Days 5 and 6

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." - Anais Nin

"How do you see your life?"

My life is a thread in a tapestry, at once of central significance and insignificant. As part of the tapestry it joins and binds, brings additional color and beauty, adds to and completes. Apart from the tapestry, it disintegrates, loosens, subtracts, abandons and rejects. Yet in either circumstance, the tapestry goes on.

I experience my life as a story, often a great novel or film. Sometimes I imagine that I am the central character. After all, there I am in every scene. I even carry the vast majority of the dialogue. But I am not the main character, but more of an audience to a story written about God on the pages of my life.

Life on earth is a test.

"Character is both developed and revealed by tests..."

"Every day is an important day, and every second a growth opportunity to deepen your character, to demonstrate love, or to depend on God."

I am having a reaction to the overall tone of this section. It's written as if God learns something about us through our performance on little ascribed tests throughout our day. Did Paula pick up that litter? Oh no? Mark it down in the book. Oh, Paula held the door for that elderly woman, Excellent! Mark it down in the book. It is my understanding that God knows me fully. That He needs a test to understand me no more than He needs oxygen to breath. I do think life can be considered a test - but it is a test designed to expose me to myself. To show me who I really am, like a pregnancy test reveals if you are pregnant or not -it tells you the way things are. In that way, I don't really think God's tests are pass or fail. We may certainly be displeased with the result (i.e., crap! I still have a fear problem) but this is not a 'failure' so much an acknowledgement of the truth (i.e., I need to grown more).

Life on earth is a trust. 

The world and all that is in it belong to the LORD; the earth and all who live on it are his. 
- Psalm 24:1 (TEV)

"We never really own anything during our brief stay on earth. God just loans the earth to us while we are here. It was God's property before you arrived and God will loan it to someone else after you die."

Amen!

"The first job God gave humans was to manage and take care of God's "stuff" on earth. The role has never been rescinded It is a part of our purpose today. Everything we enjoy is to be treated as a trust God has placed in our hands."

Amen! AND more importantly EVERYONE! Our children, our friends, our parents, our in-laws, our spouse, our family - a TRUST. Treat with care

Life on earth is a temporary assignment.

I am also having a reaction to this section, albeit a mixed reaction. On the one hand I want to shout "Amen!" this world is not right! It is unjust and there is mercilessness and suffering! I don't belong here. Again to quote CS Lewis from the Weight of Glory:

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far to easily pleased."

Or as in one of my favorite Swtichfoot songs Beautiful Letdown put's it:

 "It was a beautiful letdown, the day I knew that all the riches this world has to offer me will never do. In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt, I was trying so hard to fit in until I found out that I don't belong here."

But I think we need to hold this truth in tandem with a corresponding truth; specifically that heaven is not somewhere else, some time later, where we go after we die. Instead that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It is now. Our citizenship to the kingdom of heaven, our operation in the kingdom of heaven begins instantaneously with our renouncing our citizenship to the world and giving our heart to Jesus Christ. Certainly, we will know the kingdom with more fullness and completeness as the old world ultimately dies away, but we can access the kingdom and are part of the kingdom right now. We carry out it's aims, Right Now! We pray for the kingdom to take up a larger and larger residence RIGHT NOW!

Mr. Warren makes this point, "We're not completely happy here because we are not supposed to be... You will never feel completely satisfied on earth, because you were made for more. You will have happy moments here, but nothing compared to what God has planned for you."

On the one hand, I think he is correct - This world, as it is, will never satisfy us. But the implication is that it is because we are aliens on a foreign planet and won't be happy until we go home to planet Zeta (or whatever). That is not my read on Biblical truth. We were made for this planet and this planet for us. This is our home. We are not headed off to some other planet (neither literally, figuratively or metaphorically); our planet sick, our world is dying from sin. We cannot be satisfied so long as it remains. As long as their is injustice, suffering, oppression, betrayal, murder, hatred, malice, deceit, death, decay, isolation, loneliness, heartbreak, insecurity, fear, selfishness, entitlement, pride, gossip, bitterness or self-loathing. As long as the kingdom of death marches along side the kingdom of life we shall not, we cannot be satisfied.

True. The only immediate escape from this reality is death. When we enter the full presence of God and leave the world behind. But this will not always be so. God promises that someday His kingdom will rule ON THE EARTH. Our home will be restored, redeemed. Sin will be cast out. A Holy Temple restored.

Our job, our mission, is to go about acting as if today were that day. That the fact of the future, is the the Truth now. Ephesians 4: 22-24 puts it this way:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. - NIV

I realize that this understanding of heaven is not popular - in the sense that most folks talk about heaven as a far off, distant paradise in the sky. But I encourage to you examine Christ's teachings and dig into your Scripture and see if it is not so. Test it out.

For me it has meant changing citizenship now. It has meant acknowledging God and His kingdom as alive and active everyday, everywhere. It has meant participating as if it heaven were now, even when the kingdom of death would have me believe otherwise.

Love you.