The Resurrection

I wonder what hurt Jesus more? Our nails or our sins?

I have had intense physical pain, though nothing even close to death on a cross. But I can surely tell you that my emotional pains have been much more painful, though again not nearly the pain of Jesus taking all of our sins upon himself. So I conclude that our sins hurt Jesus more then our nails.

So rather then saying that our sins held Jesus to the cross, perhaps our sins bombarded Jesus on the cross. It is like adding hurt to injury every time we sin it is another sin that we put on Jesus. Incredible that he endured so much from just me, but imagine all of the sins of everybody everywhere for all time... wow.

But in the Bible there is this talk of his glorious comeback. So to fully understand this I analyze the comeback.

What make a great comeback is obvious: coming back from a long ways off. If MSU is down by 5 points and they "come back" and win the game by 10 points, it is not terribly exciting or impressive seeming. But if MSU is down by 75 points with 10 minutes to do go, and they win by 10 points... well there would be nothing to match the excitement of a MSU fan on that day.

Let us look specifically at Jesus comeback though. Jesus became the lowest of lows. He went from sitting on the throne to being born of a virgin in a dirty manger. And if that was not enough he got lower. He hangs out with the diseased, and the outcast. He goes and has dinner with the tax collectors. And finally he makes his exit from this physical world in an even lower place: as a convicted criminal being put to death on the cross (the crux).

Jesus intentionally put himself as the lowest imaginable human on the planet at the time, imagine the people who are on death row now and people's opinions of them.

But Jesus is totally making his comeback.

The first thing he did was coming back physically from the dead, are you impressed yet? Then he hung out for a bit and went back up into heaven, but he had just begun his come back. His next move is what we look forward to every month when we take communion. Jesus is going to come back, the same man who was the lowest of lows, is going to come back and he is going to rule over all of us.

Now we got this sweet invitation. Nobody wants to be cheering for or playing on the team that was up by 75 points against MSU only to lose by 10. Would it not be better to be down at first, to be lowly at the beginning of "the game" and be ahead later... at the end of "the game?"

We get to do that, we get to not only cheer for Jesus as he makes his comeback, but he invites us to join him in his comeback. How awesome is that? Jesus could do this without us, but he chooses to invite us onto his team. For the sake of the analogy, Jesus is incredible at basketball. Makes every shot he takes and blocks every shot he wants to, but we suck at basketball. We miss just about every shot we take, and we cannot block a shot worth spit, but he wants us on his team.

1 Peter 4:13 says: "But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."

When we suffer to be on Jesus team, we get to be overjoyed when he wins.

And he will win, I promise ;)

In anticipation,

Ben

Waist Deep

Most people have attempted some sort of flip or dive or jump into a pool from a diving board. If you haven't, I would suggest giving it a try... it is quite a treat. Anyway, years ago I had done front flips into pools, but never back flips. I tried back flips: I got on the board, walked to the edge, turned around, got my heels off the edge just a bit, then walked back onto solid ground. I was afraid to do a back flip for whatever reason. And because of this fear I was content with flipping forwards only.

Then, one day my friend Wes did a back flip and told me to do one. I did my same hesitant approach and same cowardly walking away: fear got the best of me again. But Wes did not give up quite yet. He did another back flip then told me, "just do it dude."

I still remember the pool: the shape, where the grade was, what rafts were in that pool, who was there. I took my approach with a new found confidence, and I got my heels off the board and again Wes said, "Just do it." I took a deep breath, and jumped backwards and flipped and landed with a splash into that cool water on the hot summer day. I did it.

And once I did it, I was free to do it time and time again, no fear, no hold backs. I did at least five back flips that day, and more that summer then I care to count. Then the pools all closed, and winter froze the earth. Once spring had brought enough warmth to allow it, the pools opened up again. And once again, I went to a friends pool to have some fun in the sun. I decided to do one of those awesome back flips that I learned how to do the previous year. Confident approach, heels off... cowardly I walked away.

For whatever reason, that fear had come back. I told myself time and time again that I had nothing to worry about, I pulled from my own personal experienced, but I could not do it. Later that summer I reached deep into my past experience and remembered my friends advice to "just do it" and I just did it. Once again, I had broken that barrier of fear and I had freed myself for another summer.

I am sure by now you can imagine the pattern that happened every summer, it baffles me to this day, but it seems to happen every summer.

This is me.

I do this with everything.

Girls, friends, classes, songs, every aspect of my life. I have this fear that I break time and time again, but it somehow comes back.

I have a fear of being submerged in God too.

I have lived all the way submerged in the ocean that is God, searching for some sort of bottom, knowing that I will not find it. When I am submerged I understand that I do not need the air on the outside, I can breath under this water. I know from my past experiences that there is nothing to be afraid of.

I am afraid.

Matthew 6:25-34 is a passage entitled "Do Not Worry" in my Bible. It ends in saying, "seek first the kingdom" and everything else will come. It goes against the general logical thinking that is used in this world. We think in a way that says, "care for yourself" but God says, "care for my kingdom and I will care for you... I do a much better job at it anyway."

I want to jump backwards and flip.

I am sick of walking away cowardly.

Someday You Are Going to Die

Tyler Durden: "First you must know, not fear, but know that someday you are going to die."
(Fight Club)

We all know that, we all know that we all must someday die. I, writing this, might never finish it. You may never finish reading this blog entry. If I finish writing this blog, then this time that I could spend writing this blog was a blessing. If you finish reading this blog, then I certainly hope that you count it as a blessing. Many people die when they are nineteen...

Now, knowing that we are going to die, what are we going to do before we die? How many more hours will I spend staring blankly at the television set that is playing a show that I don't even like? How many more times will I sin before I die? How many more people will I hurt?

Someday you are going to die, your time is limited. In that limited time that you have left, how will you spend it?

When a Grown Man Shook

He must have been mid to late fifties, standing in front of forty people: some his peers, some younger even then he. There were only two things between him and his temporary audience - if one were to negate the distance as an object: a microphone and a piece of paper. This normal activity for someone such as myself was very foreign to this man, perhaps something that his fifty plus years had passed up altogether.

The piano began.

Trembling, he sang the words "Joyful Joyful, we adore thee..."

Why is it that a man with over double my life experience would fret so much over singing for such a limited audience? Why is it that this man dreaded so much to share this part of him with these people?

When a grown man shook, something occurred to me. This man dreaded this because it exposed something in him. There was no way this man could hide what was coming out of him. He could distort his sound a little from the microphone, perhaps he could even hide his face from the audience with that paper, but what the audience heard was the actual sound, the actual truth of what he was producing.

There was no way to beat around the bush, there was no way for him to tell the audience anything but the truth.

Me, I know how to lie. Even with my voice I can lie. I have worked for the greater portion of my life at figuring out how to mask the imperfections that lie in my voice. We are both afraid of the same thing, the difference is how we approach it: one shaking, the other faking.

How will you approach your fears this week? This month? Will you shake all the way through, telling the truth, or will you look confidently into the eyes of your present audience, the people you love, and lie?