Tsunamis and Christ
It’s easy to hand out advice from a position of safety and security. It’s easy to be optimistic when your own life is fine or if at present you are going through a difficult patch but you know you have good reason to believe that it’ll soon sort itself out and you will be back on a level surface again. It’s easier to be one that is standing well up on the beach, out of the fury of the surf, yelling chatty advice to some poor soul that’s being pounded by waves and driven under, panic-stricken and straining for air.
It never was that way with Christ even when he called for gallantry from people in awful situations, because it was out of the darkness of the cross and his own fears that Jesus called. I think that’s why we keep trusting Jesus Christ even when harsh realities—Asian tsunamis and day after day after day crippling circumstances— continue to pound us and nothing seems to change. I think that he has convinced us that not only has he known unceasing pressure but that when his own darkest hour came that he was still sure, still persuaded beyond argument that God could be trusted. So, in the words of the psalmist, he says something like, "The Lord was always there with me and I saw him. When I look, he is there to the right of me so I will not be shaken. And that is why down at the centre of my being I'm glad and why I find myself praising him. I know I am human and will experience the agony of death but I feel no despair—I live and I live in hope! Because you will not abandon me and let the grave have the last word; you will not allow decay and destruction to be the end of your Holy One. You have shown me what life is and how to live it and I know I will be brimful of the joy you give when you finally bring me into your presence." Acts 2:25-28.
This is the heart and these are the words of one beaten by the waves and not one safely on the beach yelling advice. And carried to us on the shrieking wind from the heart of "the perfect storm" he speaks of life and joy and assurance and hope!
All very pious, all very sweet, but do the hard facts not drown all that religious waffling? New Testament writers watched the gathering storm of Roman invasion and when a Roman tsunami broke over the nation do you think they felt less than we do? Don’t you imagine that someone pounded the table and choked with anger or frustration wanted to know what was going on? Jesus spoke of that awful time and described its horror (Luke 21:5-26)—there was nothing unrealistic about the Christ. But along with all its pain and loss and agony he said this astonishing thing (Luke 21:28), "When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."
I’m not pretending to deal with the text in its historical and predictive setting. I want only to make the point that Jesus was so sure of his Father that he calls fearful followers caught up in a storm that beggared description to, "stand up, lift up your heads, your redemption is near." Would you not have expected something different? "When you see all these things come to pass, throw in the towel, wring your hands in despair, grovel and stammer because you’ve finally seen the truth and the present and future is unbroken gloom!"
That’s...not...what...he...said!
And one sufferer who knew what pain and loss and loneliness and hunger was—not because he read Charles Dickens but because he personally was on the rack—took God seriously. In Romans 8:31-39 he looked at a sad, bad world, he looked at his own agony and loss and then he looked at the cross of Christ and said, "None of that nor all of it together can persuade me that God doesn’t love us!"
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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