Reflection: The Word

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.  John 1:1-3

John, the beloved disciple of Christ, knew something so astounding about Jesus’ origins that it would challenge the world’s understanding of who Jesus is.  Because of His intimate knowledge of Him, John dared to reveal that Jesus’ existence before His incarnation reached into eternity past.  Not only did His existence pre-date time as we know it, but He co-existed with God, the Father.  This means that Jesus was a distinct person alongside God.  If this was not enough for mortal minds to grasp, John also blasted any and all pre-conceived notions when he unveiled Jesus’ divinity.  The Word was God!  Although He was distinct in personhood, in essence, He was God.  With this revelation, Jesus’ ceases to be just a teacher, priest, prophet, or king.  He is God Himself! What a grand beginning for the universe, for the gospel John wrote, and for our understanding of who Jesus is.  John introduced Him to us as the Word of God.  God’s voice could be heard in the beginning when He created the heavens and the earth with the Word, when He said “Let there be…”  It was the Word of God that created all things that exist. God’s Word has creative power. In John’s heart and mind, there is no mistaking Jesus’ identity.  Jesus is the beginning of all things.  Embrace this life-transforming Word and bury it in your heart.  After all, it is from the heart that life springs eternal.

Reflection: Hearing Voices

I was watching a TV drama years ago about the murder of an up-and-coming young writer. The person who killed her wanted to steal her writing and make it his own. The murderer thought that the young writer had two things he did not have — a voice and a future. What the misguided murderer did not know was that everyone has a voice and the voice of another coming out of yours will sound out of tune and will ring inauthentic.

Our voice is our inimitable personal language — how we express ourselves, be it through the arts or other countless ways of sharing our life experiences. Each voice tells a unique story. By giving voice to our experiences we invite others to catch a glimpse of our struggles, our dreams, our faith — our story.

Faith is what makes the difference in a Christian’s story and in the way the voice is expressed. Each story involves God as the protagonist, who oftentimes is foreshadowed throughout our lives until He is revealed to us as the director and producer of our life story. His presence and creativity brings the turning point that gives meaning to our storyline. It is that pivotal encounter that is expressed through our voices in varied forms and makes the stories worth telling and those precious sounds worth hearing — leaving lingering echoes in our souls.

Reflection: Eternal Rock

When Jesus taught the multitudes what we have come to know as the Sermon on the Mount, He closed with a caution to the hearers of His words.  He compared anyone who heard His words and acted on them to a wise person for building his house upon a rock foundation.  Whoever did not obey His words He deemed foolish for building his house upon the sand, which ultimately fell when rain, floods, and wind beat upon it.

Christ is the rock of our salvation.  He is the safe haven that shelters us from life’s storms.  As the rains descend, we find our hiding place in Him.  We do not have to run and seek refuge elsewhere. Strong is His dwelling place and the peace of His presence calms the tempests within and around us.

Christ is the life-giving spiritual rock.  When Moses smote the rock in the desert of Zin, an abundance of water poured out to quench the thirst of the children of Israel.  However, drinking the flood of poisonous lies that the world offers drowns our soul.  Despite the world’s deluge of ways to gratify ourselves, only Jesus offers us the spiritual drink that leads to resurrection life.

Christ is the unmovable rock.  He is the Truth that remains despite the winds of change evidenced in ephemeral philosophies born out of Godless minds.  Superficial ideas come tumbling down due to their shaky foundations.  The Truth will never change for it is eternal and the shifting winds all around us will find in Him a stumbling stone against which they shall not prevail.

Build an altar upon the Rock of Ages and offer Him your life.  Edify yourself upon the truth of God’s Word.  Fortify yourself against the onslaught of the enemy with the power and wisdom of God which is Christ Jesus, so that you may also build others up in Him.  Only by building our house upon the Eternal Rock can we be assured that we will not be soaked in lies, tossed about by violent winds, and drowned by the deep, dark waters of a lost and foolish world.

Reflection: Lonely NOT Alone

There are times in our lives when we feel like there is absolutely no one to depend on.  Some of the friends that professed loyalty have vanished.  Family is consumed with their own problems.  There is no one around to fill that hole of loneliness in the depths of our innermost self. That may be our lived reality but it is not the truth.  That is a mind game the enemy plays with us in our most vulnerable moments.  He tricks us into believing that we are truly alone.  In our pain, we become desperate trying to fill ourselves with second rate love, friendships, and activities that leave us feeling even more spiritually dehydrated than we were before. Way down deep in our soul a voice is crying out to us.  We hear it faintly because we have been listening to lies for so long.  It is lovingly but persistently trying to get us to realize that only God’s love satiates. It is through tough experiences that we learn to depend solely on God for everything.  When all is taken away, we learn to trust in God, because we realize that He is all we have and all we will ever need.  He helps us sift through our lives and discard thoughts, behaviors, and relationships that are not spiritually edifying.  We go through these seasons in our lives in order to discover that the primary relationship in life that will sustain us and give us the power to stand firm despite the raging storms, is one with God.

We are never alone, even when the world is telling us otherwise.  How can we realize the eternal truth of our total dependence on God, if we seemingly have everything we need?  How can we truly love God above everyone and everything if we do not learn that there is no one that will ever love us more? Even through the loss of a loved one, we realize that God’s comfort and care outweighs and outlasts any other.  His love is unparalleled and unquenchable.  When we realize the fraud that the world offers, we turn to the authentic source of our wholeness as human beings.  Tuning into God’s wavelength gives us clearer reception in order to hear the truth.  The static of deceitful messages disappears and we hear words of hope and comfort.  We fill ourselves with God’s love and strength until it overflows and we are now able to accept the destiny God has in store for us.

Reflection: My Will Be Done?

My?  Wait a minute.  Isn’t it suppose to read, “Your will be done”?  To the detriment of our souls, “I” predominates in the prideful heart of humanity.  We are constantly seeking to do our will and gratify our own desires.  There is someone who challenges us to think, feel, and behave differently than what comes naturally to our flesh.  Jesus teaches us through word and deed that we are to surrender our will to the Father.  Christ demonstrated this when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.  The extent of His mental, spiritual, and emotional anguish found its physical expressive outlet through His bloodied sweat.  His flesh desperately struggled with the deepest of humankind’s innate drive, that of self-preservation.  But, He chose to submit His will to the Father’s, even unto death.  His intimate relationship with the Father revealed that to truly live, we have to offer our most prized possession — our self.

The essence of our soul includes our thoughts, our will and our emotions — reflecting what we think, what we want, and what we feel.  We encounter the daily struggle to suppress the self-centered tendencies that plague us as humans, in our efforts to honor God by surrendering our lives to His leading.  The Apostle Paul teaches us that our lives are to be led by God when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”  This can be felt as a deep assault against the marrow of our souls…our pride…our will…our “I.”  However, we are reminded that the downfall of Lucifer was his pride.  As pride’s direct opposite, humility is to be held captive by our hearts.

Reverent humility before God puts our lives in His omnipotent hands as we cease to live for ourselves.  The Son of the living God became a humble servant to God’s will and in turn God bestowed power into His life.  We are reminded that when we are weak we are made strong through the presence of Christ in our lives.  When we surrender our will to God, we allow His power to reign supreme in our lives.  That is what it means to live for Christ and for Christ to live in us.  When we come to understand the magnitude of this truth in our lives we willingly surrender our all to the Father, simply because we realize that apart from God we can do nothing.