December 14, 2011
Live Edge
Recently I attended the Woodworkers’ Christmas party and their gift
exchange was mostly comprised of hand crafted items such as turned bowls,
carvings, ornaments and wall decorations. While the expertise of turning
beautiful wooden bowls was talked about, the extreme difficulty of turning a
bowl while leaving the live edge (the natural edge) of the wood intact was also
discussed and revered. My mind turned to the skill of the Carpenter. In the
Lord’s hands the believer’s live edge remains intact, all the while our hearts
are being crafted into a thing of beauty.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----One of the biggest problems I had with the Pentecostals in my early Christian experience was that they were so into this “you become nothing and Jesus becomes everything” business. And of course, I still meet the concept everywhere I go, probably because it is true. But understanding it in the wrong sense can lead to some of the biggest misunderstandings about the new life. I am nothing in the scheme of effecting my salvation, Jesus is everything. I am nothing in the progression of His kingdom; it can progress all the same without me. But it certainly can not without Him. However, the initiation of salvation in my life won’t happen unless I autonomously desire it and call out for it. The progression of His kingdom into my life will not happen unless I proceed into His kingdom. I say often to people that the Bible is replete with such directives as “you love”, “you give”, “you forgive”, “you show honor”, “you serve”, “you please”, “you humble yourself”, etc. Though many times such expressions are made with the subject implied, the directives are that you do it all the same. Comparatively few are the instances where the Bible speaks of God loving through you, or comforting through you, and such. And when it does, again the sense of the expression can not be ignored: certainly God develops in us all the good we are, yet we still initiate its use. Otherwise we are the robots that the “you become nothing” people insist God does not want loving Him; we become lifeless gloves on His hands only working; we become mere shadows on His cave wall.
-----Surely He brought us life. I know Jesus said something about “more abundant”. That doesn’t sound like gloves or shadows to me. There is something inside us He wants alive. He does make our spirits alive. That’s cool and all. But it seems the life extends beyond the spirit. We are to walk in the light (I John 1:7) as much as He has made us to be light (Eph 5:8). And in the progression of moving relatively out of the darkness of the ways we are leaving behind and into the light of the new ways emerging in us, we develop new minds, transformed minds of perspectives foreign to this earth. Our values change, our goals shift, our purposes are revised, and even our definitions of stuff like beginning, end, life, and death adjust. Yet we still are. And yet we still have more change to go. Dying to ourselves, emptying ourselves, becoming weak, and becoming nothing are all aspects of this process of coming alive in the Lord that each applies in its own sense, but none apply in all senses.
-----God did not take on human form and all the sin of the entire species to die upon the cross so that whosoever will might be annihilated and a replica made of him in Christ’s eternal kingdom. No, we won’t be represented by stuffed game trophies there. God suffered so that each specific person who desires to live will actually be made alive and perfected in who he is over the remaining course of his life. He will then receive a white stone with a new name written upon it that only he will know, just as Jesus has a new name written upon His forehead that only He knows. Names were big to the ancients; they portrayed what a person was. That we will continue to be significant as individuals in heaven is then obvious. So it is no surprise that our individual lives beforehand take on a proper significance in His kingdom as it is coming.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment