At a lecture I attended yesterday one of the leading scholars in New Testament studies said something to the effect-and here I am quoting him from one of his commentaries:
“Our actions belong to a larger pattern of significance than that of our own lives, and the church’s obedience to God’s will matters urgently, because it is apart of God’s strategy for the eschatological renewal of the world.”
I is funny that a quote that is getting us to look outward to the things that God wants to do in spite of us would be at the same time an invitation to look inward at the dealing of my own heart. I’m reading through the Gospel according to Mark, this narrative that moves so fast you feel as if you are running to catch up with Jesus as you read, and I am struck (more honest-convicted) by the words of Jesus. Coupled by the lecture I heard and the grand scope of God’s plan to renew this world through his Son while being confronted with the practical way this sort of thing takes root I read Mark 1-4. The idea of things taking root for me is a bit foreign at times. Jesus preached to mostly farmers and those whose intimately understood the severity of something not taking root. I want things to take root and as I read a book by Ed Dobson (a leading spiritual voice in my home community) called ‘The Year of Living Like Jesus’, I can’t help but thing of the times when I was connected and rooted in the teachings of Jesus the world was better for it. And the point is not to just be nice and more like Jesus (the one we manufacture with all sorts of our branding), but rather to trust Jesus as we find what he would have us do in turning our lives and our worlds upsidedown. So near the end of my reading in Mark 4.19:
…but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful…
This grabbed me at the end of a week I spent thinking about bike parts for hours and covering cool songs on my guitar. Bike parts are great and great music lifts the soul in ways a prayer might but the conviction came while this question hummed in the back of my mind, “How are these apart of God’s strategy for the eschatological renewal of the world?” I know, a weighty question and probably revealing the pattern of my discipleship that has saught to fit fun things into spirituality instead of being willing to be formed spiritually by everything. What do I want to be formed by? What kinds of things do I really believe will last? When I take root in the teachings of Jesus what things in my life will be made fruitful and what things will fade whither and die?
