It’s Not What It Seems

 

SLOWDOWN FOR SUMMER GIVEAWAY # 9

Women's Study Bible / Leathersoft (NKJV)

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Delissa

Get Your PRAISE On!

Kate Schwindt

Lisa Bowdon

Wild Olives T-Shirts

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Have you ever heard something that just says with you?

A quote or a word that impacts your spirit? With so much coming in, most gets cycled about and discarded.  Most of the time the important stuff sticks, like remembering to buy toilet paper,  but every once in awhile something unlikely, something deep, stays there, cycles around and comes back time after time. This is one of those quotes, and Cyprian is one of those guys from a time long ago that I would have liked to have sat down with and had coffee.

St. Cyprian wrote this letter to his friend Donatus sometime in the third century.

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see…. brigands on the land, pirates on the seas, in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds, under all roofs misery and selfishness. It really is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. YET, in the midst of it, I have found a quiet place and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are Christians….and I am one of them. (Gordon MacDonald, Forging a Real Faith)

From where I sit in America the view is a nice one. I sit among people that love me, surrounded by sojourners in a church that freely worships. I have access to clean water and food. However, it's not what it seems.  When I climb the mountain of this city, I see broken marriages, dependency, crippling fear and the same misery and selfishness that Cyprian spoke of in the third century. I turn on the television and I see what Cyprian saw. I see poverty, injustice, murder, persecution. The reality is that while much has changed, much has not. It IS a "really bad world, an incredibly bad world." Truth is, it's easier to pretend it doesn't exist, but there is no escaping the reality of what's really going on. 

Where does hope lie?

It rests in the same place it did centuries ago. It rests in the holy people, the overcomers. The reality is that it's not going to change unless we, the overcomers, step out of our comfortable lives and embrace messy. It's going to take the people who have been brought into a real transforming relationship with Jesus and His love, stepping into the midst of turmoil to be the presence of Jesus. Those pilgrims who walk in the light and live the law of love commanded by Jesus.

Let's just be real here for a minute. Loving well isn't easy. Loving well isn't going to be convenient. Loving well isn't going to look normal and honestly loving well may be harder than it sounds in John 15. Loving well answers the phone when it doesn't want to. Loving well means having coffee and conversation and missing your favorite TV show. Loving well means giving of your best, whether that is time, talent or treasure. Truth is, it's always been hard.

Do we really think that it was easy for Jesus to love those disciples in the flesh? Come on, it wasn't easy to walk the dusty road and love the multitudes He encountered on the way. You know, the ones who look like, well, us. It couldn't have been easy for Him, it was only in His relationship with the Father that He had the strength to do it in His humanness. If it wasn't easy for Jesus,  it certainly won't be easy for us, but it's what we are called to do, and in Jesus, what we are equipped to do.

Climb the mountain friend, don't be afraid, look out and move in love. Don't spend too much time looking for a mountain, it just might be the slight incline of your street or the curb on your way into the grocery store or the ramp on your way into the office. It's not hard to see the brokenness that surrounds us, in fact you may be living in it yourself. Climb just a bit higher and notice someone else and do what the "holy people" of Cyprian's day did. They moved out of their own sinfulness and into a place where they met the needs of the broken, one person at a time.

My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. 

John 15:12-14

We're not being asked to change the world. Jesus simply asks that we reflect Him, and let Him take care of the changing. It is indeed a broken, broken world, but WE ARE OVERCOMERS, we have OVERCOME the world because of the LOVE and GRACE that loved us. It's what real faith demands. Overcome something this week and praise God for the revelation and then climb the mountain of your world and love someone well. This week, allow loving well to interrupt your life, it's what overcomers do, it's what Jesus wanted us, above all to learn from watching Him.