music :: worship :: life
Throughout the Lenten season, I’ve been using John 15:13 to introduce our Lent theme song, Above All—
Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
I have focused on the magnitude of his love—the awesome amazing love. And I have focused on the magnitude of the sacrifice. Just to give up the bliss of eternity, the perfection of paradise to descend into this darkness, this fallen world—is that not sacrifice enough? But to suffer the agony, the ignominy of the cross! What kind of love is this? What kind of sacrifice?
But somehow when I said the words again on Easter Morning, the final word leapt into focus: the word friends. He said, “lay down his life for his friends.�?
The arithmetic of the crucifixion fools us. Jesus died thousands of years ago, thousands of miles away. He died to save all humankind—all the teeming billions of souls strewn across the globe and stretching down the centuries and millennia, for all time. The math defeats us. We are single blades of grass lost in a prairie as seen from outer space. And Jesus—that far away, long ago Christ—who are we to him? Yet here he plainly says he died for his friends. That’s us—you and me. He calls us his friends!
On a clear day, have you ever stepped outside and looked up into the air and seen that vast expanse of blue, and it looks so far away? But this is mere illusion. For in reality it’s right here, all around us. We breathe it in without knowing, every moment of our lives.
The same is true of Christ. Let’s not be fooled by the math. He is no long ago, far away, guy in the sky. He is closer to us than the very air we breathe.
For in him we live and move and have our being.
—Acts 17:28
He is right here. Right now. Always. Forever.
From our first cry to our final breath, Christ is with us.
We are his friends, and he will never, ever leave us alone.
Only You fill me.
The things of earth leave me
thirsty.
Though I drown—
drench myself in the waters
of the world—
Though I stuff myself with
earthly fare—
I hunger still
wanting more
Only You can satisfy
Only You fulfill my desire.
Ordinarily I don’t write down these kinds of things, but this was a God-thing too blatant to miss. Usually God does his work behind the scenes in ways that are subtle and often go unnoticed, or can easily be explained away. About a year-and-a-half ago, I made a purchase on one of those “no payments, no interest for 18 months� plans. I’ve done this before; you make payments as you go along and be sure you’re finished before the interest comes due. But this time, there was always some other need that took priority, and I kept putting the payments off.
Last Wednesday, as I was doing my finances, I noticed that my 128 months was over on March 25th. It had to be payed in full or I would have to pay the deferred interest (at 20.9%)! I didn’t have that much extra cash laying around so I transferred some money from savings and paid the bill in full. I’d rather lose the piddly bit of interest from the savings than pay the 20%.
Sunday, as I was going through the unopened mail from earlier in the week, I opened a letter from my mortgage company. I was expecting it to be next month’s bill. Instead, it was a review of my escrow account. It seems that in the past year, I had overpaid my taxes, and rather than lower my payment to let the account catch up, they sent me a check to refund the surplus.
Can anyone guess how much the check was for? If you said the exact amount of the bill I just paid, you would be wrong. It was for $0.42 more. I think that just covers the cost of a stamp, a check, and an envelope.
That check, by the way, had arrived on Tuesday, the day before I made the payment. Had I opened it right away, I would have known God was looking out for me all along.
God has chased us all the way from Eden. We’ve come a long way from Eden, running all the way. He never tires, never flags, never wavers in his pursuit of us: relentless, unbent, undeterred. Still we run. Eventually he catches us. We were well hid, or so we thought. But suddenly he was there! Right there! Where we least expected him. And we shout: We are found!
But soon we run again, and again he chases. Always. All our lives. What is it we fear? His love is overpowering. His love is fierce. When he catches us, it changes everything. Look at Paul. God pounced on Paul like a mountain lion on a kid, and tore him up. Paul never recovered. An authentic encounter with the living God will ruin your life. We run scared.
His love could burn us up from the inside out. His love is hot. His love is sticky. We can’t get free of it. No matter how we try.
We don’t want to be caught by God. It changes us. If God tags us, we’re “it.” And then what will we have to do? What does he want from us? Where will he send us? What will become of our comfortable lives?
How it hurts! — How it tingles! — When our foot’s been asleep and the blood starts flowing again. And how, when God enters our lives, pounces upon us from behind some rock beside the road we travel, how it hurts! When feeling starts coming back to our lives, where we’ve been shambling, numb, asleep. When the grace starts circulating again through our unfeeling hearts and minds and sets us tingling. Hot, burning, we jump and shout. We cry out: I’m alive, I’m alive! God has found me and I’m alive!
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