Dear Faith Family,
'Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen,
bright and pure'
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
(Revelation 19:6-8)
What a wonderful vision at the end! Our lives united together to Christ in the eternal bond of covenanted love. A forever union in which our daily living is a preparation, a "making ourselves ready," in the free life "granted" us through the making right of Jesus' life, death, and life again. A life in which whatever we do to make a life can be "righteous." Whatever we do can be done in right/proper/congruent relation to God’s person and purposes and produce fruit/results of the same kind in our daily relations. What we see at the end is what Jesus told his apprenticing pilgrims on the night before his binding act of love,
Whoever abides [makes a life] in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit...by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples...I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide...
(John 15:5, 8,16)
Stop for a moment and consider what Jesus affirms at his end and what the vision of Jesus at the end reaffirms. The explicit and imaged expectation of our Creator, Savior, and King is that making life good (i.e., righteous) with him is not only possible for us but is what our free-from-sin-and-death daily existing obliges us.
As we discussed Sunday, and Abraham Heschel summarizes below, the stories of scripture and the words of Jesus teach us:
"...not to feel accursed, to bear a sense of boundless guilt.
[Rather,] We are asked to feel elated,
bred to meet the tasks that never end...
every person is obliged to feel that the world was created for their sake.
Humanity is not the measure of all things
but the means by which to accomplish all tasks...
[So] You can’t let yourself go;
get into harness, carry the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven...
bear loads of responsibility….abhor self-complacency…
enjoy freedom of choice…
[You’ve] been given life and death, good and evil,
and [you’re] urged to choose, to discriminate...
to act...to will, to love."
So why do we have difficulty relating to God, others, circumstances, and ourselves in "righteous" ways? Why does knowing and believing what is right not always translate into relating rightly? How can we live more consistently "righteous"?
We'll ask and answer those questions together this Sunday afternoon through Entering Awareness.
Entering Awareness is a conversational tool designed to help us uncover the anxious (disquieted) beliefs and behaviors that undermine our day-to-day relationships and responsibilities and begin to learn how to live through peace. Over the next month, we'll learn what it is and how to use it together over the next month.
So, if, like me, you could use some help living like you desire to live by faith, then join Entering Awareness this Sunday @ noon and all of May. For details on how—whether you're local or not—email me this week.
May we know, believe, and continue to cloth ourselves in "righteous deeds for,
Jesus has now reconciled you in his body of flesh by his death, to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel...
(Colossians 1:22-23)
Love you, faith family! God bless.