Gentle Reader,
I went to a new doctor yesterday. Yearly check-up that we ladies are always so thrilled to have. As she pulled up my medical history, her face went through a serious of contortions, landing on an expression of surprise. “Wow,” she said. “You’re so young. How have you had so many things go wrong?”
Had to laugh.
Big ball of weirdness, am I.
Linking up with Kate and the people. We write about: blessing.
Go.
Theological statements show up in strange places.
I’m not really a fan of Macklemore – the famous son of Kent, Washington – but I did listen to his new song, “Glorious,” the chorus of which is:
I feel glorious, glorious
Got a chance to start again
I was born for this, born for this
It’s who I am, how could I forget?
I made it through the darkest part of the night
And now I see the sunrise
Now I feel glorious, glorious
I feel glorious, glorious
Those words, they take me to church.
The days drag on. We have to live in these broken bodies, on this broken planet. We have to deal with broken relationships, broken dreams, broken systems. There are desires left unfulfilled, plans left unfinished. We dwell in the space between Genesis 3 and Revelation 21.
So it’s easy to forget.
Forget who we are.
Forget Who is with us.
Forget our purpose.
Caught up in the grind, we look in the mirror and forget to look for what cannot be seen by the human eye. Forget to ask for the holy perspective. We see creases and lines, worries and sorrows. Words left unsaid and conflict unresolved. Weak and fragile bodies.
We forget,
But if God Himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of Him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome Him, in whom He dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, He’ll do the same thing in you that He did in Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and He does, as surely as He did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With His Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who He is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with Him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with Him!
– Romans 8:9-17 (MSG)
We are blessed to be children of the Living God, bought with His own blood. Blessed with fresh mercies, brand-new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23).
We forget.
We must learn to remember.
Because when we remember, we regain the ability to press through the trouble, which does not magically disappear. Following Christ is no guarantee of health, wealth or any other human-defined blessing.
It is a guarantee of purpose. Of clarity.
Of knowing, in your bones, who you are and where you’re going.
Stop.
