I should probably provide a little bit of clarification before I get into the heart of this. I know, a week or two ago, I said I was going to try to post everyday. That's still true. But in all honesty, it's never going to be daily. I probably won't post on most if not all of Alexandra's days off. I'll almost never post when I'm away for a conference. This week was the Great Lakes East InterVarsity Regional Staff Conference. It was a wonderful three days exploring prayer toward authoritative vision, but it wasn't possible to write a post for this, and really, that's ultimately a good thing. It is, ultimately, a line from yesterday, as we were nearly finished, that is spurring at least the beginning of this post. As we talked about a few passages in Hebrews throughout the week that highlighted "Entering God's Rest," our Regional Director made the point that, too often in life, we live as if the dichotomy between "rest" and "activity" is real. In actuality, he said, we can be active in our work (professionally, domestically, whatever) from a posture of rest by living in the reality that God will and does give us the strength to do the things he has for us in life. We don't have to strive to achieve of our own strength and thus, a prayerful, God-ful life is one in which we can experience a form of constant rest even in our "doing." That has got me to thinking, for this blogpost, that we simply don't talk about the presentness of the Kingdom. We use salvation as our selling point. We talk about praying a prayer that apparently saves us from hell, then we talk about living a life in a "right" way so that we can please the God who saved us. At every turn though, it just feels like the Bible calls us to something larger than a heavenbound wish for Eternal life. Eternal life is promised. Don't just believe it; embrace it as a truth and move on to life here and now, where God has a plan for your life much larger than a simple assent that Jesus died and rose for your sins.
I'm coming to terms with the fact that the Bible doesn't tell us how to live a certain way because it pleases him. It does, most certainly. But God wants to give everyone on the Earth the best possible life right now. Right now is flawed and that doesn't happen, not by a far cry, but its obvious that he's given us the charge to make that possible. He's created one huge family from formerly irreconcilable groups of people, and the great mystery, as it says in Ephesians, is that we can be a true, authentic community no matter where we've been or who we were.
I don't know your personal experience of honest, real community, but I believe it to be a gift of God. I believe God's love is best loved through others toward one another. There's nothing better in the world. It's popular, at weddings, to claim that Marriage is great because it's an Earthly image of God's love for the church. I don't like that take because it denigrates marriage as nothing but a symbol. I don't like it either, because it's unbiblical. God's given us one another to experience his love and grace in the here and now...not as a symbol, but really, as the real love of God through one another. I believe marriage is at its best when it too is marked by God's love lived and shown to each spouse through the other. That's power. That's life-altering.
It's popular to say that Jesus didn't say make converts, make disciples. We act like that means don't have people "get saved" and leave them...help them know how to live a Godly life too! But really, a disciple is more than that. It's a person who does as his or her teacher showed them. Jesus created a small community of people and showed them a love that transcended where they'd been and what they'd done. As he traveled around, he invited people into that: to be the loved and the loving.
As I get ready to embark on another semester of ministry, I'm reimagining evangelism in my own way. The hole in our gospel is much larger than its incompleteness: it's its wrong intent. I'm not going to invite anyone to heaven this semester. I can't get them to heaven. Their faith can't get them to heaven. Only God can do that, after a death I hope to be much farther away than my annual review's due date. But I can invite them into a community of love and, I hope, show them how to get enough outside themselves to become full members of the community who can show others love as we add to our number.
-Zack
"Until the lion learns to speak, the tales of hunting will always favor the hunter"
-K'Naan
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