Tag Archives: Jesus

Loving Enemies

15 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in All, Love

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“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”
–Jesus; The Gospel of Matthew, 5:43-47

In Colorado, a 10-year old girl, Jessica Ridgeway, is kidnapped and, days later, found dead in a field. The community is deeply shaken and scared. The killer is still at large.

We are told by Jesus to love this killer.

How can this be? By societal norms all would agree that the act itself was monstrous; many would call the killer a monster. Yet, Christians are called to respond by loving this person, the killer of a child. It seems to make no sense; surely Jesus is mistaken, He was really talking about your average run-of-the-mill enemy, right? the kind of person that just insults us or perhaps the neighbor who has a dog that barks all night. He didn’t really mean to love this sort of person, did He? Certainly they are beyond our love; only God could possibly love such a being.

Love the sinner, hate the sin, isn’t that our standard Christian response? Hating the sin is easy; loving the sinner is fine in theory, but it seems hard in this particular case to be able to love the person who would perpetrate such a horrific crime and inflict such pain on the young girl’s parents and the community at large. How does one love while simultaneously hoping the killer is caught and punished? And we are commanded to do more than love, we must also pray for this killer. Certainly there can be no harder command of Jesus than His command that we love and pray for this kind of neighbor.

These kinds of questions have led me to wonder about the true nature of love as God intended it, and not as our culture has corrupted it (e.g., reducing love to sex or tolerance). Maybe by understanding how to love and pray for this killer as God would have me I can better understand what He means when He says to love Him with all that I am and to love my neighbor, including the terrorists, my literal neighbors, and my family members as I love myself.

If you are following along, I’m going to try to keep the individual posts of my journey through this shorter; however, they may be more frequent because I want to work through some of what I’ve been reading, and this is my means to do so.

Divine Moments

11 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in All, Ordinariness

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It is evening and the day is done. My first twelve hours of silent retreat. Somewhere in the retreat house a blower just cut off. Now the only sound is the quiet hiss of gas flowing to the fireplace before me. The flames are hypnotic. Next to me my tea steeps, a bug crawls on my Bible. It is a wonderful time to simply be aware.

Ordinariness. The word keeps floating in my mind. A friend of mine, a musician, likes to say that music gets into his head and does not leave; he calls it a music worm. This must be what he means.

Previously I wrote about the kingdom of heaven when battleships and bullet trains were on my mind. It sounds exciting doesn’t it?, and I like exciting. Skydiving; scuba diving; motorcycling too fast; aerobatics; flying through thunderstorms, snow, and ice…I’ve always liked excitement, the rush of adrenalin. Yet, even in those things I found rush giving way to routine and I moved on.

Perhaps battleships and bullet trains are our attempt to give some urgency to God’s kingdom-at-hand. Or, perhaps we are trying to jazz up God in a culture that is all about sizzle. Regardless, these aren’t the images Jesus uses; rather, He uses wheat growing in a field, a treasure buried long enough to have been forgotten, a pearl from an oyster that grew layer by layer, and ten women waiting so long for the bridegroom to show up that they fell asleep. Were Jesus to use a modern metaphor, He might have said, “The kingdom of God is like watching paint dry.” Maybe it is better, or at least more majestic, to think of it like a glacier: imperceptible movement, but it reshapes the terrain.

After writing about the Kingdom the other day, I was sitting with some friends when I had the distinct, and disorienting, experience of God letting me see across time and space. In the briefest of moments I saw wars, earthquakes, floods, kids going to school, adults at work, families together, acts of kindness, acts of meanness, sporting events…billions of people, past, present, future, living life.

I give my life to the King. The fullness of God indwells me, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. The past is gone, the future not yet arrived; there is only this present moment, and God is God of the present. In Christ I am one with our Father as Jesus is. Spirits intertwined in Love. This moment, so ordinary, is made divine by the present of God. My life becomes a microcosm of the Kingdom of God.

Two days ago, a friend of mine, upon hearing me ramble about my obsession with the ordinary, remarked that he believed I was using “ordinary” to describe the sacred. I think he is right. In the ordinary, the Kingdom of God is at hand. Where else would we find Him?

The Kingdom of God is Like…

08 Monday Oct 2012

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The kingdom of God is like…(Matthew 13)

  • Weeds mixed in with wheat, growing together until separated at the harvest;
  • A mustard seed that grows larger than the other plants;
  • A small portion of sour dough (leaven) that sours the rest of the dough;
  • Treasure found in a field, its is worth selling all one’s possessions to buy the field;
  • A pearl so valuable it is also worth selling all one has to buy it;
  • A large net that gathers all kinds of fish until they are sorted at the processing plant; or
  • Ten virgins awaiting a wedding, five who were foolish and five who were prudent (Matthew 25).

Theologian G.K. Chesterton, likens the movement of “orthodoxy” through history to the Church being

behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she went merely mad along one idea, like vulgar fanaticism. She swerved left and right, so exactly to avoid enormous obstacles (Orthodoxy).

Israel’s King David (Psalm 29) describes God’s presence and voice–the King in His kingdom–as thundering over the waters, breaking cedar trees, striking like lightning, shaking the desert, twisting oaks, and striping forests bare.

Other writers have compared the kingdom to a ship at sea, not a cruise ship but a battle ship. We ought to come to church, says a writer whose name is now forgotten to me, not in our shorts and flip-flops with our umbrella drinks and chatting merrily, but in our battle gear: our helmets pulled down low over our eyes and our life preservers strapped on tightly with the “battle stations” klaxon blaring in our ears.

In my mind is this imagery: a bullet train. The train is moving fast, much too fast. Observers would say it is careening down the track. The normal, rhythmic clickty-clack of the wheels moving over the track now sounds like machine gun fire. With every imperfection in the track, around every turn the train feels like it will jump the track, hurling itself into space, turning itself into a twisted pile of scrap. The wide-eyed passengers are holding on for dear life, bodies covered in bruises, arms and legs straining to hold themselves secure against g-forces that work to pry them loose and toss them about like a favorite toy in the jaws of a playful puppy. Yet, the train, somehow, stays on the track.

All of this imagery captures my imagination, my heart pounds. The excitement. The danger of not being fully in control. Acts of great courage. The camaraderie in the adventure of being part of something bigger than any of us. The power of God on display in shock and awe…and yet.

Here I sit. My office is dimly lit. The quiet is broken only by the occasional voices of co-workers. Music plays softly in the office next door. Soon, I’ll be preparing another lesson for an upcoming class. Later, I’ll be sitting with someone, invited to enter into their story, listening to both them and the Holy Spirit. I’ve got to pay a few bills and set up a voice mailbox. Around me, people are still out work, some are homeless. A stranger smiles at another. A ten-year old girl is missing. A cancer patient gets a last wish. We over eat; much of the world starves. A soldier dies in Afghanistan. Two lovers are married. Iran and Israel trade threats. A prayer is answered. The civil war in Syria goes on. Infants are born, people will die; some will know Jesus, most will not have turned to Him. Today is like yesterday. Tomorrow is projected to be the same. The kingdom of God is also like this.

The ordinariness of my day is made more pronounced by the image of the bullet train careening through my mind.

Abundant Life–Now?

01 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in All, Life

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The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. John 10:10

Life and abundant life.  One commentator I read believed that this verse is the pivotal verse in the book of biblical gospel of John.  According to this commentator’s view, prior to this verse Jesus was telling us how to have life, by the necessity of following Him, becoming His disciple.  After this verse, according to this commentator’s view, Jesus begins to tell us about abundant life in Him as His disciple.

So, I’ve been thinking about abundant life.  Not long ago I was in a discussion with other Christians and the prevalent view of abundant life seemed to be that it was ahead of us.  Some believed it is the life we have when we are resurrected with Jesus in the new creation.  Some believed it was available in this life if only we could love God more, or pray better, or be healed of past hurts, etc.  Others felt that abundant life came eventually from a growing intimacy with Christ.  Most in the discussion felt as though they had not yet achieved this abundant life about which Jesus talked; their own lives seemed so hard.  Abundant life seemed like a goal always before us, just a little out of reach.

That conversation troubled me.

I was troubled mostly because I have been bouncing around holding all of those views, and my own life didn’t feel particularly abundant.  A single question kept haunting me: Are the promises of Jesus only for the future, or are they also for the here and now? I have to believe they are also for the present; if God in His fullness dwells in my now, then how can His promises only be for when I die or when I achieve some level of performance or status with God?  Then, if this is what I really believed, what did it say for my belief about abundant life?  Was it really an ever-distant goal?

A radical thought came to me: what if my life, as it is right now, is abundant.

That changes everything.

My life is typical of the American middle class.  It is reasonably comfortable.  I have a great wife, a nice house, two dogs (the good one and the bad one), hobbies, etc.  I have a good job and I’ve accomplished some pretty terrific things in life.  Then there are the “pesky” things: those things I say I wish I hadn’t, and those deeds I do I would really like to undo.  And the temptations that continually pull, though I have to admit not quite like before.  Can this be the abundant life of which Jesus talked?  Yes, and it has nothing to do with any of the things I just listed.

I now see my life as abundant because God is in it and because, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, that I believe through the power of the Holy Spirit I am becoming one with Jesus in love; Jesus draws me into relationship with our Father.  Said differently, the relationship that is available between God the Father and Jesus the Son is the same relationship God wants with me.  My life is abundant now and becoming abundant.

How can life be both abundant now and becoming abundant?  Back to the marriage metaphor used so often by God.  When I got married nearly 25 years ago I thought I understood love.  I was so in love with my wife-to-be, and indeed I was.  But, as with many things, I couldn’t know what I didn’t know.  I couldn’t know about love from the perspective of being in love together for 25 years.  Now, I look back and realize how little I knew about love when we were first married as compared to my much deeper understanding of it now, and how little I really loved my wife as compared to how much I love her now.  And, I expect in another 25 years my conception of love will be that much deeper and I’ll look back to this point in my life and realize how little I knew about it.  So, I can say that I am in love with my wife and becoming more in love.  Both are true.

I think the same can be said of abundant life.  My life right now is abundant.  As I look back on my life as a Christian I can see that I had little real understanding of this abundance, and I know I will look back in the future and see that even now I had a less well formed conception of it.  But, like love, I can only have the understanding of it that I have right now.  My life with God has been abundant, is abundant now, and is becoming more abundant.  Abundance in life is a journey not a goal.  And, given that growing in relationship with an infinite being–God–I believe the journey of abundant life will be an eternal journey.

So, what about all the stuff in my life that doesn’t feel so abundant?  Well, regarding the material stuff I hope I would be content with or without it, to still view my life as abundant.  And the stuff in me, the wrongdoing, the temptations, the…junk?  Perhaps it is like the material stuff, it is just there and God is at work freeing me from it.  However, God gives me abundance in all of it.  My “abundance” comes from relationship with Him, not my material, spiritual, emotional, psychological, or physical stuff.  The deeper my relationship, the more abundant my life

Author de Caussade, in his delightful little book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, says that to want anything in our lives other than what is happening and what we have in the present moment is to want something other than what God wants for us, it is to claim that we know what is better for ourselves than God knows.  I believe he is right.

To live in the moment with God, to be thankful for all things knowing He is drawing me into an ever deeper relationship with Him, is abundant life.  I have it now.

Hope: Now and Not Yet

17 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by in All, Hope

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My foundational hope, the hope I have when all other hope is gone, is that all things in my life are brought about by God to bring me into the transformative union of likeness of God’s son, Jesus; this, of course, is through the power of the Holy Spirit, the personification of the loving relationship between Father and Son. (Of course, this assumes that I believe in God and have not strayed from following Him.) Further, one day I will be with God (God will be among us–Revelation 21:3) for all of eternity in the fully restored creation with no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. Ultimately, my hope is this: I will see God’s face and His name will be on my forehead (Revelation 22:4).

This is an extraordinary, ultimate hope. Frankly, it is beyond my comprehension (1Corinthians 2:9). It is the very definition of hope: longing for the ultimate good, the yearning that seems to be within each of us for the not-yet-being. But…what about now? The world today is filled with so much anger, pain, greed, self-centeredness, intolerance (even in its best definition), unhappiness, the list goes on-and-on. In my own world I often seem trapped inside this body that is wracked with selfishness; voices in my head, mine and others, condemn me. In my own pain I cause pain for others.

Regarding my world, it is becoming increasingly easy for me to find ordinary hope–the hope found in day-to-day living. The idea that God is drawing me into a deeper loving relationship with Him and through this love is transforming me into the likeness of Jesus is compelling. I have such a clear image/feeling in my soul of what that relationship will be like that I am increasingly willing to endure anything to experience it. Sure, I have my attention diverted from time-to-time; however, as quickly as I can refocus on the goal–relationship with Christ–then my hope returns. I have the great ordinary hope that in Jesus I am already the child of God that I am becoming.

Finding ordinary hope for the world around me is harder. Sure, I can look at the world and know that one day it will be restored and all the hardship and death will be gone; my foundational hope for the world is nicely intact. But for today…where can I find ordinary hope as I read the newspaper? I don’t think I can apart from my own ordinary and foundational hope with God.

I’m not particularly given to progressivism (theological postmillennialism), believing that the world–its human inhabitants–will get better as history proceeds. History simply doesn’t seem to support that view. So, what should I make of this world? My head tells me that given the design constraints (i.e., God wants a loving relationship with humans with free will), this is the best possible world God could have created to ensure the most (but not the majority–Matthew 7:13-14) of us fall in love with Jesus; any other created world would result in even fewer entering into an eternal life of knowing God (John 17:3). I also know that God is active in this world in His way.

I know that some try to find ordinary find hope in the perceived security of a large 401(k), or the markets (stocks, bonds, gold, commodities, etc.), or a good job, or the green movement. Some try to numb their lack of hope with drugs or alcohol or cutting; for others, the drug of choice is distraction by cars, boats, big homes, travel, busy lives, multiple sexual partners, etc.

Apart from God I cannot see any ordinary hope for this world. Certainly not all of the things in the paragraph above are bad if experienced rightly within their proper context; however, none can provide hope as defined as moving toward the ultimate good, becoming better, progressing as not-yet-beings as the ancients defined hope. At best these things are temporal, failing to provide any real hope. I think we humans are quite resourceful in the ways we concoct to find ordinary hope in the face of the reality of this world.

The only hope, ordinary and foundational, that I can find for myself and the world around me is the hope of knowing Jesus (Philippians 3:7-16). If this is true, then maybe we Christians should stop shouting, “Thou shalt not…” at the world, being just another shrill voice in the din of angry voices in a world full of hate. Just maybe we ought to offer a positive voice asking the gentle question, “Where do you find hope?” But we need to know just where we find our own hope so that we can offer t freely to others (2Peter 3:15).

I’m going to begin asking people this question, where do you find hope? I’ll let you know how it goes.

Children of God

10 Monday Sep 2012

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But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God—John 1:12

So, I have been asking myself that same question I posed earlier in this series of blogs on the theological virtues…what is the Good News of Christ for me? The elementary things I mentioned earlier, repentance, faith toward God, resurrection from the dead, and eternal judgment have all had their day, their time of primacy, in my thinking about the Good News for me. Because they are foundation, they remain very important. But, they are no longer enough. The question:

Isn’t there something more?

has continued to plague me.

Now I find the Good News–my foundational hope–is in the promise of God that has been increasingly revealed over thousands of years. Seems like a no-brainer, but it hasn’t been for me. The promise started with God’s promise of land and becoming a great nation made to Abram (Genesis 12:1-3). It opened up more as a promise of kingdom with God’s man always on the throne in the promise made to King David (2Samuel 7:8-17). With the later prophets there were glimpses of something more, an early marriage metaphor (e.g., Hosea 1:2) and of God delighting in us (Zephaniah 3:17).

Yet, I was confused. With the person of Jesus came the doctrine of the Trinity formulated by the early church fathers: “God is three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit); Each person is fully God; There is only one God.” In the context of the Trinity there were many metaphors: friend of Jesus (John 15:14), slave (bond-servant) of Jesus (Galatians 1:10), bride of Jesus (Revelation 21:2), child of God (John 1:12), united with God (John 14:23; 17:21), sibling of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and our being filled with the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17). As I moved past the elementary things of what God had done for me, I found I had an identity crisis regarding who I was as a Christian. Each of these metaphors gives a different relational image between me and God…which is it?

Over the past five or six years and with the help of many men and women past and present, each much smarter than I am, the promise of God has been slowly dawning on me. Here is how I see it at this point in my journey with Jesus:

I am being united with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit; Christ brings me into oneness with our Father (not in the pantheistic sense). Though it doesn’t conflate all of the above metaphors, I think it happens like this:

For more than 40 years I was a son of Satan (John 8:44). It was an abusive relationship, a sick distortion of love as with any abusive relationship; this one masquerades as father-son but is truly master-slave in the worst sense. When I turned to Jesus, all I knew was slavery and abuse disguised as love. While I believe that at that moment I actually became God’s son, I didn’t know it nor did I understand what it meant. So, I acted as I knew how, as a slave of Jesus.

It is much like any human who has been abused. It takes a long time for him or her to begin to trust someone who genuinely loves them. As Jesus’ slave, I was always waiting for and expecting the abuse; my image of God was a God who tallies mistakes and punishes capriciously. As I began to believe God could be trusted, we became friends and we interacted as friends. And, over time, as sometimes happens with human friends, our love as friends began to deepen into something more.

Along with some theologians I believe that the Holy Spirit is the personification of the loving relationship between Jesus and His Father. Their relationship is so real is has personhood. That same personified love is helping me to become one spirit with Jesus (1Corinthians 6:16-17; the two become one, the marriage metaphor). As I learn to cooperate with the Spirit in me to become increasingly purified through my obedience and God’s help and discipline, I draw closer in unity with Christ. (St. John of the Cross used a window metaphor: the purer the glass the more light shines through.) So in Christ, to use St. Paul’s phrase, I am actually God’s child even now. God the Father looks at me with the same loving gaze as He looks at Jesus. With Christ in me, another of Paul’s phrases, and the work of the Holy Spirit, I an actually becoming one with Jesus, taking on His characteristics (the so-called fruits of the Spirit of Galatians 5:22-23, and I gaze upon our Father with the gaze of a truly loving son, the gaze of Jesus.

St. John of the Cross says this (Ascent of Mount Carmel):

Love effects a likeness between the lover and the loved.

Love is the transformative agent for humans into the likeness of God as we were first created to be (Genesis 1:27). It should be no surprise; after all, God is love (1 John 4:8) and knows us only through love (1Corinthians 8:3). Therefore, as I love Jesus more deeply I find I increasingly become like Him; the two of us becoming one through the power of Love personified, the Holy Spirit.

So, this is the promise of God for me, it is the basis of my fundamental hope: that I am united with Jesus in love through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that Jesus will lead me into oneness with our Father. It is the greatest not-yet-being kind of hope, the only real hope for me to become who I really am and was created to be.

Some have hopes of a reward of a big mansion in heaven (John 14:2) or to finally become holy (1Peter 1:16) or to sit on a cloud for all eternity playing a harp (that sounds more like an agonizing existence to me). I look forward to being face-to-face with the One I am coming to love so deeply, becoming one with: Jesus. This is the only reward I want: the time to know God intimately as I truly am, and, through Jesus, to be in a genuine Father-child relationship with our Father as a part of the family of God. This is my foundational hope.

I think this is the foundational hope offered by God to the world. I believe the world is desperate for this hope.

Foundational Hope

09 Sunday Sep 2012

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Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” —Genesis 12:1-3

Previously I talked about the two types of hope: ordinary hopes, those many day-to-day hopes, and a fundamental hope, that which is left when all other hopes are gone. Philosophers, theologians, and psychologists all generally recognize that we each seem to have an intrinsic, foundational hope for something better, for us as individuals to become something better and for our world in general to be better. Sometimes this hope is referred to as not-yet-being, implied in this hope is the idea of becoming, that we are each on a journey of becoming better, moving toward some ultimate good?

How does this happen? You can imagine that the answers are manifold. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, people believed that we were progressing toward this good through the sciences, both in our understanding of nature and human nature. However, the atrocities of World Wars I and II stopped this thinking. Yet, as our memory of those wars dim we seem to be moving back to that thinking, that science and now government can bring about utopia (see philosopher Thomas Hobbes 15th century writing on the Leviathan, or benevolent dictator). Even if true, this does not really address foundational hope for the individual. From where does foundational hope come?

For many, foundational hope lies beyond death, that there is something beyond this life that will be ultimately good, however we define “good.” Every religion that comes to my mind offers this foundational hope for a ultimately good existence after death. Many who have attempted suicide have reported that it was not fundamental despair that drove them to try and take their own lives. Rather, it was fundamental hope! The ordinary day-to-day despairs overwhelmed them and they felt all that was left was fundamental hope, something better awaiting a them after death.

However, there are some who believe this world is all there is (nihilists). For these, there can be no individual, foundational hope; only foundational despair can exist if they were to be honest about it. With no greater good toward which to hope one is left only with what this world offers: temporary, ordinary hopes and the distraction of busyness to keep one from the falling into the abyss of fundamental despair. Blaise Pascal put it this way:

I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am terribly ignorant of everything. I know not what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects about everything and about itself, and does not know itself any better than it knows anything else.

Just as I do not know whence I come, so I do not know whither I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall for ever into nothingness or into the hands of a wrathful God, but I do not know which of these two states is to be my eternal lot. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And my conclusion from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of seeking what is to happen to me. Perhaps I might find some enlightenment in my doubts, but I do not want to take the trouble, nor take a step to look for it; and afterwards, as I sneer at those who are striving to this end…I will go without fear or foresight to face so momentous an event, and allow myself to be carried off limply to my death, uncertain of my future state for all eternity.

I began this topic by noting that the writer of the biblical book of Hebrews says that the things on which we Christians most often focus our thoughts, repentance, faith toward God, resurrection from the dead, and eternal judgment, were the elementary things (Hebrews 6:1-2); there is something much better (for mature audiences!). The writer goes on to claim that this better thing is hope (Hebrews 6:19-20):

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

This promised hope is “as an anchor of the soul.” Strong words. What is this foundational hope, this sure and steadfast anchor of the soul? It is what Christianity, Christ, has to offer us and the world. It is God’s promise first given to Abram (above) and repeated and unwrapped throughout the four millennia since. What is this profound promise and what does it offer to us and the world?

The Good News

27 Monday Aug 2012

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The beginning of the good news [gospel] of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. —Mark 1:1

Imagine that an unbelieving friend comes up to you and asks, “What does your Christianity have to offer me and the world? What has it done for you?” How would you answer?

This would not have been an uncommon question faced by the early church. People of that time were very “spiritual” as they are now; there were many pagan religions each competing for adherents, just as there are now. There were many Christian heresies, just as there are now. What did this genuine Christian religion offer that none of the others did? In our culture obsessed with marketing and packaging, this is an increasingly common question to us as people bring their shopping mindset to their spirituality.

An obvious answer is that Christianity is true and none of the other religions are. Scripture clearly calls upon us to “contend for the faith” (Jude 3); however, in my experience people often stare facts in the face and choose otherwise if what they hear conflicts with their chosen lifestyle. Beyond the bare facts of Christianity, what does Jesus offer the world? How is the Kingdom of God different from the Kingdom of Me or any other Kingdoms of the pagan gods? In other words, what has Kingdom-of-God living brought to your life?

In Mark’s first verse, above, he tells us that the next 16 chapters of his writing are all the good news of Jesus, and there is a lot about which Mark writes: healings, forgiveness, exorcisms, teachings on wise living, miracles with food, confrontations with religious and political leaders, death, and resurrection. For you, the good news of Jesus may be any or many of these things depending on the circumstances of your life and the point in your journey with Jesus.

Here is how the good news manifested itself in the life of one woman. In Luke’s recounting, there was a woman, by tradition it was Mary Magdalene the prostitute, who came to a dinner for Jesus hosted by Simon the Pharisee. We hear how the woman washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and poured an expensive oil on His head to cool it (Luke 7:40-50), Jesus remarks to Simon that the motivation for this woman’s loving actions toward Him is because she recognizes that her many sins have been forgiven. One can imagine how a social outcast, as this woman clearly was, would respond to being accepted by someone like Jesus through the forgiveness of her sins. It seems clear that the good news for her at this point in her journey with Jesus is forgiveness. So, when answering her unbelieving friend’s question, “What has Christianity done for you?”, she would likely answer, “Jesus offered me forgiveness for my past sins.” At this point in her life, she would undoubtedly go out and preach a gospel of forgiveness as her good news of Christ.

Similarly, the man born blind who has his sight restored by Jesus would exclaim the good news of healing: “One thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).

So, what is the good news of Jesus, of Kingdom living, for you where you are right now? Is it, like the woman, forgiveness? Have you been healed, like the blind man? Is it the new life promised by the resurrection of Jesus? How would you answer your unbelieving friend? What Kingdom-is-at-hand (Matthew 3:2) gospel do you preach by your words and deeds?

Any one of these things is great good news and we must be grateful for any and all of them in our lives and we must be ready to give reasons for our belief that it is from the God of Christianity (1Peter 3:15). However, I believe there is something even more profound that each of these points to, not just good news, but an overarching GOOD NEWS that is needed so desperately in the world yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Keep reading…