A friend brought to my attention how a young person answered him when he told him that Christ died and rose for him. The young person said: “Ah that’s good but so what? How does that help me get my way in life, pay the bills, but a house, finish my degree or get a job?” I guess how does a 2000 year old event about the life a Jewish Teacher followed by a few hundreds or thousands at best which many atheist deny even happened, have anything to do with the life of a person in 2017?
Don’t fall of your chair or have an accident but these are fair enough questions. They are fair because faith means little if it does not connect to everyday life. They are fair enough because one can go a lifetime immersed in the daily chores and achievements in life without having an inkling of God’s life inside of us, our spiritual life.
We can spend a lifetime living on the surface of the ocean busy affected by the winds, storms and waves. Distracted by the boats and ships, by how others swim better than us, have better costumes, look happier and forget life in the inner depth of the Ocean. Forget we are immersed in water because we are “doing” and not “being”! Yet there is a kingdom in its entirety under the ocean we will miss if we don’t go deeper.
It is the same with our spiritual life. We can live on the surface busy with achievements, success and possessions, with winning and loosing and forget our inner lives where God resides. A whole world awaiting to be discovered and encountered if we learn to “be”.
“God is dead” says the atheist philosopher Nietzsche. Perhaps in a secular world God is dying from the consciousness of society, public debate, policy and in the daily lives of many people.
Yet the question of God cannot be killed from the human heart. Whenever we ask for meaning, for purpose or whenever we feel this inner emptiness, encounter suffering, become aware of our inchoate aches and desires, we are encountering the very seeds and fruits of God’s life in us.
It is these questions that ask for meaningfulness that point us to the depth of the ocean. It is these questions that remind us that we are in the water. We are soaked “in” grace. We may decide to look for the answers “out there” but eventually God’s grace active and alive will lead us “IN”.
When we live from “within”, when my relationship with God who is alive for Christ is risen, is where I operate from, when I am living “in and from” grace then paying the bills and finishing my degree or getting a job matters but in a new light.
Christ died and rose means more than a historical event. It has redeeming effect. It is an event that saves. Saves us from our own inner bubbles, from living and being consumed by the surface. From the forgetful of “being” in water, in grace. It saves us from the sin of being self-sufficient and isolated, the sin that is self-destructive.
Christ is Risen! Pay your bills, eat and drink but ensure that you dive into the deep bottomless Ocean of grace often, for the more we live “inside”, the more we live “outside” in more meaningful way.
Ensure that you quench your thirst, fill your eyes and be immersed in grace and love, then come back to the surface for you cannot live there permanently in this life. Just know though that all goodness and love you find on the surface finds its origins from the depth of God’s heart shown to us on the cross where blood and “water” flowed. God is not dead! Christ is risen!
Thank You
Burning Hearts 