Too Young to Understand

I have been praying that the church would be under divine protection from the distorted holiday season we’ve entered into; so much of what America celebrates conflicts with what I read in the Bible.  It seems that we have come to celebrate exactly what Jesus came to free us from…

I am told more and more frequently that my ideas on materialism, giving, the poor, Americanism, the modern church, and what the gospel is meant to be are impractical, misinterpreted, unrealistic, and other such discouragements. Yet I am convinced that I still do not have near the innocent, childlike faith that God’s people should have. I have prayed, I have searched scripture, and I do not find any instance in which the people who are completely in love with God lived practical, realistic lives. Very little of the gospel makes sense to me (by sense I mean by the world’s standards: what I have been taught by other people, “common sense” and the regular workings of modern American society and such) but the more I devote myself to following the way of Christ and the less I cling to everything the world says is wise, the more I discover a cfonunsig, SURPRISING, and unnaturally Exquisite joy about everything I do. If someone cannot believe in this God they cannot see, they should try living as He commands, and they will undoubtedly begin to see Him – not with their eyes, but with something else. There is another way of “seeing” inside us all, but it is so often unrecognized because we fail to open our “eyes.” I do not have clear and explicit explanations and descriptions of this, but I do not need to; all I need to do is live so that people actually believe I am “seeing” something they are not, and in doing so make this “sight” something irresistible.

The church is here to bless a world with Christ’s love that does not deserve it, and to show that the way of Jesus truly is most desirable. We are not after results (though we rejoice when there are), we are after a love that transcends all wisdom and knowledge. We are after a world of peace, a world that reflects heaven. We are not here to preach and prove and explain where and how and why the lost are wrong. We are the church of the living God, and we are here as models – small, not-quite-built-to-scale examples made out of scraps and broken bits and pieces – of the immeasurable love (and grace and mercy and forgiveness and joy and so on) of the resurrected Jesus Christ, who taught things so very backwards from the ways of the world that it seems like total nonsense. It sometimes is even offensive, how foolish the cross is. But to see things we have never seen, we must do things we have never done. And seeing as how Jesus’ life is the only life that has ever truly been different from ours, being without sin, I can find no other way to approach my Savior than to live a life that will be called impractical, misinterpreted, unrealistic, and other such encouragements.

Oh, what the scandalous grace of God can do to a man...