Life Matters - April 24, 2024
As a young lad viewing the world with excitement that could course through my sensory perceptions like a close encounter with a hot wire, the dangers in this world were easy to overlook. Now, as an older lad? Not so much. This world is a dangerous place and our journey through it a treacherous one, even as there is an evermore struggle to create a safer and safer environment overall and to create an individual safe space within that safer environment. But, the attention is grievously outward while the inward dangers become easy to overlook, as spiritual attention spans become shorter for lack of paying attention even as distractions increase. Distractions that so often awaken the basest of human instincts to then take up residence in the human heart. ‘’That which cometh out of the man,’’ Jesus said, as recorded by Mark 7:20-23, ‘’that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness; All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”
“Come from within.” There you have it. The indictment on evil that remains relevant to all of us. So as we get rightly appalled at what is happening to our nation, both morally and politically, let us not forget that all things wrong have their earthly beginnings in the hearts of men (and women) and are spiritually sown, scattered, by that enemy of all righteousness, the devil. Even the most morally degenerate among us were at one time innocent children on the laps of their mothers. Or perhaps one of the many insecure, emotionally rejected children who were taught, by example, from an early age, to seek fulfillment in the physical, material, things of this present evil world. A seeking that is already natural to all of us. And a seeking with no legitimate hope of fulfillment that is lasting because lasting fulfillment is eternal. There is no lasting fulfillment in the physical, material things of this world. No matter how titillating. When the day, the moment, is over it leaves its seekers empty, still searching, and dry.
Lasting fulfillment—being eternal—is only to be found in the source of all true joy, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only Mediator between God and man. He it is who brings troubled souls to rest, beaten souls to rejuvenation, hurting souls to healing, seeking souls to fulfillment. He makes every day worthwhile, gives refuge in every storm, makes winners out of losers, doctors of those who’ve been healed, and preachers of Good News of those who’ve been seeking. Those who may have been unaware of who or what they were looking for have been awakened to an innate need in the very depths of the soul and have discovered that the need they have been trying to fill is an eternal one and must therefore have an eternal answer to the spirit and soul that is the inner man. The Answer, that Isaiah prophesied of, recorded in Isaiah 61:1 that Jesus quoted in Luke 4:18 when announcing his redemptive mission in the Jewish synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” The prophet Isaiah continues in verse 3, “to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.”
As a young lad we had a magazine for teenagers delivered once a month to our mailbox, subscribed to by our concerned parents; God bless their memory; as it was a Christian magazine targeting those critical, vulnerable, teen years. The Young Ambassador focused on accounts of teenagers getting born again and encouraged becoming effective ambassadors of Christ. It had a variety of articles, testimonies, quotes, and… a cartoon at times. One such cartoon showed two young lads running in a circle, marked by puffs of dust kicked up by their heels. The one in the lead is looking back over his shoulder saying something. What he’s saying is in the caption; “Are we having fun yet?!”
Are we having fun yet?! Hot-wire excitement is deceptive. It is a list of questions with answers that seem to be floating away with the dust. Elusive to the same degree they are run after. Because spiritual questions have spiritual answers that culminate in One Answer. Jesus Christ the Righteous. Our Redeemer and King.
Life Matters!