Work or Stay Home Sick? What Would Jesus Have Me Do?

Today I feel better, but not great.  I am still sick and I will attempt to go into work and last as long as I can.  I need a shave, to wash my hair, and a hair cut.  The hair cut will have to wait.  Sure I have things to do at work today.  I have email to catch up on, I have phone messages to answer, and I have lots of work from the convention that needs to be entered and followed up upon.  I will b busy.  My head will be fuzzy.  And I will very tired.  So why go?

The entry for today talks of my Master’s appearance to the Apostle John while he was exiled on Patmos.  The response of John when he sees my Master in His glory is to fall as dead at His feet.  The reason is that John had not seen Jesus in this way before.  He had seen Him as a Son of Man, and he had seen Him transfigured.  But this vision he has of my Master is very different, and not familiar.  John was given a gift to see my Master in a new, more powerful way.

I go to work, not because I have been given a new vision of my Master which makes me fall as if dead.  I go to work because I have already seen my Master as One enduring suffering on behalf of others.  I go for my team.  I will be gone as of next month, and what I do now matters little to my pay check.  But the team is behind, my month is behind, and, although my year-to-date is just fine, I have a contribution to make.  I go for others.

On the other hand, what disease I have is communicable, and my team can easily become infected with it.  I run the risk that it can be transmitted airborne, so just breathing the same air with me is dangerous.  So, how is this really for others?  Am I not putting them in danger even as I claim to be working on their behalf?

Well, yes.  But my Master sought people who were not convenient.  I read of Him going where He was out of place.  Sure there is the risk that what I have is able to be spread to my team, but I have measures I can take.  The need out weighs the risk.

The other reason I go is because I am not sure that I will be able to last all day.  I go because I know I can at least make a start on my duties.  I hope to last all day, but I will need to balance that with how effective I am being versus how dangerous I am being.

What I really want is a new powerful vision of Jesus.  I want a vision of my Master that causes me to fall down as if dead.  I have seen things that have taken my breath away, but a vision of Him I still lack.  I want the effect of driving out fear, the effect of grounding faith so that I can move on to higher ground of belief and experience.

It all sounds very dramatic and impressive, but my Master has lots of other ways to draw me deeper into Him.  My imagination failed to see the option from my work which He brought into play.  He may not decide to provide that way, but it was a reminder and an assurance that He will provide.  That was something less dramatic which took me into deeper faith with Him.  I can rest in the promise that He has my back, and walk obediently in peace.

I will go into work and see what happens.  I may stay or I may not.  I will obey the prompting of my Master and leave or stay at His command.  Perhaps on the way there or once there I will be given the gift of a vision of Him.  Or perhaps, I will know the peaceful grace of assurance of His care.  It’s a win-win day of blessing ahead for me.

Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest": May 24th.

Exploring the Trinity…From Within!

One of my favorite discussions to get into with atheists is about the Trinity.  They love that it doesn’t make sense, and, as it turns out, so do I.  Why would I expect the One responsible for this inexplicable universe to have a personality that made sense to me?  But as a believer, there are some serious aspects of the Trinitarian nature of my Master about which I am ill at ease.

For instance, this passage to which Chambers refers is one that I really find difficult.  It either is not referring to the Trinitarian nature of my Master, or it makes this nature accessible, and inclusive of me.  It’s one thing to say that my Master has this nature made up of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Three are One in some fashion.  It is a whole other matter to say then, that my Master’s human creatures (like me) can be included in this nature. 

The problem is that I know I will never be God.  Yet, for whatever reason, the Apostle John was convinced that we will be like Him.  I don’t know what it means to be “like” God, and in this passage I am even challenged further that I will be “in” my Master as my Master is “in” the Father.  Part of my problem with that is that the Apostle did not use some specific narrow Greek word for “just as”, or some special preposition for “in”, but the general purpose common words which are easily understood.  While the Greek preposition “in” has a wider range of meaning than the English equivalent, it still represents the idea of something penetrating beyond the surface and proceeding within the object. 

So taking only verse 21 of John 17, I am left with this idea that, just as Jesus is “in” the Father and the Father is “in” Jesus, so I will be in both.  That is some deep water.  It is a concept that troubles me.  I am not even as “clean” as Isaiah and his “unclean lips”.  My people are not even as “clean” as his “people of unclean lips”.  How can I be “in” my Master?  How can I exist within the boundaries of the Person responsible for creating, maintaining, sustaining, and eventually destroying something as vast as the immeasurable universe I live within?  I can’t even understand it on a micro-cosmic level, how can I be “included” within the Creator of it?

This is my real problem with the Trinity, not that my Master would have that as part of His nature, but that I can be somehow included in such a nature.  And not because I cannot accept or believe that such a nature has the capability to include others in it, but rather because I know my sin and profane nature.  How can someone like me (and there are many like me in this world) be included in this way with One like Him?

I know this bothers me, but my Master has a very familiar answer.  It is possible because my Master makes it possible.  I cannot be holy, but my Master sanctifies me (the process of making me holy).  I cannot be perfect without sin, but my Master takes away the wrath demanded by justice for those defects on which I have worked so diligently (a process also known as “propitiation”). 

These are the activities taken by my Master which make such an inclusion in the very nature of my Master not just possible, but inevitable.  That is where I am headed regardless of how much I cannot understand or refuse to accept it.  I am to be somehow included within the boundaries of this Person, this Creator of the micro and macro cosmos.

So, if this is my destiny, laid out by One so powerful so as to make it as certain as the dawn, why then should I be concerned about a job, insurance, house, food, clothes, car, and anything else uncertain as my family transitions to living in a different state?  Seriously, what else matters if that destiny is certain?  What else can compete for my concern if that future lies just ahead?  What is left to worry about?  What is there to cause me angst?  How can anything unsettle me if that is true?  I would hope that dogs would not make me as upset as they do, but they do.

If I live my life with the certainty that I will be included in my Master, then the last part of verse 21 will also become true.  The world (cosmos) will believe that my Master was sent with a purpose.  The purpose and intent of this inclusion is the eventual inclusion of others in this cosmos.  I am not supposed to be alone in this amazing impossible experience.  But, rather, as I experience and live this inclusion out daily, others see and believe, and hopefully enter into the inclusion as well.  Faith allows me entrance into Heaven, love enables me to bring friends.  So, once again, it isn’t really about me after all.  How surprising…or not.

Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest": May 22nd.