Panes of Glass

It is quite fitting that I should be writing this now, after the events of last night and this morning. I have recently read (actually, listened to on audiobook) A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables. I finished the latter this morning. Last night, in my Bible study class home team, we discussed 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, a dear passage for me. Well, as you may have figured out by now, I think often of the end of life, what passes through one’s thoughts and what wishes or desires that were not fulfilled that one might long for the chance to complete. For some time now, I have been at peace, and that is a major blessing. Not necessarily at peace in the sense that I am enjoying everything life is throwing at me. That would be a lie. However, I am at peace with knowing where I will be and that there is nothing I want more than to be there, with and before my Lord and my God. There can be nothing greater.

We are such a selfish people. We think so much about life, and about our own lives in particular. I am still guilty of this, and more importantly, I don’t like it about myself. Sydney Cotten took the high road when he did not need to so that he might preserve the life of another. Jean Valjean, though he predicted accurately the outcome of his choice gave up his darling Cosette and wasted away that she might be happy and have a beautiful life. We think of ourselves as being the happy people that find our princes and princesses and live happily ever after. Some Christian writers would even have us believe that such is true for us in this life. But the fairy tale is for our real life, not the one we watch and agonize over in this lifetime.

In this lifetime, however, we are more like Fantine, who gave up her hair and teeth so that her little girl could have medicine and eat, though in reality Fantine was being cheated out of her income. We are a burnt offering, a willing sacrifice. We are in fact the ones who shall suffer. And rightly so! Was it not my sin that drove that powered the arm that drove the nail into Christ’s right hand? Was it not yours that did likewise for his left? How then should we think we are entitled to something more? Pain and misery are what we deserve; yet God is merciful and gracious. “He does not treat us as our sins deserve nor repay us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103).

John wrote of love as the most important theme of the story of our lives. We obey God by loving one another. We know Him by loving one another. We are to endure with one another and stand in the place of one another when the other cannot stand on his or her own. We are not our own. We have been bought at a price, and a high price indeed. Do not grow comfortable in your desk chair or in your recliner. Do not grow accustomed to gonig out each night or venturing down to the movie theater because you have nothing better to do. We waste our lives away so easily. With whom have you recently expressed your love for and joy in Christ? To how many unbelievers have you bared your soul and allowed them to see your need that they might see their own? How often have you made yourself happy instead of seeking to nurse the hurts in others? Oh friends don’t think that I am speaking just to you! I am writing to and for myself as well. May the Lord push us together as the body to see his will done and made manifest in all the earth! Amen!