March 08, 2011
AWOL
Wisconsin’s democratic senators left the state in order to avoid voting on their governor’s budget proposal and now they are trying to figure out a way to get back. A Republican lawmaker observed, “They didn’t think about how hard it would be to come home.” The simple thing would be to just get in the car and turn on the GPS, but the worries of politics cloud the issue. I can see believers responding to the Lord in a similar fashion. We sometimes run away and then let the worries of the world make returning to the Father a lot harder than it really is.
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Gail;
-----“Let God be true though every man be false.” (Rom 3:4) So, in controversies between men there is only more right and less right. The determinate between which is which is reality, not man. Resolution between men’s differences must be found in a bridge called diplomacy. That structure is mutually made of three components: 1) always admit to your own errors; 2) always give your opponent a way to save face; and 3) always secure your end of the resolution as tightly to reality as possible. From the perspective of the party closer to reality, the third component of the bridge calls upon the first component for a voluntary laying down of any unmitigated baggage. The graciousness of such action combines with the welcome of the second component to inspire the other party to do the same. As both parties lay down useless baggage, the bridge becomes built of what is right on both sides of the issue.
-----The party who is unwilling to discard unmitigated baggage will suffer the loss of building no part of a bridge which he will eventually be drug across. This effect does not necessarily appear in resolutions between men’s controversies. Rather, it is usually the party who is humble enough to employ proper diplomacy who is ceased by unjust advantage and drug across an unrealistic bridge. We live in a world where might makes right, and all that unmitigated baggage makes might so well that unjust men avoid just rules.
-----But in the controversy between man and God, Jesus Christ both plays by the rules and builds the bridge, because He is the determinate of reality. His might is not in His baggage, it is in Himself. Therefore He could lay aside His equality with God and admit upon Himself our errors to give us room to save face in His grace. Upon accepting this welcoming call to lay down ourselves as well, we are spiritually brought across that bridge at our desire to cross it. But physically, we can only be crossing it, because our bodies are themselves unmitigated baggage. Jesus prayed to His Father that we not be taken out of the world when He was. Since we are left with this baggage, our needs create more baggage, and our desires create more yet. So we find ourselves discarding what baggage we can and carrying what baggage we must as we trudge across a glorious bridge.
-----Then for each of us comes the redemption of our bodies. At that time the least of our baggage will be cleaned up and brought fully across the bridge into His eternal glory. At the same baggage ending event for those who held it and refused Christ’s diplomacy, there will be a yanking across a different chasm to a different place. It is sad. But it is real.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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