The difference between being humiliated and being humbled is that one is received with joy.
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:15-16, NIV)
The days are evil, no doubt about it. My mom keeps telling me how my generation lives in the best of times and the worst of times. We live in an age of incredible technology, rapid innovation, great information. And yet we live in an age where there is incredible evil, from the 20 million entrapped in slavery, to the horrific acts of terrorism, racism and police violence. Life becomes a thing of uncertainty. We can die at any time, being one of the 100 that die each day of car accidents, or cancer, or heart attacks.
So what Ephesians tells us to do, in light of the evil times, is to live wisely, to make the most of every opportunity. If the only hope we have in these evil days is Heaven, then we ought to live wisely, making the most of every opportunity to let others know who Christ is, and the hope He offers. Because in these evil days, we don’t know how long we have left.
Last weekend, I found myself in a room of a church that had a picture of Jesus on three out of the four walls, each different, but collectively depicting Jesus in the same way—as bearded white guy with long flowing hair.
Incidentally, I was at said church for a weekend of discussing racial reconciliation. What does it mean to be American? What does it mean to be human? When we say that Jesus came and took on human skin, why do artists automatically think that skin was white?
Truth be told, Jesus was Jewish. He was a Jewish man living in a Roman world, growing up in Galilee, a rural—and likely poor—area of Israel. Isaiah 53:2 tells us that “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” So the question remains, why the urge to try to depict Jesus? It would be irreverent and possibly unartistic to depict the Savior as ugly, but we fall into deception when we make Him look all pretty. Paintings of Jesus, in some ways, are crafting God in our image, when in fact the order of things is the other way around, as we are made in His image. And so often, our image of “human” is what we see dominating the media—whiteness. If our only depictions of God show Him as a white male, how can people of color believe that they are made in His image? For people of color, this image of a fair-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus is one that they can’t quite relate to, a Jesus that can’t understand their struggles and sufferings. But the truth of Hebrews 4:15, is that in Christ, we do have a high priest that can sympathize with our weaknesses. When this truth is obscured by an image of a distant and unsympathetic Jesus, it hinders people of color from confidently approaching the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help them in their time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
What if, instead of trying to make pictures of Jesus, we would become pictures of Jesus, as we are transformed into the likeness of the Son. The picture of Jesus in our lives, is the only picture that people need to see, and the only picture that will draw them into His loving arms.
Dear Hope,
It’s been a while, my friend. I miss seeing you around. It’s been far too long since we last talked, or even shared life in silence. You used to be the one to cheer us all up when everything in the world looked dismal. You were always the one to help us look past today, and see a brighter future on the horizon.
I miss the late nights that we’d stay up talking about that better world, catching just glimpses of what the kingdom of God would look like here on earth. We’d reminisce about the times you came to save the day, all the triumphs of lives rebuilt, families brought together again, people brought back from the brink of despair. We’d make crazy plans for the future, seemingly impossible schemes to build His kingdom here, to bring God’s justice and healing and restoration to a broken world that so desperately needs Him. You would always remind me that even if nothing worked out, the story would end in victory. In the success and in the failures, you encouraged me with 1 Corinthians 15:58, urging me to, “stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” You always pointed me back to God, reminding me that He was sovereign over all of time and space, and He was working, and that the victory has always been His, and that evil, no matter how many battles it won, would never win the war. I miss your confidence, your absolute assurance of the unseen. I miss staring into your bright eyes and knowing that everything would be okay.
But lately I haven’t seen you around as much. It seems like every time something happens on the news, you recede further into our shell, afraid of being let down again. Every mass shooting, every celebrity failure, every downturn of the economy, every act of injustice, every moment of unspeakable horror is another gust of wind that threatens to snuff out your candle. And I’m afraid that one day, your flame will finally turn to embers and disappear altogether.
I won’t let you go that easily, I promise. I’ll be here waiting for the day you draw back the curtains and let the light in as it breaks through the clouds, and for the day you step out that door again and smell the cleansed earth after a rainstorm. I’ll look for you down every dark alley, in every barren field, in every cloudy sky, in every stormy sea, because you’re the only one who can stare down all the hurt and suffering in the world without being completely overwhelmed by despair, the only one I can lean on through these tough times. Please come back soon. I need you desperately, my friend.
Sincerely,
A Broken World
Why do we put crosses by the side of the road, crosses on tombstones, crosses to mark fallen soldiers?
Perhaps it’s to say that Jesus was here, to take one more person to His side, leaving only a cross, to remind us that they are with Him. Where they are now, is in His presence, in their true home—and ours as well. The crosses point us to the the only hope we have to see them again at Jesus’s side.
What a great hope we have, that the failure of our fragile bodies is not the end of the line, that there is life, deeper, richer, better than anything we have known here waiting for us on the other side of this chasm we call death. O death, where is your sting, O grave, where is your victory? Christ has redeemed even death, transforming dread of the unknown to a blessed assurance of the fullness of joy in His presence. As Paul says, “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” With Jesus, living or dying is a win-win situation. In life, we come to know Christ, and invite others to know Him, and in death, we get to see Him face to face.
Here’s to you, Brianna Izuno, you spent the short life you had well, in His service. In the time scale of eternity, I’ll see you in a little while. In the meantime, we’ll miss you, but we’ll take comfort in knowing you’re home with Jesus.
a cup of kimitea 