April 23, 2015
Where are you?
When TV media replays 911
calls it’s interesting that many people in an emergency situation don’t know
where they are and are unable to give the operator a location. Recently a
baggage handler found himself in a similar situation when fell asleep on the
job while in the cargo hold of an airplane and awoke to find the airplane had
taken off. It’s not unusual to hear people who are unsure about their spiritual
location to have similar comments. With hesitation they say, “I hope I’m going
to heaven. I think I’m saved. I feel I’ll see my loved ones again.” My heart
goes out to those who can’t grasp the assurance of salvation. The writer of
Hebrews said, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what
we do not see” (Heb 11:1 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Questions and answers are like keyholes and keys, they fit only each other and neither is much good without the other. Hope and faith are like questions. If we fully had in hand what we hoped for in faith, we would need neither hope nor faith. Last week Char took me to Olive Garden. I ordered a chicken plate hoping it would be good through faith in Olive Garden’s reputation of making food good. When I received my plate and began to eat, I no longer had hope that it would be good. It was being good. And neither was my knowledge of its good anymore coming through faith, but rather through experience.
-----But if we would have gone to another restaurant, Roach Kitchen, let’s say, hope and faith would have served their same purpose of legitimate question right up until the time the food was served. We can hope in anything our minds accept for generating a feeling of well being, as long as that thing has not yet been delivered. We can generate any answer to any question we can imagine unlocking the door to goodness. But none of that dispels the different way hope and faith’s disappearance feels when the roaches start crawling out of the salad.
-----So, how do we know to place our hope and faith in Olive Garden or Roach Kitchen until we’ve fully had their meals? Or does it matter which we go to because our hope and faith is that they both make great food? Can we trust the faces of those leaving their dining experiences? I’ve known people who’d seem to delight in chomping the legs off cockroaches. They’d be smiley walking away from Roach Kitchen and disgusted walking away from Olive Garden.
-----It seems the relevant question is asked us by God. Do you have enough sense to distinguish an olive from a roach or a garden of food and beauty from a kitchen where anything might cook up? Maybe this is what makes Jesus’ disciples predestined, just the simple sense it takes to know which keyholes are worth the interest of finding the keys that fit them.
-----There is a sense of destiny in the one who puts his hope and faith in Jesus Christ. But this is not an ethereal sense. It is not an emotional sense unattached to anything but imagination. Those who do not particularly care for the company of cockroach eaters will more acclimate towards Olive Garden. The world is full of hints and clues sorting reality from imagination. People who really care about reality as reality is will really care about a God who is who He is. These are people who use keys and keyholes for what they are rather than for what they want them to be. Imagination is not their bag, reality is. And the more one searches into the reality’s evidence, allowing it to unlock the keyholes it fits, the more the doors open unto Jesus Christ, because He is the pinnacle of reality, as everyone will note when that dinner is served.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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