The Passage

We all enter this passage. Until then, we peer at it, contemplate it, fear it.

Every one of us will observe people walking this way before we ever step foot on that path.  But when we do, it's a final walk.

I watched my father on this passage 44 years ago.  A painful walk.  Now I watch my mother.  Her journey is soon to end.

Death is so common. You would think that such a common experience among humanity would historically have elicited something different than grief. Since we ALL go through it and have done so during our entire history, would it not be more natural and sensible and evolutionary, to be more matter-of-fact about it? We are born, we live, we die. Repeat for every human. As far as losing someone, hey, there are plenty of human companions to take the place of one who walked that final passage.

Why is it then that we feel this gaping hole in our chest when we lose someone we love?  I can remember thinking for decades after my dads' death that perhaps he was just 'lost' and would walk through the door any moment.  What a bizarre hope.  Really I don't care what someone thinks. I am 60 and still miss him.  Now, it's my mother.  While my head understands the reality of death and in her case, the progression of cancer, my heart is being ripped open.

The reason death is ALWAYS so hard is because it was never designed into us.  I believe in a Divine Creator who made us for eternal life.  We were not made for death - and that is why death is so 'unnatural' to us. We grieve not just because of the loss of presence, we grieve because deep in our visceral soul, we face the most unnatural event of the human experience - its end.

You and I will walk this passage as my mother walks it now. It ends in death. No one escapes. But I say to you that there is another passage you can access on this side of life that will usher you back to the original plan of God.  The still living and very real Jesus Christ offers us a way of living that returns us to the original plan of God.

Talk to me if you want to know more.

For now, I'm helping my mom on the final part of her passage here.  And when she is done, she has a new passage to walk.  But it still hurts like hell.

Mysterious Faith Meets Real World

Have you read Sapiens by historian Yuval Harari? He subtitled his book: “A Brief History of Humankind”. How humble.  His is a pure humanist POV that views anything not originating from a biological imperative as a myth or an imagined reality, created to help keep some sense of order in a society.  My faith included.  Jesus & Christianity is merely a myth.

His arguments got me wondering about my faith.  As I pondered his theories of culture and religion, and then my reasons for following the Way of Jesus, I concluded that if I looked at all the religious & faith options available to me in the world,  I am actually not sure I would pick Christianity! How would I know which one was true?  Better to live by my own rules.

Yet I cannot escape faith and belief.  I have tried. 

Faith calls to me even in my doubt and when life makes no sense whatsoever.   My most profound encounter with this was when I lead an international church in Phnom Penh Cambodia in the 1990’s.  It was barely post-Khmer Rouge. The church was comprised mostly of relief and development workers. Every day they worked with a traumatized people.  Their MAIN issue week in and week out was:  “How could God have endured and allowed the pain and horror that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on these people?  Where was God?”. Christian platitudes from a pastor were not helpful in those moments.  I had to wrestle down the ‘why’ of my faith to its purest essence.

It’s such a messed up world isn’t it?  A hard one in which to maintain faith & hope in anything.  Evil threatens to break the dike built by human good and decency. The dike has so many holes in it there’s not enough of us to plug them.  So, why should I believe in a God who lets this world get so messed up? Why would I choose to plug the holes in the dike? Why not just pull away from it all and let it be?

So I ask myself, and you, “What or who, keeps you in the game of following Jesus”?

The only answer I have is that faith as a gift.  If it came down to being dependent on creating and sustaining personal reasons to remain engaged as a Christian, I would have given up long ago.  I have endured too much personal pain and have seen too much evil in my lifetime for that formula to keep me in the game.

The gift of faith does not and cannot come from within.  Someone gives it.  

If you and I have faith in Jesus it is because that is God’s gift.  It is a deep, often unexplainable confidence that keeps my eyes focused on God in the face of so much that rails against even the existence of a God. The Bible says that without faith, we can’t please God.  It’s also made clear we can’t work our way to God, therefore He gives us the faith we need to come close to Him.  And sometimes, like the manna the Israelites had to collect each morning, we too have to pick up our faith, enough for each day.

This is both a humbling and an astounding mystery, so counter-intuitive to the quid-pro-quo economy of the human mind. We have what we have been given.  No effort.  No status produced this.  Why some get the gift and others don’t is also a mystery, and will remain so because since it’s a gift, it’s up to the Giver.

If this gift of faith is an undeserved grace, is there any reason then to bother engaging this faith with the world?  Any reason for 'evangelism'?  Any purpose in passing on the faith? 

YES

Faith being a gift of God releases us from trying to convince others to take the gift.  It’s not ours to give.  We are released from placing heavy  ‘save the world’  burdens on ourselves and are freed instead to live according to our faith in a way that “will make the teaching of God our Saviour attractive” (Titus 2:10).  Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith we can’t possibly connect to God - and that to even receive faith you need to believe that He exists and that He cares enough to respond to those who are open to seek after Him.

So the BIG question is whether there is anything to convince others of a reason to believe that God even exists.  What would make the teaching of God our Saviour attractive?

That’s where love enters.  God is love.  If so, then where’s the love?

·       You can create the most articulate argument for God and belief, but if LOVE, the very essence of God is not evident, how will anyone even believe there is a gift-giving God?  However if a person sees and feels love, belief in a God is perhaps possible.  If the thought of a God who loves is possible, then seeking after that God is possible, and then the gift of faith is possible.

Faith is not in your control.  It’s a gift of God.

Love however, is in your control.  It’s a gift you can give.