The Lord blessed us
yesterday during morning worship. Being Boy Scout Sunday yesterday Chris, one
of the leaders and a professor at Davis College, preached. We were all
challenged and blessed.
C.S. Lewis faced the death
of his beloved mom at the age of nine. He struggled with his faith in the
loving Lord and almighty God. Years later, when as an Oxford
professor he began to rationally think through the possibility of Christian
belief, Lewis finally understood what was going on in his mother’s painful
illness. He came to see that this world is a battlefield between the kingdom of
God and the powers of evil, and that Christianity was true precisely because it
took this conflict seriously.
Lewis’ mother died not
because God didn’t grant a child’s wish, but because the evil one had twisted
God’s good world in such a way that even the very cells of her body no longer
worked as they should. Though healing did not come in that instant of boyish
spiritual lisping, the prayers did not go unheard, and his mother was not lost
forever or forgotten.
Our Lord Jesus told
several parables which are recorded in Mathew 13. Jesus’ stories in this
chapter remind us that we are on the winning side in the battles of life. When
Jesus told the Parables of the Seed and the Yeast (Matthew
13:31-35), He presented a picture of
the kingdom of heaven that grows and dominates until it is the primary factor
shaping the world. The tiny mustard seed morphs into a tree that provides a
home for the birds, and the bit of yeast transforms the entire loaf until it is
utterly and completely changed. It is important to note that these things
happen rather automatically, with the change taking place from within the seed,
and from within the grain of yeast.
In
other words, the kingdom of heaven has the winning power within itself, and
invites us along on the journey. We do not create the kingdom, but the kingdom
creates us. Even though it appears to be insignificant at the start, the
essence of greatness and the confidence of success lies within.
Scripture is filled
with testimonies to this. One in particular from the Old Testament is the scene
in Jeremiah
32 where the prophet buys a field. Normally
this would seem like an ordinary transaction, but Jeremiah and the salesperson
were both holed up inside the walls of Jerusalem, while battering rams of
Babylon’s armies were pounding the gates and walls to rubble.
What is more, in the
prolonged siege of Jerusalem, the invading armies killed and burned every living
thing for miles, and made waste of whatever farmland there might have been in
the region. Added to that is the sure promise of God, spoken through Jeremiah
himself, that this time Babylon would be successful and the city, along with the
Temple, would be destroyed.
If there was ever a bad
time to invest in real estate, this was it. The land itself was worthless, the
currency inflated, the threat of destruction obvious and the future about as
grim as any could be. Yet Jeremiah bought the field because he knew the power
of the seed of the kingdom of God. He knew that God would have his way, even
beyond the threat of Babylon. He knew that in spite of the waywardness of the
people, God’s kingdom would rise again and thrust itself to the heavens until
even the Babylonian vulture would nest in its
branches.
When we
read the account as Jesus told us about the kingdom of heaven, we recover our
sense of values and outcomes. We see past the current hopeless,
all-encompassing mess of daily events. We carry the passport of heaven. We
live as those who are under orders to be, to do, and to make a difference. Best
of all, we know Who writes the last chapter.
In Christ,
Brown
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