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Time moves quickly. When you get technical and confusing, the only truly present moment is this present second (a present minute always has more seconds to go or so on). Consider how short a second is and you get this sickening glance at how fast your life is ticking away into the past and how fast you’re constantly speeding into the future. You can pull out a little bit and view life in present days, weeks, or months, but it still passes by without giving you adequate time to measure it.
As time moves so quickly, you tend to overlook how you personally change, for change comes slowly. It takes a concerted effort, and maybe even years, to really slow down (or stop?) your life so you can note what’s moved or been rearranged. Last weekend I was forced to come to grips with my past and consider how much I had changed in 7 years.
You read, last weekend I went to an event called “Jr. High Believe” with a church group full of rowdy jr highers (read: 4 6th graders). I wanted to go not just to chaperone the kids, but because I had gone to that very event 7 years ago when I was in jr high. It was strange seeing how much had changed, the program, the theme, the venue, the etc. But it was stranger to compare my ”present” self with my “past” self…how far have I come?
For the past couple years I’ve felt like something in me has changed, is different. I think it happened in the final month of my senior year of high school (or sometime thereafter). During that period, something snapped. In some ways, what snapped was good, in most ways, bad. I had become an adult. I had tasted of love and pain, put myself under loads of stress, smelled freedom for the first time, and many other things. I went to college and I continued changing, most ways good, some ways bad. I grew in faith, but in a harder, grittier way. Unfortunately, I grew more sarcastic and cynical. Within the past months I’ve gone through things that have made me grow up far sooner and faster than I think I would have liked. Here I am, a hard-boiled adult.
Compare that to me 7 years ago at Jr. High Believe. The Reveal Tour. February 20-22. Friday night-Sunday morning. I was a geeky looking 8th grader that was finally getting serious about this Jesus. I was struggling with sins even as I struggled just to get on my feet. I was quieter then, more reserved. I was also, in some ways, more open. I certainly wasn’t the cynic then that I am now (and curse that cynicism!). To a point, I think I was more…innocent. Less compromising. More committed.
It’s not that I’m not committed now, just not as committed. The fire has lost its luster as the night wore on. But does it have to be this way? Does my “innocent” child-like faith have to mature into a more hardened adult? Of course, faith must mature. And as I blast my way through life I’ll tarnish myself, find ways to foil my own plans. But for every foul up, there’s forgiveness. For every grinded moment, there’s grace. The fire must be rekindled, but it will be a harder fight to keep it blazing now.
In some ways, I feel like Ralph from Lord of the Flies standing on the beach and weeping for the loss of innocence. In another sense I feel like Dorian Gray staring at his horribly mutilated portrait, carrying the weight of consequences from his actions. Maybe it’s time I stab my own portrait and take a few steps back toward a “child-like” faith. So yes, I’ve changed in the past 7 years, but God hasn’t. Like Aslan when Lucy finds him for the first time in Prince Caspian, my God certainly seems bigger as I’ve grown older and I can only expect Him to grow bigger to me still…
here’s a poem i wrote for my dad’s funeral. may it encourage and comfort you…
Death’s Victory Is Brief
By John Underdown
1-24-11
The way of the cross is never easy, You said,
The best life is not now but yet to come.
The seed shall not sprout until it is dead.
The pilgrim shan’t rest until he is home.
Life’s battle is long, yet Death’s victory is brief,
Robbed by You, Lord, at the coming of dawn.
So after a saint’s pain, follows great relief,
And sorrows and troubles will be mem’ries soon gone.
Now take this dear one in gentlest sleep,
To Your throne’s side where sin is not seen.
And lead him in safety as an innocent sheep,
To graze out in pastures of emerald green.
Yet we here below continue to mourn,
As we grieve for our loss at Death’s cold hand.
But hope still remains and Life be reborn,
When on the day of rising together we’ll stand.
The just shall live by faith…
In “Reformed” circles, this phrase is thrown around so often I think no one knows what it means. I used to think that it simply advocated salvation by faith alone, as Martin Luther promoted it. But in its original context of Habakkuk 2, it takes on a semi-different level of meaning.
In context, chapter 1 is a Q & A session between the prophet and God. First, Habakkuk wonders why there’s so much violence and injustice in Judah and what God planned to do about it. God responds that the injustice issue was about to be resolved when Babylon would move through the area and practically devastate it. To this Habakkuk also cries foul for how could a just and holy God use such a corrupt and proud people to enact justice? The prophet finishes his tyrade and settles down to let God speak.
And He speaks in chapter 2. The thrust of His reply is that there are two types of people: the proud man with a crooked soul, and the just man who lives by faith (v. 4). The rest of the chapter highlights how the proud man (Babylon) lives, thus contrasting him with the man of faith. In the end this answers the prophet’s complaints because although God is using Babylon to accomplish His will, He certainly doesn’t approve of the nation’s sin. There will be a day when God will sit in judgment over the nations and right all wrongs, but that day will come in its own time (see v. 20, 14, and 3). Until then, Habakkuk, be a just man and live by faith.
The point? I began studying this little book last week, which is very ironic. It’s ironic because I began studying the prophet’s questions the same week my dad dies of cancer. I, like Habakkuk, could question God. If I believe God to be sovereign and totally in control, as well as being wholly just, why would he use cancer/my dad’s death to advance the kingdom of heaven and His will? Doesn’t that seem contradictory?
But the same answer that was given centuries ago can be applied today to me. God certainly doesn’t approve of cancer and death, but there will come a day when He will right all wrongs, when His very presence will fill the earth like never before. Yet until that sweet day comes, no matter how many long hours of pain must come between, the just shall live by faith. I may not understand His will or His ways, but I can live by faith.
Is that unrealistic? I think not. A proud person cuts his own roads, makes his own shortcuts, relies on his own means. But a just person lives by faith, rests in God’s timing, walks on God’s road. I’d rather have that, and its subsequent comfort, than to be a proud man,living on the edge of a knife, questioning every single thing that God allows to happen to me in this life.
