Dear CWG,
Just a quick
to thank you for sharing Max Lucado's talk on Christian writing
! He is such a joy to read... and hear! I've been attempting to write Christian poetry for over 20 years sharing my Christian heart with friends and especially my wife and best friend ever, Evelyn. Sadly, my Evee died last November from complications with pain medications she took for rheumatoid arthritis; she encouraged me to keep on writing throughout our years together. I've found great comfort in writers like Max Lucado, Chuck Swindoll, Ken Gire, Bill Crowder, Jill Carratinni... to name a few. I wish I'd have been better prepared for Ev's departure but with God's help and the encouragement I find reading authors who focus on His Word I trust His purpose for my life will somehow be fulfilled (Psalm 138:8). Because it was the following poem and the attached Slice of Infinity that got me thinking about "change" this morning (which only by faith in Christ am I going to survive) I thought I'd send them along.
God bless you and again - Thanks!
Jeff
A NEW AND LIVING WAY
Are you still lost in this old world?
World-wise with bloodshot eyes
Unwilling to accept God as real?
Are you still afraid of dying?
Techno-wise with commercial lies
Unable to believe what you feel?
Are you still confused about faith?
Business-wise with dollar-sign eyes
Unconcerned what others may say?
Are you now ready for a change?
Truly-wise with BORN AGAIN eyes
Called to follow a New and Living Way!
The House of God
I am not sure what it is as children that makes us readily picture God as seated high above us. From childhood, we seem to nurture pictures of heaven and all its wonderment as that which spatially exists "above," while we and all of our worries exist on earth "below." While this may simply illustrate our need for metaphors as we learn to relate to the world around us, there is also biblical imagery that seems to authenticate the portrayal. Depicting the God who exists beyond all we know, the scripture writers describe the divine throne as "high and lofty," the name of the LORD as existing above all names. Yet even metaphors can be misleading when they cease to point beyond themselves. Though the scriptures use the language and imagery of loftiness, they also pronounce that God's existence is far more than something "above" us. The startling image of the Incarnation radically erases the likeness of a distant God. The message that comes again and again from the mouth of this God on earth is equally startling: The kingdom of God is among you! Of the many objections to Christianity, there is one in particular that stands out in my mind as troubling. That is, the argument that to be Christian is to withdraw from the world around us, to follow fairy tales with wishful hearts and myths that insist we stop thinking and believe that all will be right in the end because God says so. It was in such a vein that Karl Marx depicted Christianity as a kind of drug that anesthetizes its consumers to the suffering in the world and the wretchedness of life. Sigmund Freud argued similarly that belief in God functions as an infantile dream that helps us evade the pain and helplessness we both feel and see around us. I don't find these critiques and others like them troubling because I find them at all an accurate picture of the kingdom Jesus described. I find them troubling because so many live as if Freud and Marx are quite right in their analyses. In our impervious boxes and minimalist depictions of the Christian story, we live comfortably as if in our own worlds, intent to tell our feel-good stories while withdrawing from the harder scenes of life, content to view the kingdom of God as a world far away from the present and the rooms of heaven as mere futuristic promises. The kingdom is seen as the place we are journeying toward, the better country the writer of Hebrews describes. In contrast, our place on earth is viewed as temporary; like Abraham, we are merely passing through. As a result, we build chasms that stand between kingdom and earth, today and tomorrow, the physical and the spiritual, the believing world and its world of neighbors. Whether articulated or subconscious, the earth itself even becomes something fleeting and irrelevant—one more commodity here for our use, like shampoo bottles in hotel bathrooms—while Christ is away preparing our permanent rooms. Yet these chasms we allow not only belie a posture irresponsible for those called to abundant life and love of neighbors, they betray the identity and decree of the good creator we profess. The stories Jesus left us with are so much more than wishful thinking; his proclamations of the kingdom among us are far from declarations of escapism. To view the world around us as a temporary place further negates the words of our most sacred prayer. What does it mean that we pray God's kingdom come, God's will be done—on earth as it is in heaven? What does it mean that Christ repeatedly declared the kingdom of God as here and now among us? What does it mean that for lack of human praise the very rocks will cry out at the glory of their creator while the trees will clap their hands? Far from being a non-spiritual, kingdom-irrelevant commodity, the earth is filled with rooms of faith, staircases and ladders that assure a constant traffic between heaven and earth, rooms of a good kingdom we now see in part and will one day see in full. Surely the Lord is in this place; how often are we not aware of it? We live our lives in none other than the house of God. The Christian worldview is one that believes at the deepest level in eternal dwellings, the day when tears will be no more, and the one who is preparing a house of many rooms. And yet, we very much live with the distinct experience of these promises here and now. Neither Christ nor the kingdom he came to make known is a static entity, something that mattered long ago and might matter once again but not today amidst the world as we know it. On the contrary, all of history, the stories of salvation, and the incarnation itself, remind us that God is far more hands-on than this. Christ is not merely the one who will be with us in all eternity. He is among us today, reigning in a kingdom that is both present and approaching, going out into the depths of cities and neighborhoods that his house may be filled (cf. Luke 14:23). Precisely because the faith Christians proclaim is not a drug that anesthetizes or a dream that deludes, we must live as people aware of the house we live in, ready for the ladders that extend between heaven and earth, and anxious to invite the world inside.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
