Is the fatigue in your hope connected to the distance between your last visit to the Cross?
Coming back to the Cross is a necessary rhythm. To maintain our hope, we must frequently return and not stop short of the transformative power present by merely "remembering" the work of Christ. In the way we use it today, the language of remembering can unintentionally suggest complete understanding: that the knowledge of the fullness of the work of Christ is already present to us. It's just a matter of recall. Today, let me lovingly challenge that language.
When we return to the Cross, may we not just remember the work of Christ but ask more questions, dig deeper, wrestle, and surrender again. Our remembrance is not the goal, but a changed heart and a renewed hope because what we found at the Cross is yet again transformative. When we wrestle, Christ is not threatened but glorified. You once gave your life to Christ because you wrestled. You surrendered not because you grew tired but because in repentance, your saw rightly. You saw Truth, and it was more radiant than what you once believed, experienced, and lived out. May the Cross continue to be that place of wrestle. His work is too magnificent to isolate reflection to a moment of conversion. Too vast to be reviewed once or twice a year with the assumption of already knowing its depth.
We must stop our obsession with making the Gospel ' simple.' There is nothing 'simple' about the oppression, brokenness, and fatigue in our world. The Gospel is neither simple nor complex: It is Good News. It speaks to the sinner and the wounds sin has created in hearts, communities, and the world.
When we call the Gospel simple, we're saying it's spoken. Christ's death and resurrection have no continual words to say to the Christian. We neglect the truth that it's still speaking. And to the person of faith who bears a daily witness to trauma, relational brokenness, and injustice, it must.
At the Cross is a message that never ceases to preach a good word. To our suffering, it speaks, broadcasting God's redemptive plan. There is nothing shallow or thin about the Gospel. It is full-bodied, and no one preacher, teacher, or evangelist can articulate the fullness of our hope.
So as we communally and personally come to the Cross, let us commit to swimming a little deeper. Continuing to inquire, search, and be transformed by the hope we discover. May the days of wrestling at the Cross never end.
May God complete our joy by giving us a fuller picture of Jesus' Good News.
Opmerkingen