The Three L's part 2
Life, Light, Love. If I had to describe God with only three words... those would probably be my choices. Today I want to focus in on the aspect of "life." And what I want to say first and foremost is that this is not describing what we might (or might not) have someday in the sweet by and by. This is our present reality. Look at John 11:24-25, "Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Did you catch that? Martha was putting everything out into the future. Just like so much of the church world still does today. Everything is a blessed hope (in the sense of hoping that it will happen someday). I believe the cross is a blessed assurance, because it happened 2,000 years ago! Jesus said, "It is finished." He did everything He needed to do in order to give us everything we needed to have. Notice that He didn't say, "I WILL BE the resurrection and the life." He said, "I AM the resurrection and the life." Present tense. Not what was going to happen, but what was happening at that very moment. I always equate this to the days of heaven on earth. Because, see, heaven isn't just where you go when you die. Heaven is where you went when Jesus died! Heaven is where you are right now, because heaven is in you right now! This life isn't about struggling until you get to the afterlife. It's about living life to the fullest while you have a life to live! The past is history, the future is a mystery, all we have is right now. And it's a gift. That's why they call it the present! So instead of wasting the time we have, in the hopes of something better after we die, we need to use it to experience and enjoy the gift we've been given! We need to understand that when Jesus died... we died! So in a very real sense this IS the "afterlife." This IS heaven. Heaven on earth. We're not wiating until "the last day." The last day was the cross. And, really, when you consider that Jesus is the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, the end came before the beginning! Jesus is both Alpha and Omega! He is the beginning and the end. It's all Him. It's all love. It's all light. It's all life! Look at John 1:3, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." I don't know how else to say it. It's all Jesus. And when we see Him in everything--as everything--we can even get to the point of seeing that it doesn't necessarily go FROM beginning to end... but in reality the beginning and the end are the same thing. How could eternal, everlasting, never-ending life have a beginning or an end? Right? That's how Melchizedek is described in Hebrews 7:3, "Without father, without mother, withou descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually." No beginning or end. Simply there. Abiding forever. Always has been, always will be. And the picture of this that I really like is the picture of the river of life. Living water. It flows no matter what. And we experience it when we jump in and stop trying to swim against the tide. When we flow. When we let the water carry us to where GOD wants us to be. To where LOVE wants us to be. Life isn't as hard as we make it a lot of the time. Life is meant to be experienced as we be still and know that HE is God. Not trying to follow in His foot steps but letting Him make His own foot steps with our feet. Living life--right here and right now--by letting Jesus (who IS life) live His own life in us, and through us, and as us. Experiencing His life by letting Him live it. In HIM we live, and move, and have our being! That's where I think I want to go with this tomorrow.