Hope, part 2

(The conclusion to Reactor and Wasteland)

What’s in it for me?

It is a question I find impossible to avoid. It comes up all of the time. I think the question is appropriate. It is impossible for us as individuals not to think that way. Jesus repeated, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Old Testament didn’t say love your neighbor instead of yourself and Jesus certainly didn’t change the meaning. Since we are going to love ourselves, that is just how it is, we should attempt to show the same love to others.

A tall order, but one that clearly assumes that we can not avoid the ‘me’ of it all. A tall order when we have a broken core and we are living in a wasteland.

How is your me? When I was in high school I played on our schools basketball team. Well, maybe saying played is a stretch. I was voted most likely to sit the bench. There were games that I was so certain I wouldn’t play that I brought candy concealed in my warm-ups. It was nice having a snack while I sat and watched.

My brother was a different story. He started on the varsity and lead the team to a regional championship his senior year. I say all this to point out the one great advantage to being a poor basketball player. I have good knees. My brother hasn’t been so fortunate. He has had several operations on his knees over the years to repair the damage that was done. I may have ended up with a larger dental bill but my knees are great. The fact that you have to actually play combined with the fact that you have to go up to come down wrong, has left my knees in pristine condition.

Unfortunately, we in many ways are like my brother’s knees. We are all first team players in the game of life. It is impossible to sit on the end of the bench. Everyone who has a job, a family, a home and a whole host of other responsibilities, understands that you can not claim bench warming status. But with the activity of life comes the results and they impact me as an individual.

The Gift

This is why one statement that Jesus makes resonates with me. The book of John records this promise that Jesus made to his followers. “I tell you it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.”(John 14:7) Jesus tells them it is actually better for them if he leaves. The core is broken and there is something better than having God with us in the flesh.

I must go so the Helper will come. We are broken, the core is cracked and our infinite God of wonder and wisdom has sent us the Helper. To give us a new heart, a new operating system. To take away the broken and corrupted core of stone and replace it with one of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26) To give us life.

The Spirit is not simply some concept or fact of Christianity. Something to be affirmed as indwelling, let’s move on to affirm the next concept. It is the essential item that makes the story different. It is what gives us hope, a hope that we can live differently than the broken world around us. A hope that we don’t have to give into the desires of our cracked and decaying core.

Paul’s letters are filled with this hope. Hope that only came because Jesus died for us. Hope that could only be realized when we were made clean by the blood of the lamb. Hope because we have been made a proper place for the Spirit of the living God.

This is a part of the hope for this world. Shouldn’t believers be a stark contrast in this world’s barren landscape? Shouldn’t a group of people, living in harmony as we were made to be, a light? Shouldn’t it give our neighbors a glimpse of what it will be?

If we will allow the new core to operate, if we will allow the Spirit to rule and run our system, then the story can be different. It is suppose to be different. In Galatians Paul implores the church to “walk by the Spirit.” He contrasts the fruit that comes from our new core with that which is produced by what is broken, the flesh, and he tells them to “be led by the Spirit.”

In the end all have hope. You and I, creation. Each lives and waits with hope. A conscious understanding that one day we will receive a new body, perfect, and a core that is unbreakable. A time when all of creation will be restored. Until that day we must fight. We must fight the darkness that comes from the broken core. We must seek to live by our new operating system, the Spirit. It is not easy because our broken core and the wasteland constantly work to take us back.

Our world needs to see people who model a different way, a way of the new core. Will we always allow the perfect Spirit core to control? No, but that isn’t the issue. The issue is, will we strive to allow our new core, that which is perfect, that which Jesus died to allow to live within us, to be our primary operating system?

It is a fight worth fighting because ultimately I believe a day will come when my broken core will be permanently destroyed and I will receive what is without blemish. All of creation will be perfected because of Christ. All will be fixed upon His return.

That is our ultimate hope, that we can show a glimpse of this in this current wasteland, always pointing to a better place. A place where justice will reign, mercy will be the rule and we will walk with God.