Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Eyes rising

Monday, March 11, 2013

Isaiah 65:17-20
I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,
The things of the past shall not be remembered
Nor brought to mind.
No longer shall the sound of weeping
Be heard there, nor the sound of crying,
No longer shall there be in it
An infant who lives but a few days,
Or any old man who does not round out his lifetime.

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031113.cfm

"Come down, Jesus, before my child dies."

Jesus says to me with authority, "You may go. Your child will live." And she does. She lives, and she plays and she forever sings her song. With each step and every word he speaks Jesus brings the Kingdom of God to our world. Isaiah's words are indeed fulfilled.

What price glory? Walter Brueggemann writes, "The texture of this future is expressed in the staggering inversions of a life that contains not only new gifts but also harsh judgments against those who resist the vision or seek to have a piece of it on their own terms. The future held for us by the Bible is not a blissful blur."

Jesus speaks most tenderly and most effectively to the poor, the weak, the old and the dying. Their self-control has relentlessly been removed from them, and perhaps because of this, they are most open to Jesus' love.

Jesus invites us all to become part of this whole organism of life, the "body of Christ" which consists of members in every state of health and dis-ease. When one lives, we all live. When one dies, we all die.

As the great Iranian poet Rumi wrote in the thirteenth century, "What have I ever lost by dying?" In The Bible Makes Sense, Walter Brueggeman's poetic prose captures my imagination: "Our life is not for self-indulgence, nor for desperate coping, nor for frantic, empty surviving. It is life lived after the manner of this very God who empties himself to obedience in the life of Jesus.

"The Godness of God does not consist in power and sovereignty but in his obedient suffering for the sake of the world. And our vocation consists in that emptying activity after the manner of God, in which we experience for ourselves God's strange poverty among us that heals."

Come down Jesus, before my child dies. Not there, not then, but here and now, our eyes rise up to meet yours. Death is swallowed up in your gaze, Jesus. It is no more.

Devotions Archive

Eyes rising

Monday, March 11, 2013