Where Eagles Gather ...

 

A true surprise is not something you could have planned for.  It is something you were not looking for, at least not at the moment it is revealed.  It is misaligned expectations.  You thought you were going to do one thing, and your friends or family surprise you with another.  Sometimes surprises are most enjoyable.  When they are not, we use other words to describe them.  Perhaps a birthday comes and you planned to just spend it in quiet reflection; no parties, no cake, not even presents.  But your co-workers have other ideas.  And so you are surprised, not just by what occurs, but by the fact your co-workers care that much about you, to invest their time and money to demonstrate it.  On the other hand, if your original plans for your birthday were met by an equally unexpected car accident, and you were instantly killed.  That too would have been a surprise, but we don’t use that word, instead we use words like tragedy.  Those who survive you say things like “what a shame”, or “what a loss”.  Everyone knows death will eventually come, but to have it so blatantly interrupt our lives when we least expect it, is not something any of us believe could happen right now.  And so we are almost always unprepared, not ready.  So perhaps for any given event we did not expect, whether we see it as a surprise, or a tragedy depends upon our perspective,

Take the second coming of Jesus for example, if it happened right now, would you see it as a surprise or as a tragedy?  Your life here, in this world, would be over.  If you were saved, your life in the next one would immediately begin.  And for most of us, we don’t actually need to live all the way up until that event occurs.  As we die, it is as if we fall asleep, losing all sense of time, while from our perspective – I was just here, and now the fast forward button is pressed – and there comes Jesus.  So one minute alive in this world, the next minute there is our Savior.  And given how often death is something that greets us unexpectedly, this is not something you could truly plan for.  But neither is life.  As you sit reading this BLOG, you would be literally amazed to look out your window and see Jesus coming back right this minute.  But that is possible.  All the prophecies you think are yet to be fulfilled may have already been so, just differently than you first understood.  The time you think you have from the conditions of the world, and the actual event of Jesus coming could never really be known, or definitively marked on a calendar.  So whether alive (or unexpectedly dead), Jesus could come right at this very moment.  Would you see that with the welcome eyes of a surprise, or with the dread eyes of a tragedy, a shame you did not have more time to prepare, to get right with God, before it does.

Jesus knew when He left his companions the first time, that they would miss having Him with them.  Who wouldn’t?  To have the literal source of love, and life, right within your reach had to be life altering.  It was.  And for the many generations who have had faith in Jesus without ever knowing Him personally in this world, the hope of His coming back to us, to be with us for all eternity has always been the ultimate goal we wait and wish to see.  So all of us wonder, thinking about the big question … when?  When will Jesus return and bring an end to the pains and disappointments of this life, and perhaps bring about the perfection of who we are, for as we sit today that destination is as yet unreached.  Jesus knew this question would overwhelm our minds from time-to-time, so He decided to address it.  In the gospel letter of Luke to his friend about what we believe and why Jesus takes on the subject directly.  Jesus could not tell us when, for only the Father knows that.  But He could tell us what it will be like, so He does.

Picking up in verse 22 it reads … “And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. [verse 23] And they shall say to you, See here; or, see there: go not after them, nor follow them.”  Oh how His disciples would miss Him after He was gone.  They knew Him personally.  They heard His love every day.  They witnessed it.  Nothing could stand against it, save for those hearts that would refuse to yield to it.  Though the disciples were still imperfect, even imperfect creation could know the yearning to be back at the side of God.  Their longing to be once again with Jesus Himself might make them vulnerable to grasping any hope of seeing one of those days.  Jesus knew that was not going to happen and that they would be lied to.  Wicked men, self-deceived to think they themselves might be the embodiment of the long awaited Messiah, might try to deceive others into believing it too.  The hope of finding Jesus based on the misguided words of others might have otherwise had the disciples following every goose chase that ever emerged.  But here is Jesus saying don’t go, don’t bother, those men will not ever be correct. 

In our day we have what we call “cult” figures emerge.  People who carry a ton of personal charisma, blended with some unique understanding of scriptures, who tend to think of themselves as the right-hand of God Himself.  Our modern figures may not claim to be Jesus anymore (that seldom works), but they may claim to be His prophet, or His mouthpiece, or some other highly elevated position, that in reality they have no right to claim.  If they were truly to be this great in the sight of heaven, they would dedicate themselves to being the chief servant of all, denying all credit, and serving and loving others.  Instead most of them desire to be loved, to be served, to be elevated in the minds of other men and women.  But the warning from Jesus stands.  Don’t go, don’t bother.  It is only a scam.  It is only a deception, for the return of Jesus will come in another way.

Jesus continues in verse 24 saying … “For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day. [verse 25] But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.”  So don’t get too happy during a thunderstorm.  This is not the story of the mythical Thor who long dead Vikings hoped to see riding the lightning to their villages.  It is a mere comparison.  Lightning covered the entire horizon.  Everyone could see it.  And Jesus was trying to tell us all that His return would be likewise.  Every eye would see it.  It would not be concealed.  It would not be hidden in some dark room at the far corner of the world for only the few to behold.  It would be in the sky itself.  It would be enormous.  It would light up our world with the ferocity of lightning, and extend beyond the horizons to encompass the planet.  Everyone will witness it.  Let that sink in.  Everyone alive at the time of His returning will be unable to ignore it.  When it happens every eye will be inexplicably drawn to it.  And the event will not be a silent one either.  As lightning is often accompanied by thunder that shakes the rafters.  The return of Jesus will come with a trumpet blast so powerful it will wake dead.  You don’t need CNN or FOX to cover this event to get the word out.  The earth itself will be in a state of turmoil forcing the attention of everyone to look up as it unfurls.  But none of this was to happen immediately.  Jesus was to offer His love and be rejected by many, most of all by the church leadership of His own generation.  The clock was still to tick to offer man a chance at redemption, all men, not just those within ear shot right then.

Jesus continues in verse 26 saying … “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. [verse 27] They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.”  Yikes. This is the most unfortunate of comparisons.  The days of Noah involved more than a few conditions.  First, Noah was keenly aware the world was coming to a universal end.  While Noah prepared for it, as per the instructions of our Lord, he preached to the entire world who made pilgrimage to see Noah’s folly one of the larger distractions from their day-to-day lives.  Outside of laughing at Noah, life for them was just normal life.  They ate what pleased them.  They drank the best of wines, beers, spirits, and juice.  They got married.  Since morality was not high on their list of things to integrate into their lives, they married “wives / plural” as Jesus points out.  No idea if that meant more than one over time with the phrase “given in marriage”, or meant simply adding to the harem.  Given in marriage may also have referred to a concept of trading your daughters for wealth – effective early human trafficking.  But even though they had heard the ominous words of Noah’s daily warnings about what was coming.  They paid no real attention to them, choosing rather to “live it up”.  Until Noah went into the ark with his family.  And the rains began to pour down.

This is the other less fortunate aspect of the return of our Lord.  Not everyone will be saved.  There are those who have like their predecessors, simply ignored every entreaty of His love, and just gone about their day-to-day lives.  They take one day at a time, unaware the clock is still ticking, and as it reaches zero at the end of all things, their lives are destined to be ended on that day, at least for a while.  The death we all know is coming, comes for every lost soul.  So while they may witness His return, they will not survive the day.  The fast-forward of death that comes for them is only a speedy entry to the onset of hell itself.  That aspect of “not everyone lives” is what some call the Judgment.  But here is Jesus saying, it happened before, when men went about their daily lives.  Notice too Jesus does not call out this generation for their sins, other than perhaps the perverting of the family unit He had designed.  He calls attention to our lust.  But nothing else.  And yet the evil of the generation of Noah was so bad, so intense, and much broader than mere lust, it had caused God to repent of even creating our species.  The reason for the flood.  And while He was imperfect, the offer and acceptance of Grace by Noah and his immediate family.  But literally no one else took God up on Noah’s offer to be saved.  The Ark was big enough.  And if so many people chose to enter it that it overflowed, perhaps the flood would have been stayed all together.  But no one accepted.  And everyone died.  Is that the state of our world today?

Is it even the state of our Christian churches today?  Do we stand on ceremony and tradition, but not on Jesus?  Do we simply go about our lives thinking we believe the right way, but finding our lust leads us from one crime to another?  Do we so casually give our hearts to one after another after another, forsaking the covenant of marriage we make before God, because we believe our love has moved on to someone else?  Life happens.  But life is happening, just as it did in the days of Noah before us.  And the clock continues to tick down, on a generation that pays it no mind at all.  Jesus continues His comparisons in verse 28 saying … “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; [verse 29] But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. [verse 30] Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”  Think on this comparison.  Sodom was destroyed for rape, for murder, for homosexuality, for a total abandonment of any constraints.  They did not see it coming.  They were just living lives of plenty they enjoyed.  While their lust was unabated, it provided them a constant distraction from anything remotely related to God.  And the day Lot left the city, it fell to fire from heaven, and killed every resident, none escaped.

It is easy to look elsewhere, to look at “those people” dividing ourselves on any lines that is convenient to our own hearts, and thinking others are this wicked today.  But were we to be true to ourselves, would we find the wickedness of Noah and Lot’s generation finding firm anchor in who we are?  Even within the church, a generation of people nearly indistinguishable from those who predate us by so many millennia.  And all of us just going through life, unaware of our proximity to His return, and frankly not caring anymore, too busy with the cares of just getting through this life.  We eat, we drink, we marry, we change our minds, and we repeat the cycle.  Feed the primaries, to the distraction of greater things.  Completely dive in to our jobs, as if our jobs could ever bring us peace, or build our families for the future carrying any one of them to the foot of the cross.  The danger compounds for even those who work in ministry.  They share Jesus outward with the world, but is His image lost inside the walls of their own homes, as example fades from the exhaustion of what we do every day.

Jesus then moves His eye to the soon coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the years of persecution that would follow.  This time of death is surely on its way and He does not wish to have any who might choose to believe be caught up in the coming tragedy by concerns of this life.  So He continues in verse 31 saying … “In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. [verse 32] Remember Lot's wife. [verse 33] Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.”  When the signs of the Romans coming happens, get out.  Get out now.  Don’t try to save anything, just go, right there, right then.  When later persecution comes, follow the same ideas.  Run and spread the gospel wherever you wind up.  Remember Lot’s wife.  She died.  Everyone remembers she was turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back.  But why did she look back?  Her family was with her.  Therefore her treasure was with her.  But was it?  Could she have lost her earthly possessions, her collection of things, that she so missed as to disobey and look back, even knowing what would come of it?  Or worse, could she have been secretly transgressing with another in the city of Sodom.  Sharing her heart where it was not supposed to go.  And now realizing the destruction that was raining down, must she look back even if it kills her, to see if her love interest might somehow have survived all this?  We do not know.  But we know she knew what was expected, what was told of them by God in her own home to her own ears.  And she chose to disobey for some other priority that was just more important to her.

Jesus says to “remember Lot’s wife”.  Are we her?  Even within the church of today, we know what we have been told, but do we do it.  Or do we disobey with hearts fixed on other priorities?  Even if the cost of that disobedience is to lose ourselves in it.  Jesus turns His eye into the hearts of all of us.  For we cannot discern, who is truly obedient, who is truly repentant, and who is not.  To us a group of people may look all the same from a spiritual perspective.  But to Jesus there is a difference in the heart that we cannot see, but that He alone can.  Jesus continues in verse 34 saying … “I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. [verse 35] Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. [verse 36] Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”  It is easier to work our way backwards in this passage.  To have two men working together even in the same field, and have one be saved, and the other not tells us that Jesus discerns hearts differently even when all the circumstances appear the same.  For two women at work grinding wheat, one saved, the other not, re-emphasizes the point.  It also tell us that women are not immune to the process of salvation, nor can they rely upon their husbands or anyone else to be saved.  Their own hearts must be right with God, for God will see into them fully and completely.

But two men in the same bed certainly has modern connotations to it.  Only one reason for that in our age, and it is generally not space constraints.  That looks like choice.  That looks like lifestyle.  Keep in mind we have just been discussing the times of Noah, and Lot, only a few verses before.  So it is entirely possible that Jesus was recognizing the inevitability of two men living in a way that scripture does not advocate as right.  Perhaps an open expression of a sinful life.  But don’t lose the main point.  One of them is spared, the other not.  Even for those of us steeped in sin, the heart of repentance is still different to God than the heart who feels it needs no repentance.  And this is not just directed at the homosexual community.  Again remember the passage of Noah, where multiple marriages were occurring, and where lust was unbound.  The straight community is not immune to errant sexual expression, or breaking the covenants that God has established.  There is as much addiction to wrong-doing in straight sex as there is anywhere else.  But even covered in sin, there is a difference between the heart affixed on Jesus, and the heart that has no time for Jesus or all that “silliness”.

But since Jesus has just talked about people being taken somewhere, the disciples want to know where they were taken.  They missed the concept of judgment of the heart in these words, they took them more literally.  So Jesus answers in verse 37 saying … “And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”  Does this sound even remotely like the Rapture so many churches hold as doctrine?  Where the body is; what body?  The body of those taken, of those left.  Or perhaps more likely, the body of His church.  Where the body of His church is, the eagles (or angels) will be gathered together.  Perhaps what Jesus is saying, is that the heart dictates our destiny.  If we are willing to open our hearts, no matter how deep we are in sin today, Jesus can save us, can restore us to His body, can surround us with angels or eagles as we have need.  This last passage or answer to the disciple’s question is not about when the second coming occurs, or how, or where we will go at any time.  It is about restoration based in hearts that may be indiscernible to others, but keenly visible to God.

This entire admonition is about - not being distracted with the cares of this life and missing the greatest event of all of history.  Jesus tells us His return will be an unexpected event for most of us.  Will you see it as a surprise you have long awaited, or as a tragedy of something you cannot believe is taking place now.  To be ready for it, we must find Grace as Noah did.  We must seek it.  We must be willing to accept it, no matter the condition of our lives right at this moment.  No man can substitute for Jesus, Jesus will be seen by everyone.  No one will be able to avoid it.  And not everyone lives.  If we judged the numbers based on the comparisons of Noah and Lot’s ages we would say very few lived, very few were willing to find His Grace.  Noah preached for 120 years to no avail.  Is that happening today?  Do we even within the church body look away from the eagles sent to us, and instead focus our eyes on the lusts of this life to our own great and eternal dismay?  God forbid.  Let us seek His grace, to lead us away from temptation of any kind, even if it is but misaligned priorities.  Let us seek to be where Eagles gather, to find safety under His angels, and service within His body.  Let His return become the most important surprise of our lives, being ready in His grace to meet that wonderous event.

 

Genesis of Thought and Feelings ...

 

Have you ever considered how your thoughts work?  Or perhaps wondered where feelings come from?  Your body is largely water, it has a few trace minerals in it.  From a composition standpoint there is nothing in the periodic table that would lend itself to the process of original thinking or feeling.  Electrical impulses maybe, but that is mere mechanism.  Your house is full of wiring that powers the lights, the TV’s, and air conditioning.  Just having an electrical impulse down a carrier wire does not create thought, intelligence, and far from emotion.  These days A.I. is all the rage, trying to make a computer emulate the human brain.  As far as logic goes, we are too close for comfort.  But as far as ethics go, we are close enough to create Sky-Net and watch Terminators come to life.  But to make something as inanimate as a computer understand feelings is still beyond our capacity.  We can make a computer “pretend” to respond based on certain sets of stimuli, but to originate a feeling is again beyond our current capacities.  And in that sense the origination of thought is also barely understood.  What makes Beethoven, Beethoven (the musician)?  Why do his thoughts not lead him to become Picasso (the painter), instead of the musician?  Why does his version of creativity, or the origination of thought and desire, not lead him anywhere instead of in just a singular venue?  These are still mysteries we do not fully comprehend.

So then, if you are you, because of how your thoughts and feelings are uniquely composed and cataloged – but the “why” of who you are we still do not understand – then when Jesus says the “Kingdom of God” is within you, could He be talking about a literal phenomenon, not just a figurative?  Could the Kingdom of God be more than just what we believe, what we think, or what we feel?  Could it literally be the presence of God influencing all of the above?  After all, we do not know why a particular thought originates in our brain.  We believe most of them happen due to external stimulus, influenced by conditioning, habit, preference, and bio-chemical responses.  But perhaps there is one more very critical factor in the very genesis of our thoughts and feelings.  Take faith for example.  Does faith come from you, or does it move through you, like some combination of thoughts and feelings you do not fully understand yet cling to in spite of facts, logic, and common sense.  How is that possible?  Reality would dictate that faith is illogical, or self-deception.  But faith rewarded only becomes stronger, and with it trust in what cannot be seen.  So when thoughts and feelings of faith overwhelm you, is that truly some sort of self-delusion, or rather is it divinely inspired from the throne room of God Himself, alive in you, alive in the origination of thoughts and feelings in your brain?  More the latter if you ask me.

Does a Kingdom have to be something we can see, and touch?  Must it have limits defined by its physical presence, or could the Kingdom of God be truly limitless unbound by what we can merely see or touch, but as real as anything else we can experience?  Love is not something we see, but it is more real to us than anything else we experience.  An overabundance of love, is a life beyond all descriptions of happiness.  An undersupply of love, is a life of pain nothing else can bring comfort to.  So love is not bounded by a physical presence in the “real world”, but it remains something very real in our experience, existing perhaps in the same plain of existence where God also reigns.  Love drives behavior, it has been known to cause us to willingly self-sacrifice for the benefit of another.  Love is not about self-preservation, so in that sense it defies all logic as well.  And we say that God is Love, but how seldom do we connect the dots, of knowing God, by knowing what it is to love our spouses, love our children, love our friends and family, and even to learn to love our enemies.  Things greater than ourselves, greater even than what exists in the world of see and touch.  This is something Jesus wanted us to understand.  It begins with a story of faith.

Luke writes to us of this story in the 17^th chapter of his gospel letter, picking up in verse 11 saying … “And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. [verse 12] And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: [verse 13] And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”  Think about this, Lepers, men and women with a terminal disease from which all cures have been lost.  The disease is a death sentence, a long slow living death.  Flesh rots until the whole of body is shut down painfully.  And the disease is horribly contagious forcing one who has it into isolation.  There will be no doctor’s visits.  There will be no pharmaceutical remedy to dull the pain.  There will be complete loneliness, physical pain, and a long slow march towards death.  Priests who were supposed to know how to heal this, and frankly any other condition or malady (remedies given to them by God), had long since forgotten how.  Or perhaps even more sad, had lost faith those remedies which rely upon the supernatural would work.  But are we any different? 

But these lepers had faith in the impossible, as it existed in the person of Jesus Christ.  So they stayed away as much as they could and found Jesus as He begins to enter the next town or village on His route.  They cry out, hoping against hope, believing in someone they do not understand why, being overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings they simply cannot reconcile with any form of logic.  Luke continues in verse 14 saying … “And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.”  First, when Jesus asks them to go to the priests as was part of the custom for cleansing that had been lost, but Jesus was not going to let go – they were not clean yet.  They started walking away from Jesus, still losing body parts, still being infectious, still suffering from a terminal disease.  There was no reason to go see the priests.  The disease was still with them.  Yet they went.  Without question.  It is what they were told.  Perhaps they would be healed when they got there.  It did not matter.  They were told to go, and go they went.  And along the journey while they were walking, their bodies were fully restored.  All the missing parts re-appeared as if re-created by our Creator God Himself, as it truly was.  Full strength returned, perhaps even better than it had ever been.  I am certain it overwhelmed them all. 

We don’t know if these ten lepers were a mix of Jews and Samaritans, or a mix of young and old, or a mix of men and women.  We only know about one.  One leper disobeyed what he was told by Jesus.  But he disobeyed because he could not help himself.  Perhaps he was the one who was healed of the most serious case of the leprosy among the ten.  Those who are forgiven the most, tend to be the most grateful.  But this one leper just could not follow what he was told.  While the other nine did as instructed.  Luke continues in verse 15 saying … “And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, [verse 16] And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.”  The one man who returned was a Samaritan.  Luke points this out, because while the Jews looked down upon Samaritans, it was the Samaritan whose heart was broken by this healing and just had to return to Jesus, glorifying God, falling at the feet of Christ, and thanking Him with tears and a heart shattered by the love of God.

Luke continues in verse 17 saying … “And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? [verse 18] There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. [verse 19] And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”  This is not a condemnation of Jesus of the other nine.  They remained healed.  They are actually continuing to do what Jesus had asked them to do, to present themselves to the priests, to the Pharisees, as a testimony to them that healing was back in Israel.  Even if the Pharisees had lost faith that terminal illnesses could be cured, Jesus had not, nor had these men, who were now living testimonies to the healing power of Jesus Christ and His Father God.  But Jesus asks about the other nine, and draws attention to the fact that this man is a stranger (a Samaritan), to draw contrast to how the “more devout” children of Abraham responded to an encounter with God.  The Samaritan just had to come back and thank Jesus.  How many of us are more like the other nine?  We may do as we are told, because our hearts do not drive us back in great joy and worship.  We worship when it is time to.  We sing when it is time to.  Pray when it is time.  Our brains have us conditioned to do what we are supposed to, when we are supposed to.  But the heart of this man drove him to do what he did despite instructions to the contrary.  He just had to thank God first.  He would still go the priests, but He needed more Jesus first.  How few of us think this way, or feel this way, and how sad that is.

Luke continues in verse 20 saying … “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: [verse 21] Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”  The priests got the message and were none too happy about it.  It was rather humiliating to have ten lepers show up who were no longer lepers because of an encounter with Jesus who still knew they could be healed.  To rub salt in the wound, these lepers were also fully restored something only Jesus could do, that is, only the Creator could do.  So the Pharisees were determined to bust Jesus on something.  If He were God, He would know when heaven was supposed to come back to this world.  So the priests wanted a specific answer from Jesus, when would they be saved, when would Israel be saved.  Note the emphasis on “when”, not on “how”.

But think about the answer of Jesus.  Heaven does NOT come because you watch for it.  In just a few verses later, Jesus will discuss how the time of Noah, and the time of Lot, were also very analogous to the return of God to our earth, and the re-installation of heaven for us all.  But that day will NOT ever be seen without understanding “how” salvation works.  For salvation to work, the Kingdom of God must live within you.  The thoughts of your brain need influence, they need the direction of the Holy Spirit, they need God to interact with them.  Your feelings need not be based solely on bio-chemical reactions, but instead be fully influenced by Jesus Christ through the mechanism of the Kingdom of God within you.  How else will you ever come to know empathy for the downtrodden instead of apathy?  How else will you ever learn what it is to love others so passionately that you would gladly self-sacrifice without a moments hesitation or regret?  Not just feelings of worship highs, but deep feelings aligned with the Kingdom of God that make a difference in the lives of others, that have tangible benefits for others in the here and the now.

We need the power of God’s force to influence our very weak minds, to create thoughts where none might have existed to do what love would drive us to do.  Faith, despite all logic.  Trust, despite a complete lack of what we can see or touch.  Thoughts, aligned with feelings, aligned completely with a boundless Kingdom of God founded in a love we will never fully understand.  While we may never understand how our thoughts are created or why; the genesis of our thoughts can be better understood in the light of the Kingdom of God within us.  Our lives can be made better.  Our freedom can be granted to us by the power of Jesus, made free, made whole, saved beyond what we could have imagined.  Despite the impossibility of it all, yet it remains real.  The “when” of God’s return cannot ever be fully appreciated until the “how” of our salvation is understood.  Genesis was not only a book about creation, it is a living process instilled within you by a willing heart and mind, to accept the salvation you need, and by allowing it we come to want more and more.

 

Abuse Alternatives ...

 

If you have never been its victim, you have no way to imagine it.  If it came to you in your childhood, you have no way to refute it.  All that is certain is the brokenness, the damage, the forever lasting impacts of abuse.  Abuse is the power of the greater over the smaller, the stronger over the weaker.  There is no defense against it, at best one can only seek protection from it, from another who may be equally greater or stronger or determined.  But to seek that protection requires the admission that abuse has occurred.  It is to relive what was done, and re-experience the horror of it.  Yet without this step of confrontation, and admission, abuse can linger or repeat until it seems all hope is gone.  And for many who have been victim to this, the very salient question emerges … where was God?  How could there even be a God, when this level of evil is permitted to exist, when this level of damage will result?  There is no good answer to a question such as this, because that answer will get very personal for you, very quickly.  To begin we must start with an examination of sin itself.

Not every sin is child abuse, that is certain.  There are many others.  But they all share a common theme, a common thread, it is the indulgence of self, or self-love, at the expense of others.  Even something as seemingly innocuous as pride; pride only make me feel good about me, about who I am.  But in that good feeling is hidden a change about how I feel about others.  For I cannot feel better about me, without in some small degree feel less impressed with you.  It is the start of the nurture of self-love, at the expense of love-of-others.  Think about it, Satan was not always Satan, he started his existence as Lucifer, content to love others and trusted with the highest position outside of the Godhead in the universe.  All it took was simple pride to begin his journey of self-love that would literally turn Lucifer into Satan over time.  It is no different for us.

And so the quest to make myself happy begins through any number of self-indulgences to experience.  And perhaps the expense to others is small in the beginning.  But then two other characteristics about sin (all sin) begin to emerge.  Sin is not constructed of singular incidents (as Satan would have you believe), it is instead a roadway that leads you on a journey ever downward.  What begins as an ever so small self-indulgence grows greater and greater, until the damage to you and others is larger than you would like to admit, or think about.  It is a pathway of degradation.  It is a de-evolving of a righteous state into a wicked one that is nearly imperceptible as it happens.  If you saw the end of the pathway, or perhaps even how far you have already sunk, you might seek a way to escape it.  But then your attention is instead focused on you, not on the damage you do to you, or others.  And once you begin to realize this phenomenon you discover the remaining common theme of sin, it is built upon the model of addiction, to in all effects make you powerless to stop.  Once an addict, you will never be free of it.  Only then do you discover you must be made free, or freedom will be lost to you forever.

Sex was made by God.  He created the physiological constructs in the bodies of men and women.  He added the biochemical reactions that take place in the brain and in the body.  But this gift was meant for a specific purpose, under a specific set of conditions.  Chiefly, to understand how two independent people might truly become one flesh through the committing of themselves one to another forevermore.  Only in that union could the act of pro-creation ever be possible.  Only in that state of pure vulnerability could one learn to trust their own heart, mind, and life into the hands of another.  That is intimacy.  That is trust.  That is sealed by our God Himself and blessed by Him.  Sex itself is not bad, or evil, or something to in any way be ashamed of.  No, sex as God designed it, is a higher state of purity than language is able to express.  And it is supposed to be an indicator of the union between a husband and wife, that would cause them to leave all others and seek first the companionship of each other no matter what the world tries to counteroffer in its place.  Done in this light, sex leads us ever closer the very throne of God, to a heaven created with homes for the privacy we prefer to be one with each other.

But pull sex out of this context, pull it away from the plans of God, and what was once holy becomes inevitably marred, degraded, and perverted.  The bio-chemical responses that were meant for holiness become perverted into everything but that which is holy.  Evil takes hold.  And as we just expressed, there is no end to the pathway downward of evil.  No man, and no woman is immune.  Expressions may be varied, destinations may differ, but the common destructive elements exist within every sinner to degrade further and further until all sense of morality is abandoned on the altar of self-love.  It is then when the sad truth emerges.  That any one of us is capable of the horrific.  That any one of us is capable (even if we think it far from possible right now), of walking a roadway ever downward that ends in the abuse of others, at the worst of that road, at the abuse of children.  So many would pull away at this idea and state it could “never” be them, that perhaps they would kill themselves before that happened.  For some, degradation moves to a different destination.  But damage still follows.  And while it seems incomprehensible, without the grace of God, and His active work of salvation in your life – you too are capable of the most horrific acts you cannot even conceive of at the moment.

Luke in his gospel letter to his friend Theophilus about what we believe and why, offers the prophetic words of Jesus Christ Himself on this very topic in the seventeenth chapter.  Picking up in verse 1 it begins … “Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! [verse 2] It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”  As this passage starts out, one might think Jesus was talking about His own betrayal by Judas.  But as usual, Jesus is not thinking about Himself.  He is thinking about others, in this case about the little toddlers, babies, and children He is continually surrounded by.  Jesus knows that not all of them will return to safe home, or have safe lives.  Jesus knows where sin leads (all sin). 

He knows that in our quest to amuse ourselves, that wealth and privilege will only make our degradation worse until we lose all sense of morality.  Until others become only playthings for our amusement.  Until even little children are seen as objects of sexual conquest.  Until our brains can become that mis-wired as we reject His transformative work in our lives.  And because the indulgence of any sin, has the potential to end us in the darkest places, Jesus points out the inevitability of pursuing such pathways downward.  Jesus says it is “impossible” but that offenses will come.  There are those who will simply sin, no matter how dark they become, or how much damage they inflict.  Their addictions will ever drive them further, until their animal pursuits degrade well past anything seen in the kingdom of animals.  Addicts to darkness and wickedness.  This is the end-roads of all sin, of any sin, in any one of us.

But Jesus says, we should consider an alternative to dishing out abuse.  It would be better for us, if we are to reject His salvation, and choose to abuse little children – that instead we tie a heavy piece of concrete millstone around our necks and throw ourselves into the sea.  We would die, death by suicide.  Suicide too, is considered a sin, but Jesus states in this instance, we would be making better use of our lives to die, than cause the kind of damage that comes from the abuse of children.  This should tell us several things.  First, how much Jesus cares about little children, and would wish NO harm ever came their way.  Second, that suicide is better than abuse in this kind of situation.  And finally, the most horrific of lessons, that all sin, that any sin, is capable of starting you on a journey downward that could lead you to a point of not only contemplating a sin like this one, but of acting on it.  No man, no woman, immune – all of us just at varying points on our journeys either downwards or upwards depending upon whether we embrace the salvation Jesus offers or not.  This is the hardest of all lessons, and the one most Christians fail to admit and find themselves suffering from as a result.

Jesus then takes a minute to explain to us, how salvation from such a thing, even as evil as this, could still be within our grasp.  He continues in verse 3 saying … “Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. [verse 4] And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.”  Imagine how hard this admonition is for those of use who are mere mortals.  If your spouse betrays you, and repents, you are to forgive them.  Accomplishing this single feat could involve months of time, tons of prayer, even grief and depression from the pain it would cause.  So to get over it once, would be the hardest hill you will ever climb in your life.  But wait.  Jesus says if they did this seven times a day, and seven times asked forgiveness, we are to grant that forgiveness.  I don’t know about you, but once seems like a weakness.  Twice looks like a pattern.  Three times looks like behavior to me.  By the time you get to seven times, you are describing the actions of a full-blown addict.  And despite this, Jesus says forgive the addict.  Does that lessen the pain they cause? no.  Does it undo the betrayal, or damage? no.  But it is the very nature of salvation that Jesus does exactly this for each of us, each and every day, and his limit for forgiveness exceeds seven times, it is more than sufficient to meet our degradation.  Even at our lowest point.  It is as if Jesus is saying, I can save even the addicts among you who have lost all hope of repair.  I can redeem even you, and put you on a different road.  Take it to Jesus.  Take the pain to Jesus.  Find the hope in Jesus.  Nestle the commitments in the strength of Jesus.  That works, nothing else does.

But can you believe this could work, even for you, even for the worst person you know?  What would you need, in order to believe this was possible?  Perhaps a faith greater than what you have today.  Jesus knows your need.  He continues in verse 5 saying … “And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. [verse 6] And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.”  The disciples heard this saying of forgiveness, and immediately connected the dots.  They would need more faith to be able to do this.  They would need more faith to be able to believe it could even be done.  So they ask for it.  Jesus then informs them as to the power of faith, how that even the smallest grain of faith, is capable of doing that which is IMPOSSIBLE to do.  This means a spouse can forgive an innumerable number of betrayals but only through the love and power of Jesus Christ.  Through a faith that is grounded in His love and emulates His salvation for us all.  It means that even a victim of child abuse is able to forgive the abuser, but ONLY through the love and power of Jesus Christ.  These things are impossible on our own.  It would be stupid to even try them of our own power and strength.  We would fail.  But with faith in the power of Jesus to save us.  We can forgive through His strength, and only through His.

It is beyond distasteful to us to think our own sin could lead to such a dark place, that we might require this kind of forgiveness from God at the very least, in order to be saved.  We like to think of our own sin, as nothing even remotely as bad, as what the adulterer or worse the abuser, has perpetrated.  We like to think of ourselves as “good” people.  But in this we self-deceive, for our evil knows no boundaries outside of the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.  And our evil is not a singular sin from which we need repentance, but a series of sins, that seem to repeat as often as minutes in the day.  We are addicts to our evil.  Even if that evil is simple pride, or “harmless” gossip, or gluttony to excess.  And Jesus knows we are already addicted and spiraling doward.  It is only in this context that we can answer that earlier question about where God was when abuse took place.  God was crying, with a broken heart, for both victim and harder to swallow for us, the perpetrators – longing to save us from ourselves, from our addictions, from our journeys downward that will one day lead us to our very real destruction.  God was begging us to look up.  God was entreating us with a Love so great we will never understand it to come home.  To be forgiven, to find salvation, to change who we are, what we do, and how we love.  God was there, even then, trying to save.  That picture of love should overwhelm us, even more than the real damage that would destroy us.  Look up, it is not too late, find your salvation in Jesus Christ.