Accepting the Hope

The woman in the IGA parking lot, turned away, with disappointment. It happened to Jesus, too. Someone wanted something very important, but the price seemed too high. He wanted a magic answer. This is told in the gospel story of the rich young man who encountered Jesus.

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"

"Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

"Which ones?" the man inquired.

Jesus replied, " `Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,' and `love your neighbor as yourself.' "

"All these I have kept," the young man said. "What do I still lack?"

Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.¹

He turned away, sorrowing. He wanted an easy answer. He wanted an easy restoration in his relationship with God. He wanted magic. It wasn’t going to be easy. His money, rather than being the indication of a right relationship with God was an impediment.

I just couldn’t help but think of this story as the woman walked away from me. She needed help, power and hope. But she wanted it on her terms, and that just wasn’t going to work.

The power and hope is in God’s power and willingness to change us.

We may want an easy answer. It will never be easy. We can go away, sorrowing, or we can trust in the power of God and his willingness to change us. This is the key to getting off the spiral.

There actually are things we can do to get off the comfort spiral. It usually isn’t all that easy. We have had lifetime patterns of behavior that we go back to, because we have always gone back to them. We may do well for a time. Then we fall back into old patterns. And I can tell you, it is harder to get off the spiral the second time, than it is the first time.

The rich young man had a lifetime pattern of relying on his wealth as the blessing from God that indicated God’s favor toward him. The idea that he had to give up the one thing that brought him his comfort was just too much. He wanted it easy, and Jesus seemed to make it hard. Most of us cannot relate to him in this regard. We don’t see ourselves as wealthy. We (hopefully) see salvation as something so incredibly worth everything that we would be willing to give away everything we have for eternal life.

Would I give up my calories? If Jesus told me that I could inherit eternal life if I successfully lost one hundred pounds and kept it off, would I be like the lady in the IGA parking lot? Would I turn away, disappointed? Would the alcoholic easily give up the bottle? The smoker her cigarettes? It sounds so easy. But if we don’t truly believe that God can provide more comfort than we have ever known, what will we do?

There is hope. There is power. It is in God’s power and willingness to change us. God can lift us out of the spiral. It’s not a magic pill, but it is powerful.

¹ Matthew 19:16-22

Good as New! (Or Heading That Way, Anyway)

Factory refurbished or restored. I’ll admit, I’m pretty slow to buy an electronic doo-dad that is sold at a bargain price when it is listed as factory restored. Already it didn’t work for one person. What makes me believe that it will work the second time around? But that is based more on my lack of confidence in the restorer, who in all likelihood is responsible for the original problems.

God is in the restoration business. The good news is that he is not responsible for the original flawed product! We have messed up, and God is restoring. Once again, we are back at 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I’ve talked about the problem of discomfort, and traps we fall into, in trying to seek comfort. Now I want to start looking at how we can cooperate with God’s grace and move toward wholeness, accepting God’s comfort. For comfort to truly overcome the brokenness that is the source of our discomfort, it must move us toward restoration.

Restoration is taking whatever is broken, and repairing the breach. In the Divine-human relationship, God has already taken the initiative. Jesus was born among us. He taught us. He died for us, and rose again. Now we must respond. If the breach is between two people, someone must follow God’s example and take the initiative. If the breach is with the environment, then perhaps applied wisdom in living is needed.

Sometimes, acceptance is needed. God accepts us as we are, even as he longs to restore us. How often do we expect someone else to pull it together, before we will deal with them? The problem is that they may be powerless to pull it together. Perhaps I need to pull it together enough to accept the other with all his problems.

Restoration is not easy. There is no magic pill. Dieters want a weight-loss pill that allows them to eat and not exercise. The patent-medicine snake-oil salesmen on radio and television are busy battling it out, claiming that their unique pill will help you lose weight, and the other is a sham. Heroin addicts shift their addiction from heroin to methadone rather than going cold turkey and quitting.

One day I was walking through the parking lot at the IGA (our local grocery store). A woman I didn’t know, came up to me and asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“How did you lose all that weight?”

I gave her the Reader’s Digest condensed version “I count calories, and I started walking every day.” (In fact, I was on my daily walk when I met her.)

She turned away without a comment, but also with a clear expression of disappointment. She wanted an easy answer. She wanted a magic pill.

There is no magic. But there is power and there is hope.

Power for Good

Guilt can lead to paralysis. But it can also be a powerful force of motivation for repentance and renewal. Earlier I said that guilt was a gift from God that draws our attention to something that we should stop doing. In this sense, guilt properly applied is a comfort mechanism that is God’s gift to us. If we are walking outside of God’s ways, we will feel guilty. The stress that this brings to our lives can be eliminated very simply by returning to God’s ways!

If you’re cheating on your spouse, you should feel guilty. You are guilty, and you should feel it, and you should stop. If you are a shoplifter, you should feel guilty. If you are contentious, always bringing strife into the lives around you, you should feel guilty. If you are a gossip, you should feel guilty. If, in all these things, you do not feel guilty, you have deeper problems than just the behavior.

On the comfort spiral, when we are at the point of feeling guilty for our behavior, that isn’t a false accusation. If I am overeating, feeling guilty can be a strong signal to stop! When a sense of guilt and the behavior that engendered it are brought to God’s throne of grace, then the very power of God has been released into your life. And now we are moving into the power of hope.

Each of us is affected by brokenness. Sin is a breakdown in relationship. Whether the relationship is with God or another human being, discontinuity is created when we seek our own needs, wants or desires, without regard to God or others. Sin is a failure to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, or to love our neighbor as ourselves. All brokenness comes from sin, whether it is our own sin, or the sin of others. God did not create a broken world. He looked upon his creation, and saw that it was good.¹ Brokenness came about with the fall, as Adam and Eve decided to ignore what God told them, and went their own way.

Immediately there was a breach in the relationship with each other, and with God. The relationship between man and woman changed as they suddenly felt shame, looking upon one another. They covered themselves up, to hide their shame. But there was more shame, and they also covered themselves up to be invisible to God. “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”²

The best reaction to such shame, though, is not to run and hide. God is seeking to build relationships, not destroy them. God’s work is one of restoration, not ruin. When guilt drives us into God’s loving embrace, then we are cooperating with grace, and open ourselves to God’s restoration work. Restoration is what God is about. Guilt has the power to move us toward restoration, if we respond appropriately.

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¹ Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31
² Genesis 3:8