Recently you experienced your first train ride: a true experience indeed. I can’t help but laugh at how uneasy you were having experienced that uneasiness myself not that long ago. So much goes into just one train ride! The time when to leave, when to arrive, where to go, where to sit, how to say goodbye…
But with everything considered, I’d like to let you know how proud I am you had the faith to step onto that train. You see you had not experienced anything like that before, at least in the context of a train, and yet you believed, without seeing how it would occur beforehand, that that train would take you to your destination.
You could not see your destination, you could not hear or smell or feel it either! But you still knew it was there, having never seen it, having never been there, just because I told you that it was there and I am here.
If you had gone off of common sense, your mind would have told you naturally that it was folly to pursue such a foolish endeavor having never seen the place before. However, I suppose that having a past, similar experience gave you faith that this place existed, that what I told you was true. You could not get to me on your own, you needed some means of conveyance.
I repeat myself because I want you to see the obvious connection between faith in trains and faith in Christ. Haha! My dearest friend, think about it! Have we ever seen heaven? Have we ever seen something relatively close to looking like heaven? I would hope the answer, although meant to be rhetorical, would be no, because if you have seen something you think is close to heaven then either heaven is not what I have come to expect in all its ecstasy, or that we need to sit down and have a serious conversation. Haha!
Stepping onto the train God wants us to be on, the one that leads us to Him, takes faith. He has told us where it is (with Him) and when we’ll get there (maybe not an exact date in our calendars, but we can extrapolate a little bit). It is also the only way to Him; there are no alternate routes or different buses that go towards Him, but only one through faith in the Son of God Jesus Christ who has cleansed our filthiness and had our relationship with the Lord begin. But there is a little more of a journey for some to understand why we would even want to go to Him.
First off, He is infinitely glorious and majestic and kind and true. His love extends far beyond anything we can imagine. Tis true that God is a just God (what need would there be for the sacrifice of His Son if He was not?) but is that not more of a motivation to want to be on His good side (I speak in human terms)? But basically this is the God that has provided a way from eternal damnation to eternal splendor. Romans 5 talks about how we are now at peace with God because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which can logically only mean that if we are now at peace with Him (if we have this faith) then previously we were enemies against Him (the God who created all things and blesses us with everything!). Would you not rather be on His good side?
Secondly, we yearn for something to fulfill our lives. Theorists try to convince people that the universe spontaneously created itself and that the matter was formed at some point in time (but by what!?!). If this theory holds true, then our lives hold no purpose. CS Lewis addresses this thought
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”There are so many other factors that play a part into this faith, but for the sake of ink I defer for now.
My final question is this, my friend: If we can believe in a place we have never seen on Earth and plan ahead to be there and spend so much time in preparation to be there, why is heaven not the same in our minds? Rather, if we expend so much energy to go to a place that is temporal and will one day no longer be, where is our passion to be in an everlasting splendorous place with the benefactor of every good ever observed?
If I am bankrupt in God’s economy and He offers me an eternal loan equal to that His own Son receives, why not take it? CS Lewis also writes
“Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.”
Why not step onto that train?
Your fellow traveler,
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment