears, death, and a hooded
understanding of God’s eternal reality.
But we are encouraged by our discoveries, faith, accomplishments, hopes,
and loves. We survive good days and bad;
we want more comfort and less discomfort.
We want to get “more” in this life, but wisdom teaches us that joy is
learning to give away that thing most valuable to us: life.
That is the single, magnificent
seed of Jesus. We needn’t ask Jesus what
we get for our faith; let’s instead seek the thrill of being invited into
divine life’s renewed picture.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) concedes you may
well have your own answer(s) to the question, “Why are life and death
important?” He encourages you to think
about it.
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