Into the Fire

In the time of change . . .

What is “it” that brings a person to the Cross of Christ, to the place of full surrender, to the laying down of all things me and mine to the place of you and yours? Many people can feel the uncomfortable changes oozing up out of the troubled waters of life. What was just a light stirring of the surface waters, like the milder scuffling of inconsequential waves, has turned to the sudden quieting of waters to the recession of waters to the building of whitecaps with tsunami implications. Fear rises with the tides.

From my childhood days of playing pioneers on my city block in Seattle and trading post on Debbie’s back porch, I can somewhat understand the reclusive Amish community. I don’t profess to know much about them, but I can in an emotional sense grasp the desire to withdraw from the evils of society. In so many ways the world around us is blanketing the landscape with the accolades of living sinfully. Of course, it is a lie. But for those without a moral barometer, it is a convincing lie.

Day in and day out we are subjected to the worst of the human race. Our focus is forced to view the sexual experience as a mere exercise in lewd behavior, taunting exploitation, and graphic seduction. We see the guile of the rising numbers who want something for nothing and want someone else to give them what isn’t theirs. We watch as human life is slaughtered in its most innocent state within the womb, and shudder as the factories hide their unscientific and unproven harvesting of tiny cells and organs.

We watch as leaders attain cult status with their words mesmerizing those who inhale them like a poisonous mist and follow those words to the destruction of all things noble and worth fighting for.

So, the only Truth in this world has not eroded with the soils of time. It remains the same, unchangeable, stalwart, unmoving, in spite of those who attempt to recreate it, reform it, redress it in some gaudy costume to make it more appealing to the very world who shuns it. The Truth is not fun or pretty or glamorous or sexy. It is Truth. We are sinners. Any ability we have to do “the right thing” is a gift from a benevolent loving Father who gave His Son Jesus Christ as a perfect sacrifice for the ugly and atrocious sins of the humankind. That death was anything but sanitized and tidy. It was filled with brutality, blood, a sinister punishing without cause, the desire to harm and annihilate, to maim, to belittle, to control and curse, to put in physical play the atrocity of sinfulness. But even in that mayhem and murder, God would not allow the bones of Jesus Christ to be broken like those of the other criminals. Besides the unjust torment of an innocent “man”, this God-man endured a separate torture to prove His love for mankind. He was not the typical thief or murderer—He had done nothing wrong. So, His sinless perfect Blood was spilled and shed for you and me, but His bones remained intact. An old prophecy culminated.

The crux of the Cross is sin. So many refuse to define it or to admit it exists within their DNA—that it is part and parcel with them and their blue, brown, hazel, or green eyes, the color of their hair, their size and build. Yes, more innate than all their inherited features and tendencies is their sinful character. Only able to be changed and reorganized by the Blood of Christ constantly applying its supernatural abilities to wash and cleanse repeatedly as we struggle against our nature. Only a portion of the power of the Blood.

The Cross remains as a marker for those who finally get fed up with sin. It mars their insides and outsides and one day they can’t stand this gnawing decline within themselves anymore. Some are so removed from an understanding of church, of God, of Jesus Himself, but they have nowhere else to turn but to that previously unimagined road to the Cross. God is waiting there. To lead them to the Cross. To Jesus. To the Risen Christ. To safety in an unsafe world. The Holy Spirit has known their journey all along the way. Waiting. Patient. Unforced. At the moment of odd tenderness in a heart made of stone, He invites and points in the direction of the Cross, “Take it or leave it, but I suggest you take it. You’ll never be the same.”

Father, bring more to the Cross. We are all desperate for you. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.