Reading through the New Testament, internalizing the possibilities of one becoming like Jesus, which is no less than the Pauline Epistles state as possible, I must say is troubling.
Like the songwriter, I am: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;”1
The more I read of men who boldly profess the call of God on their lives, men who press into the marketplace as change agents, versus huddling among their own in sanctuaries, the more I realize this holy tension held in my breast.
Yet, even with the reality of calling comes the deep awareness of own brokenness. Our brokenness surely should be apparent in the macro. One has only to watch our nation’s centuries old struggle with racial justice, or the global brutality of terrorism now being inflicted by fellow human beings in the name of God.
Owning our brokenness individually and publically is simply not the American way, especially if one ever desires to speak into the political arena or climb up the corporate ladder. Even now my readers must be trying to determine if depression is driving this post or perhaps some type of Messiah complex?
Just being real, yet longing for the change that could be ours if we stepped not only into the reality of our brokenness, but with the salve of love, forgiveness and compassion. We all know both exist, or at least hopefully have experienced love, either as a wayward child, a hopeful parent or as with me, a doting grandparent!
That deep love is the base for authentic Christianity, perhaps not American Christianity but the belief system where a God exists who both desires to walk with us as friends and to see us as children, become all we were called to be in this broken world.
Aging has its benefits and its setbacks, more data for hard calls but more urgency given time. This morning all this bubbled up, as I read the words of Jesus: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” He was not only here as God, to make possible the things that our brokenness had robbed us of, but to model who we could be!
“Sorrowing I shall be in spirit, Till released from flesh and sin, Yet from what I do inherit, Here Thy praises I’ll begin; Here I raise my Ebenezer; Here by Thy great help I’ve come;”2
Staring headlong at the end zone, in fact, living in the Red Zone, my last 20 yards! No time to hold back!
1 Come, thy Fount of Every Blessing. http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/c/o/comethou.htm 2 Ibid.
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