Day 142: Examples of Light

"This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin."  1 John 1:5-7

This passage should give us all hope.

It first defines how we are to live our lives.  We need to make sure that our faith manifests itself in our lives through our actions.  We teach the best and spread the Gospel the best through our actions, for that is how others can conceptualize things.  Over the past week now, I have made many Chinese dumplings (餃子 and 小籠包).  I'm a guy who likes to learn things from books, and that works quite well with most recipes I've encountered.  However, the trademark of dumplings is their pleats.  I have read countless instructions on how to perform them, but they all turned out to be disastrous and plain odd.  But, after watching one video, I was able to understand how to fold them properly.  After a few dumplings for practice (and eating, of course) I feel that I have made quite some progress.

The way we live our lives becomes a light for many who are around us.  If we demonstrate our faith, just like a video, people will be able to understand all that they have heard from Christianity.  In fact, we too will begin to understand the bible and teachings better when we live our faith.

The latter part of this passage is what should give us all hope.  It says that when we live our lives faithfully, we will have fellowship not just with God, but with everybody around us.  Now, it is amazing enough to have fellowship with God, but it must be reassuring to be in the company of the many faithful who are walking in the light.  People who live around us, going through many of our same challenges, should make us feel closer to God.  The reason why we'll be in good company is because we will all be heading in the same direction, albeit from different starting points.  When we wander without God, we will end up in so many places that are unfulfilling.  Many will actually find themselves heading backwards towards destruction.  But, when we walk towards and in the light of God, we will find all of those who are walking in the same direction.  Those people will be able to dust off your shoes, provide you with water, hand you a coat if you need one, and will welcome you to the glory of God.  We need to provide that fellowship, because it is our duty as Christians.  The light of God is God's unconditional love for all of us.  When we provide that fellowship, we will see the light grow not only around us, but also in us.

Day 132: Direction

"Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away."  James 4:14

Right off the bat, we should remember that our lives are in God's hands.  God has the ultimate say in everything that goes on.

Imagine how great it would be if we could predict everything that would happen in the next year, next day, or even the next hour.  We would be able to plan for absolutely everything.  But, at the same time, we wouldn't have all too much to live for.  We would have all the answers, and we wouldn't have much else to do.

We live where we can't tell what's going to happen next.  So, we work on ourselves so that we can be ready for absolutely anything.  One of the greatest tenets of Jesus' preaching is, "be ready".  But that's all we can do.  It sounds pretty restrictive at the start.

Our lives our precious.  We can't control everything that affects them.  I like the metaphor of the vapor.  It's similar to smoke.  When you look at smoke, it floats in so many different directions, and I'm sure much of that depends on how the molecules of air are moving in around that smoke.  Then, there are also basic traits of heat, such as the circular motion that comes from the source.  Eventually, no matter which way the smoke goes, it dissipates as it reaches higher and higher.  We cannot grab smoke and manipulate it.  All we can do is prepare everything from the source and hope that things go in the direction that we want it.

Right now, our lives are going.  They are going in so many different directions.  You might get a call for a new job offer.  You may receive a message about the death of a relative or a friend.  You might get hungry.  You might do nothing.  The only thing we can do is prepare ourselves.  The way we prepare ourselves for the future involves realizing where we want to be.  This will involve prayer and meditation.  This will also involve lots of study and practice.  If we don't prepare, things will only go in different directions, whether we like them or not.  We can't complain if they don't go in the way we want them to go.  At the same time, we cannot say that everything will go according to plan.  We just need to remember that our lives are in God's hands.  God is working in our lives.

Day 090: Seeing God's Face

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation."  Colossians 1:15

Here is the Good News.

When reading the Old Testament, especially the time period from the Exodus before the era of Judges, you can get an image of a community with a lot of angst.  There are many commandments coming from the God who liberated all of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  Not only that, but those commandments are only coming from Moses, the only person allowed to see God, let alone interact with God.

When Jesus came into the world, though, we now have a clear image of Almighty God.  We can see Jesus in the flesh.  We can hear Jesus in a language we can understand.  We see another human to whom we can relate, teaching us the Way.  It is a good thing, for we are all invited to participate in the divine.  Jesus gave us the Eucharist, and now we have a way to commune with God.

When I thought about this verse, I thought about an old hymn, where one of the verses says, "I see Thee face to face and live!"  And that's what we have now!  We see Jesus face to face and live!  We have so many things to be thankful for, and the chief of them is that we can come so much closer to God than ever before.  Love, which was once something concealed and confusing, is now something we can understand with many examples from Jesus Christ.  We have all of his teachings to guide us.

When we read the bible, when we pray, when we take communion, we are seeing God face to face, and we, indeed, are living.

Day 076: Total Devotion

"Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham."  Galatians 3:7-9

This is a revelation to us about how to live our lives.

On the one hand, Paul is clarifying the fact that the Gospel is not restricted to those who are related by blood line to Abraham.  In fact, the only way to become children of Abraham is through faith.  On the other hand, this is actually an explanation about how we can be true Christians.  Just as the Jews could only claim heritage to Abraham through their faith, in the same way we can only claim discipleship to Jesus through our faith.

We have all been called to become followers of Jesus through our faith.  And what does that entail?  It entails a total dedication of our lives to Jesus.  The neat thing about being followers of Jesus is the fact that we have lots of his teachings written down in the Gospels.  We know how Jesus wants us to live.  He calls us to put aside all of our judgments, our prejudices, our discrimination, and instead show our love for one another as signs of our love and devotion to God.  We have so many invitations to follow Jesus that you would think that more people would decide to become followers.  Again, it seems that it is because of the simplicity of the Gospel that we can scare ourselves away.

This Lent, take some time to read one of the Gospels (I'd recommend Mark because it's the shortest) and find out how you can become a closer follower of Jesus.  Point all of the things you do in your Lenten devotion to God.

Day 074: Let God Live in You

"He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living.  You are therefore greatly mistaken."  Mark 12:27

This is an admonishment that Jesus tells us every day.

It seems to be the answer to many people's questions about declining church attendance.  We have let God become the God of those who have died way in the past, people we don't even know personally.  We allow ourselves to be absorbed in motions and customs that we don't even believe in.  Why do we do this?

Perhaps we do this because of the fact that we are afraid of God: not with a godly fear, one that brings us closer to God, but a phobia, one that just forces us to run away from God.  We're afraid to explore our relationship with God, so we let those who have dared to draw closer to God guide us with their mere words.  However, I don't think that that's what those saints before us would have wanted.

What happens to you when you see something amazing?  When you go to a breathtaking beach for the first time, or climb up the top of the Great Wall of China?  You take pictures, you make your personal mark, and you tell every single person around you.  In the same way, those who have experienced God in so many ways have given us their postcards, their accounts, their videos, their selfies.  When we show off our pictures and talk about our experiences, we almost always conclude with the same recommendation, "you have to go do this."  And that's what the saints of the past are telling us, living in their words and their histories.

Sometimes, though, when we walk into church, pick up a prayer book, mouth the songs, or watch the priest do her thing, we are just there.  Imagine going to a foreign country for the first time and just walking around everywhere without taking a moment to breathe the new air, look at the new sights, or even taste the food.  You just wasted a trip.  In the same way, by not engaging in church, you're just wasting your time.  You are allowing God to be the God of the dead.

It will definitely take some effort, but a long line of saints will tell you that the results are worth the effort.  Raise your hands, think about the prayers, sing your best, just do something when you are in a spiritual space.  Allow for the Holy Spirit to enter you.  The only way you will truly reach God is by reaching out towards God, just as God is reaching out to you.

This Lent, take a moment to think about the different prayers you say in church, or think about your favorite hymn/worship song.  Think about how all the words can become part of your everyday life.

Day 066: Direction

"For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it."  Mark 8:35

 This sounds like quite an order, but it's for our own sake that Jesus commanded it.

But, to preserve our own life can seem pretty selfish, especially before God.  When we go about on our own, making everything in our life just the way we want it, many times the process leads us on a path away from God.  Our life would have our name on it, but it would fall very far from God.  Directing our lives can isolate us from all those around us, and then we will indeed be gaining our own world while losing our soul.

Losing our life means to let go of it.  We need to let go of our lives so that God can take it and shape it into the best that it can be.  What do Jesus and the Gospel mean?  They mean love.  They mean support.  They mean everything that is good.  So why would we want to keep our life from all of that?

Giving our life over to Jesus is a constant thing, though.  We periodically take it back from God's hands out of fear.  However, in order to make sure that God has complete control over our lives, we need to be in constant communication with God through prayer and reading the bible.  We will only be able to give our lives over for the Gospel's sake if we actually know what the Gospel is.  We direct our lives on the basis that we know our every thought.  If we familiarize ourselves with the Gospel, then we can allow for the Gospel to take over.  It will be a lot of work, just as Jesus pointed out (take up your cross), but Jesus will be there every step of the way, guiding us and helping us.

Take some time this Lent to familiarize yourself with God in a new way.  Find a new devotional, have a conversation with a faith leader or even your friends, or just sit down and read the Gospel of Mark (it's the shortest one).  Also, pray for guidance through your process of learning.