Paradox

I love paradoxes.  I like to try to wrap my my mind around great intellectual puzzles, to take seemingly contradictory ideas and make sense of them.  One such paradox is the one spoken by Jesus in Luke 21:10-19. First I'm going to talk about the passage in general, and then specifically about the paradox so oft repeated in the gospels.  Jesus informs his disciples that they will be persecuted for their faith, but also that that same persecution will be an opportunity for them to bear witness.  Now, I don't know about you, but the idea of suffering does not always sit very well with me.  I like to be comfortable.  So, being persecuted for not doing anything wrong just doesn't seem fair.  But Jesus tells us to expect it.  And, not only that, he tells us to seize that opportunity to do more of what got us into the pickle in the first place--bearing witness to him.  That doesn't seem like the wisest idea to me.  But God is all about being counterintuitive, going against the grain, doing things that make no sense to our minds.  So, Jesus tells us to be brave for His sake, proclaim His name, and not worry about being hated and even betrayed by the ones who are closest to us, because, he tells us, he's got it covered, he knows what he's doing.  But here comes the major paradox--"some of you they will put to death....But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives." How does that make any sense?  Some of us will die, but we will gain our lives?  I think the answer can be found in another saying of Jesus in Mark 8:34-38. 

Jesus is speaking about two different lives, one being our body and one our soul.  Our short physical life on this earth is but a blink of an eye in comparison to the eternity we have ahead of us.  We have a choice in this life how we will spend eternity--eternal life with Christ, or eternal death, punishment for spitting God in the face after he was merciful enough to provide a way back to him.  If we give up a few extra years on this earth because we are persecuted for our faith, we will not lose eternal joy in heaven.  But if, instead, we decide that we love this life too much, we can choose to deny Christ before men and then in turn be denied by Christ when this short life is over.  If we make the former choice, we truly will save our lives by losing them, but if the latter, what gain is there?  In the words of Jim Eliot, martyr for being a witness to Christ: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."  What are you holding onto? This life or then next?
 

Hard to Ponder

Contemplating the death of Jesus is a hard thing to do.  Hard, because it removes my ego from its pedestal and smashes it on the ground, showing me how utterly unworthy I am of the mercy of God.  Hard, because it saddens my heart to see the utter depravity of human nature, and that the best, most worthy, righteous person could be subject to the worst, most degrading treatment of all.  Hard, because it angers my inner sense of justice that a completely innocent person could be punished for crimes he did not commit, just to placate the crazed crowd.  Five times in Luke's gospel it is emphasized that Jesus was innocent, guiltless, undeserving of any punishment, yet he bore it anyway (Luke 23:4, 15, 22, 41, 47). Hard, most of all, because when I see his sacrifice, and remember that he could have avoided death completely, but chose to die anyway, I am left in utter awe of the immense love that Christ has for each and every person on this earth, including the ones whom he knows will choose to reject him.  It is hard, because it puts me down, but it is also good because it exalts Jesus.  His death, unjust and depraved as it was, satisfied the justice of God, so that we might be deprived of our depravity and decorated with the worthiness of Christ.  

Lent

So, the day before Lent started, I totally pigged out on some amazing almond bark.  I wasn't even thinking about the fact that it was the day before Lent, i.e. Mardi Gras.  I just saw the chocolate and ate it.  Later, though, I was contemplating what, if anything, I should do for Lent.  As I was thinking about it, I decided I would give up sugar, meaning any foods with added sugar, beyond those minuscule amounts found in bread and such.  I was actually thinking it wouldn't be that big of a sacrifice, because at our house we rarely have anything with sugar in it, and my mom always sweetens things with other natural sweeteners, such as honey or agave nectar.  So, I figured, "why not?  It will focus my attention on Jesus when I do run across something sweet, and I'll have a reason not to eat unhealthy foods."  At first it was relatively easy, because there weren't that many opportunities where I actually was tempted with sugar.  However, last week I headed to Virginia to visit a friend and watch her perform in a play and get proposed to on closing night (watch it here), go to DC (where I had never been before), and go wedding dress shopping (which was all tons of fun). The only problem was that I had to be confronted with sugar pretty much non-stop.  Then it really did become a sacrifice for me.  Instead of eating sugar literally every meal though, I got to feast on Jesus. As I approach the end of my commitment, I'm realizing more and more that any sacrifice I might choose to make pales in comparison to the one which Jesus made during Passion Week nearly 2,000 years ago.  I'm also realizing that feeding my relationship with Christ should come first, and that when I get hungry for physical food, I should be yearning just as much or more to be fed with the spiritual food of my relationship with Jesus.  I'm starting to consider fasting once a week for one meal, to continue the reminder for me that feeding on spiritual food is just as important to spiritual health as physical food is to my physical health.  Giving up sugar for forty days has been a worthwhile sacrifice, and although at the beginning I had no idea what I would learn, now I do. It has been so worth it!