Monday, September 26, 2022

King Down

Monday, September 26, 2022

I correct and discipline everyone I love.  So be diligent and turn from your indifference.  “Look! I stand at the door and knock.  If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.  Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne.  “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.”  Revelation 3:19-22

In chess, when an opponent has cornered your king, to the point there is no possible move without being taken by another piece, it is checkmate.  You have lost the game, and the acknowledgement of your loss is laying-down your king.  It is this picture that enters my mind whenever I think of Jesus’ followers placing the body of Jesus in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb…KING DOWN!  This describes the message of a popular hymn in many churches, Victory in Jesus:[1]  

I heard an old, old story, how a Savior came from glory,

how he gave his life on Calvary to save a wretch like me;

I heard about his groaning, of his precious blood’s atoning,

then I repented of my sins and won the victory.

When you begin to parse the words from the hymn, groaning, blood, sins, wretch, and envision Jesus’ last moments on Golgotha’s hill, there doesn’t seem to be much “victory” in it.  It reminds me of Homer Rothrock, a member of a church I once served.  Homer was suffering from a gastro-intestinal block.  He was in the hospital, in great pain, waiting on the doctors to decide whether to operate.       As I stood next to my friend I asked him how it was going.  He looked at me with weary eyes and said:  I’ll tell ya, preacher; there ain’t much romance in it!  

Thinking about Homer’s statement has always brought a smile for the way he could maintain a sense of humor, even in the tough times.  It also drives me to the issue of human pain in life, and how going through a rough patch makes us put aside the mundane, in favor of the grand. 

Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis pushed us towards the grand and noble when he wrote:  Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

“Moderate” is the lukewarm word of Jesus’ message to the church of Laodicea, that group of believers who were once white-hot for Jesus, and had cooled-off, like lava from a vocanic erruption that loses its’ heat, losing its’ ability to move, and eventually forming into a heap of hardened slag…a small hill of moderate uselessness.  For a church, that is an epitaph of shame…once vital, we cooled off and stopped where we were comfortable.

For You Today

Wall Street marketing ideas would not include suffering, bleeding, and dying as a great invitation to belong to anything.  Yet, this is precisely what Jesus said led to his victory, and sitting on Heaven’s throne.  And He invites everyone to join him. 

So, are you ready to join King Down?  Or stay with the Indifferent Slow Down Slag?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Game Over and After the Disaster  and It’s Just a Job and Open Door Policy

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©  


[1] Eugene Bartlett ©1939

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