August 31, 2011
Tangled
In the Disney
animated movie Tangled, Rapunzel was held captive for 18 years. It
wasn’t until she escaped the tower that she learned her real parents were the
king and queen. I think we’ve all had those times in our life when we didn’t
like our parents and wished for the fairytale experience of getting a new mom
and dad. Jesus puts a lot of emphasis on God being our Father, but I wonder if
we sometimes fail to grasp our role as a child of the King.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I think we fail to even grasp the role of being a child. If perfection was attainable at some point in this temporal life, then the role of the child of the King would be much different. But our own perfection will not be for any of us before we physically die into the Lord’s care. Of course, we are perfected right now in Jesus Christ. Because we desire righteousness and seek it through His direction, He considers us perfect, and so we are in that way. Acknowledging the reality of it is maybe the first important aspect of the child’s role.
-----A child recognizes his father and his father’s character. And what he recognizes in that character becomes a map for his own movement through life. By God’s granting Christ’s righteousness to be a part of us, the map becomes not only of our Father’s character, but also of our own future character when reigning with Christ. We are then personally vested in the map, increasing our responsible actions in safeguarding it and living by its insights. The child of God thus moves on a guided course through this life of becoming ever more like Christ, “...being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (II Cor 3:18)
-----But we never become perfectly godly this side of death. In fact, we remain far short of it. This means we may start as actual children in the Lord, having learned the Lord with our very first words as toddlers, and will still be children in the Lord at hundred-ten or more. As long as there is more growing to do, more changing and putting off feckless, childish ways, which after all are the essence of imperfection, then one is still a child. Even though we press on toward, “...mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” (Eph 4:13b) we are still children doing so, because we will always have more maturing to go until that measure has been perfectly filled in us.
-----Only the humility natural to the child’s mind can take such a prospect of never fully reaching adulthood by its own effort, yet pressing on to reach it as if somehow it could. Only this humility can be bounded by the alpha of righteousness worked heretofore and the omega of it yet to come and still, in it’s present state of imperfection, be filled with the peace and joy needed for working as much righteousness as is possible today.
-----So we must come to Him in the child's role, for we are children until our mortality ends. We must live in the resigning yet active natures of childhood, each mutually linked to the righteousness of Christ God imputes to us for our childhood treasure-maps.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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