A Thanksgiving Offering

We have come to believe that the blessings of God are deserved. Abundant life is then squashed under the weight of our own and personal expectations. We whine like children that do not get their flavor of popcicle. The Fall has caused life to be full of thorns and thistles. Christ told us to expect life to be a process of death, just as His was. We just have come to believe the opposite. We think real life is given to us by Jesus giving us just what we want. Where did we get this idea? The truth of the matter is, that the true reality of life is much worse that we think it is. His grace is far greater than we think it is. The fact that we are breathing right this moment is a miracle. The Christian life, the abundant Christian life doesn’t happen without death.

Have you ever seen a child covering up his ears so that he will shut out the disappointment that is coming to him? We are like children trying so hard to shut up the reality of life by stuffing our hearts full of new toys, new and more activities that will, even just for a little while, make us have to face the fact that this life is not what it should be. Something has gone terribly wrong. We even as Christians, are constantly being disappointed by what is not given to us, or provided for us. Trusting God becomes just a cliche, that is never truly lived out seriously. We just kind of hold on in between the activities. But....Jesus; “was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.” We are to be like Him. How do we do that? Our affluent society has blinded us to the realities of living for Him, living like Him, and living abundantly.

Recently, I read a novel by Shusako Endo titled; The Samurai. The protaganist was a self-righteous priest who wants to save the world, or at least Japan. The novel takes us on a journey of his life as God humbles him. We see a vivid picture of the process of sanctification. In the scene in the quote below, he has come to grips with what it means to follow Jesus. It is very different from what he thought it would be. He has just sat up all night watching and waiting for his co-laborer to die in the prison cell that they were sharing. His fellow priest has just died and the guards are taking him away.


“At daybreak the guards wrapped the priest’s body in a straw mat and took it away. His arms and legs, which poked out from the mat, were as spindly as needles, covered with dirt and caked in mud. As I watched the scene with Luis Sasada, I had a flash like a revelation from Heaven. This was reality. No matter how much we try to camouflage or idealize it, the real world is as wretched as the dirt stained, mud-caked corpse of Father Vasquez. And the Lord did not avoid this miserable reality. For even the Lord died covered in sweat and dirt. And through His death, He cast a sudden light upon the realities of this world.”
“As I think back on it now, I feel as though the Lord gave me all those setbacks so that He could force me to look this reality in the face. It is as though my vanity, my pride, my haughtiness, and my thirst for conquest all existed for the purpose of shattering everything that I idealized, so that I could see the true state of the world. But, as the Lord’s death pierced that reality with light, in order that my death may someday pierce Japan.”

Isaiah 53 gives us a clear picture of what the life of the Messiah was all about. Remember this was God incarnate.

Isaiah 53

1 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

8By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?9And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death,although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him....

Sometimes, God wants to give us a glimpse of what the reality of life is. Take your hands off of your ears, and eyes to see just what He wants you to see. It will surprise you. The prison chains that we have imposed upon us will never come off until we do.