15 April 2014 - one way

15 April 2014 - one way

The death and resurrection of Jesus save us from futility:

Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
Yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.

The wages of sin is death (cf. Rom. 6:23) and our world seems to be on a constant collision course with it.  We try to do some good but the darkness seems inescapable, the good we manage so very temporary.  Everything we try seems tainted because we know that nothing lasts here.  Fear of this inescapable reality actually keeps us enslaved (cf. Heb 2:15) and we can't break free on our own.  We are strapped into a "world in its present form" which "is passing away" (cf 1 Cor. 7:31) and we don't know how to get off.

There is, in fact, no way out...

“Where I am going, you cannot follow me now,

...until Jesus makes a way for us...

though you will follow later"

...by becoming the way for us...

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth* and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus creates a way through the futility of death to the superabundance of life eternal.  He creates a way where there is no way.  By his death our own toil can now find reward and recompense in God.  Provided, that is, that we get on board with this new world.  We know that we still have the same weakness that consumes Judas and which causes even Peter to deny Jesus.  We "should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds" (cf. Eph. 4:22-23).  This is where the transformation which will one day renew even our physical bodies begins.

This is the renewal we find only in Jesus.  Only the way through death he opens has the power we need to free us from futility.  So let us take refuge from this dying world in him.  He is our refuge from death itself.  Let him be our rock when everything seems to be falling apart.  Let him be our refuge when this world seems full of danger.  Most profoundly, let him be our hope.  If our hearts our fixed on him in this way he will certainly deliver us and incline his ear to us until we finally sing of his salvation.  And when we choose to seek him in this way, to take refuge in him, we do not abandon those around us.  We are not, in fact, in a coccoon of isolationist salvation. We reveal his saving power to the ends of the earth.

And I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD,
and my God is now my strength!
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel;
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.