Friday, April 26, 2019

Alive!

Monday, April 29, 2019

When I turned to see who was speaking to me, I saw seven gold lampstands. And standing in the middle of the lampstands was someone like the Son of Man.  He was wearing a long robe with a gold sash across his chest.  His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow.  And his eyes were like flames of fire.  His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice thundered like mighty ocean waves.  He held seven stars in his right hand, and a sharp two-edged sword came from his mouth.  And his face was like the sun in all its brilliance.  When I saw him, I fell at his feet as if I were dead.  But he laid his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid!  I am the First and the Last.  I am the living one.  I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever!  And I hold the keys of death and the grave.  “Write down what you have seen—both the things that are now happening and the things that will happen.  This is the meaning of the mystery of the seven stars you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands:  The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.  Revelation 1:12-20

More than a half-century after the resurrection Jesus appeared to his beloved apostle, John.  John was at this time the lone survivor of the original 12, exiled by the Roman emperor to the tiny isle of Patmos.  John had faithfully served Jesus for all these decades since the last time he’d seen Him at the ascension.  That last meeting was mysterious and awe-inspiring, but this one was overwhelming! 
Jesus instructs John to write down what he’s seeing and hearing.  This simple instruction to record what was happening at that moment, and, particularly, the coming events (that which, for us, is history leading up to the 21st century and beyond), is a declaration that all of it is in the hands of the One Who IS alive!
Arnold Schwarzenegger[iii] as the Terminator, a cyborg who absorbs death time and again, yet comes back to inflict destruction on his enemies, is an archetype of evil’s attempt to thwart God’s good plan.  He appears to be alive but is merely a machine; an evil machine.
Jesus, the God-man, fully-God and fully-human, is everything opposite of Terminator.  He is incarnate, the human expression of the vitality of Heavenly Father.  His mission is not domination and oppression with killing and mayhem.  Rather, his works are healing, setting captives free, and giving Himself as a sacrifice so that all might come to know God with the penalty of sin taken out of the way.  He came that we might see clearly and embrace our Creator.  If evil is the terminator, Christ was the extender, the One who would offer his life to us, eternally.  This  is what the risen Jesus told John…I died, but look – I am alive forever and ever!  And I hold the keys of death and the grave.
The older I get, the bigger these words become.  It’s difficult at any age to ignore our mortality; it’s impossible to NOT think about it every day when you’re on the down-slope, past 70.  The echo of that phrase, threescore-and-ten bellows around in your brain at least a few times every day.  Old people don’t just think about death; the reminders (aches in places you never knew existed, graying, wrinkles, low-energy….and I won’t even say the thing about memory lapses), well, those reminders are too stark to ignore.
And so, we arrive at the dividing-line between Arnold and Jesus, one came to bring fear and bondage; the other came to offer his nail-scarred hand as a bridge to the Giver of life and total joy.
For You Today
He’s alive!  And He said we could be too!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:   Pixabay.com
[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©
[iii] Terminator II, video cover courtesy of IMDB

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