Emmanuel - God with Us

 Look! The virgin will conceive a child!  She will give birth to a son and he will be called Immanuel, which means "God with us."  Matthew 1:23

"With" in the Greek is "meta," which simply translated means "among."  It has other intonations, though, that include participation, proximity, association and union.  It signifies a personal union of the human and divine, symbolizing a symbiotic presence of the divine with humanity.

Do you remember the definition of symbiosis from biology class?  Symbiosis is the interaction between two different organisms, denoting a mutually beneficial relationship.  This really usurps ideas about "it's all God" I have heard.  God intends a give-and-take.

This raises a huge amount of questions.

How does this mutually beneficial relationship develop?  How are God and I impacting each other? God benefits from being in relationship with me?  

I think about the very definitive description of "God is love."  With him, love is not a one-way street.  Love is God's way of being with someone.  To return the gesture (symbiotically), how do I "be" with God?  How do I place myself into God's desires?

So, how about this comparison (and expand it for yourself):

God "with" me                                Me "with" God

Presence - availability                    Seek out his Presence

Offer of the Holy Spirit                Be aware of the movement of                                                                       the Holy Spirit

Purpose                                           Seek out his purposes

Triune-nature:  community             Seeking community of others

I'm not trying to fit the eternal and expansive God in me, but rather find my place in Him, his presence.  I am not going to confine God to a "God-shaped-hole" in me, but rather find, live and grow into the space in God's presence and creation that he has for me.

God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth...so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us:  for in Him we live and move and have our being..."  Acts 17:  26-28b.

I love the metaphor of water: submerged, I find I am in the water and it is in me.

Lord, submerge me in you, your ways, your presence, your movement. Let me bear no resistance to the full presence of You!  Carry me and sustain me.  Amen

Psalm 74

 Psalm 74

A lament during the exile to Babylon

What is our exile?

It feels as if the democracy “experiment” has failed.  It is crumbling from within.  Its one success was that it spawned an ideal of self-governance and liberty around the world, but now it fails to protect itself.

Though it did not hail from religious beginnings, it was from the faith of men wanting self-rule.  A flawed beginning held together by a construct/a mythology that slowly spread, sporadically and imperfectly, to all people within the boundaries that freedom mattered.  That mythology did not hold, though, because forces of old – greed and power – used an inherent hierarchy to reinvent a system of control over the masses. Freedom and equity (whether of power, sustenance, health, opportunity…) would no longer exist, if it ever did.  

Maybe the Republic was just a false front.

Did we invest too much in the man-made structure of democracy?  Is that our torture now?  Did we make freedom and self-governance a sanctuary that only served those who thought to sequester the power, pretending it was for all? 

We claimed our identity around the altar of democracy.  Did the Republic even define our “religion”?  Self-governance took you, O God, out of your rightful place among us.  We valued freedom and happiness as first pursuits when You should have been our first pursuit – then you would have defined and given freedom and happiness in a more encompassing way.

Is this what the Republic has done?

·       Was it a lion that claimed the inner sanctum (of being and import) in each of us for itself?

·       Did the Republic rip to shreds culture groups’ and people groups’ purpose and protection? (Ask the American Indian, African slave and the immigrant.)

·       Did the democracy “scorch” all the places where God can meet His people?  (In the name of advancement and financial growth, did earth pay the price for settlement and expansion?)

And now the experiment of democracy crumbles.  Will it soon go up in flames with only ash and smoke remaining?

The deconstruction of the American Republic might be God’s effort to reorder the culture and bring people back to the right place of salvation on the land, with God in the lead.  What power is needed to finish off bad governance, misdirected ideology?  We are watching inherent evil do it for us.

Power belongs to God.  Can’t you see it in the cycle of life on the earth?  Even the cycle of the universe – day and night – belongs to God. 

Don’t forget that the enemy has taunted You and we, as a company of fools, have snubbed you, O Lord.  Bring back our focus and renew our spirits such that we turn again to You.  Don’t forget us and Your true intention for all. Put us again in a position to give You praise!

Lord, rise up and defend your cause.  Reveal and remove our foolish pursuits. 

#34

 

I dare not say what I might write

if just left to pen and light.

I dare not think of what I’d do

if bereft of love and thought of you.

I’m overtaxed with sight and sound

And filled with dread of greater wrongs.

 

So, I move my attention

         give attention

         pay attention

pay the price by moving my thoughts into the debit column of your offering.

 

It’s in your hands now

and with head bowed,

divested of being in the center,

I lay at the edge

no longer in torment.

Life's Questions

 Shouldn't we expect far greater glory under the new way, now that the Holy Spirit is giving life? If the old way [under the law], which brings condemnation, was once glorious, how much more glorious is the new way, which makes us right with God!  In fact, that first glory was not glorious at all compared with the overwhelming glory of the new way.  2 Corinthians 3: 8-10

Life's questions - determining the answers for who we are and what we should do - often revolve around the wrong theme. What if life's questions revolved around God?  (not the church and its rites and rituals nor us and our misplaced affections)

What was God's purpose for creation?

What was God's purpose for me?

What does God intend for this day?

How do I get involved with those intentions, both externally in the world and internally in me?

What does God want me to become?

How can I move towards that "becoming"?

How can I "be" in him, for him, of him?

God's good intentions are for this "new way," a "good" way thas new definitions:

     1) communities of belonging for all

     2) personal experience of belonging with God and his people

 Life's big questions usually revolved around me.  NO.  Time to ask the questions of life with God in mind.  That would be glorious!

Meditate

 I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles.  Psalm 145:5

We have long pursued the "knowing" of God.  To connect with the reality of the divine is quite the pursuit.  Oh, we know the facts that we read in the Bible.  We might have an experience of him in our lives, but can we hold that experience and let it flower into a deeper life with him?

I believe that proper meditation of God - his splendor and miracles for each of us - deserves to be multiplied.  It's an effort that the church has attempted to guide for a long time.  The stained glass of the buildings, the religious icons artfully presented, even the movies that we make today attempt to provide a bridge to realizing God's presence.

Yet, there is a difference between those man-made presentations and the actual presence of God.  Think about the difference between seeing a picture of a mountain or standing at its base.  Compare a video of pounding waves with swimming in them.  Note the difference between a picture of your team's football stadium or laying on the 50-yard line of the field.  

I remember the holy presence of laying at the foot of El Capitan.  It is breath-taking and focusing.  There is nothing like the lap of the tide at your feet or the terror of being caught in a riptide.  I have joined in with the crowd at the entrance of my team onto the football field.  No distant picture or video compares...and barely holds the emotions of the original act.  No replica will do.

Even God's word - clear, illuminating and truth-telling - is no substitute for the indwelling of the presence of God through his Holy Spirit.  The printed word comes alive only when the voice and movement bears its truth in our lives.  Meditation can provide that movement as we take a printed or spoken truth and remember how its truth is portrayed in us.

Gratitude is an easy meditative example.  Think of a delightful meal or drink you had this week.  How does that provision remind you of God?  What person presented love and care for you today.  How do you see God in that gift?  To take the time to re-live those moments is to truly meditate.  

The Psalm says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."  Our senses, given by God, can supply us the conduit for meditation.  We know best with our senses.  Thus, meditation moves us from the printed Word - though good - into our heart where Christ dwells.

Life-Before-Death

 Someone came to Jesus with this question:  "Teacher, what must I do, what good thing must I do, to have and hold eternal life."  Matthew 19:16

We are looking for that "eternal life" and I think most of us don't even know what we are looking for.  Eternity is often explained and thought of as something in the future, but according to the Greek, it is more.  The implications of the language make it clear that this life is current.  It is life now.  It is life for now as much as in the future, which I like to call "life-before-death" because too many times we think this culminated life is only futuristic - after our death.

        "Eternal" - aionios - with no beginning and no end. So, this timeline doesn't start in the future, but has been ongoing.  This fulness has been possible all the time, the future only being an extension of what we have gained now.

        "Life" - Zoe - being in the state of vital living - in absolute fulness.  It is life active and vigorous: blessed and animated for the causes of community and God.  It is sometimes translated as "lifetime."  

        "What must I do" - agathos - sometimes translated as "good deed," but not really.  It's more positional - having a good constitution or nature; being good, pleasant, agreeable, joyful;  upright or honorable.

What if salvation, resurrection and eternal life is in the present:  us living our fullest life of goodness within our beings and within our surroundings....as God intended.  That is righteousness - literally "rightness" - to be as God intended, as he created us to be.  Jesus loves me just as he created me and then died to bring me closer to the divine.  He likes what I am.  He enjoys my presence, guards my journey.

Psalm 37:3-4 Trust and do the good* thing (for yourself) and live into what God provides and rest/keep company in his faithfulness.  Take joy in the Eternal.  His gifts are coming and they will meet your heart's needs.

        * good - tob - pleasant, better, well, merry, prosperous, precious, beautiful, glad; of rich moral character.

God wants the best for me now and into eternity.  I don't need to hit the wall of goodness after death, but live fully now in the life he has ushered in for me through the life and death of his Son.  

Make me ready to receive!

Attitude

 From an adult student:  "Our attitudes cannot be situational.  They must come from deep inside of who we are, otherwise, we are just pawns - victims of our circumstances.  This is life-diminishing."

Have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.  Though he was God, he did not think it was his place to seize that role as an opportunity; he did not cling to that identity for his advantage.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges, took on the humble position of a slave and submitted to being born a human being as he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.  Philippians 2:5-8

While Christ understood who he was, he also understood what his role was while on earth.  He came to save the least and the lost and could only do that by joining the community of humanity.  I wonder if it was a devastating loss just to leave heaven and become human...but he didn't stop there as he embrace his path and his human end, all for the cause of God's people.

Have that same attitude.  The Greek word is phroneo.  It means to be wise and mindful of one's role.  And it means to set one's affections and determinations to direct one's mind and actions toward the right cause, towards God's cause.

To do so based on knowledge and commitment of what God says about us removes us from the whims of the world.  We won't be blown this way and that, but can stay steady, firm on the word we get from God.

Since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.  He understands because he faced those same tests as we do.  Go to him and find grace to guide and help you when you need it most. Hebrews 4:14-16