MANY OF US strove throughout our lives towards poorly-formed goals. Our motivations were part of an embedded philosophy and set of expectations that we grew up in, and never thought to question. Peter calls this “the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.” (1 Pet. 1:18) Paul, in a parallel frame of reference, says “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (2 Cor. 2:14) Simply put, we were crippled at birth by something unseen, and didn’t know it. It didn’t seem abnormal, for everyone around us was maimed in the same way.
Spiritually, we might liken this to an unseen structure that is the skeleton of society, and the beliefs, mores, and traditions of the entire culture of society are the individual bones of that structure. We are each one of us a micro-representation of that larger conglomerated entity. Like bones physically obscured by flesh, the motivations that drive our emotional and spiritual movements simply seem natural to us—until something doesn’t work right anymore.
Let us say, for instance, that our strongest bone, the femur, is broken in an accident, and our leg, something we’ve never had to pay particular attention to before, cannot perform its ordinary function any longer. Then the entire unseen skeleton and its attendant flesh cry out first in pain, and next for a doctor. All of life is upended until the injury is treated; life slowly returns to normalcy as healing progresses, and establishes a new normal after rehabilitation. But in that new normal, though we are able to carry out most of our former routines, we may never walk in the same way again; a slight limp remains, and our gait is changed.
The Lord reveals himself to people in many different ways to change our errant direction in life. Consider Jacob’s journey from covetousness to clarity, out of veniality and into a new spiritual reality. At a rocky bottom in life, in the turmoil of oppressive mental and emotional torment, he encounters the angel of the Lord. After desperately wrestling with him all night long, he receives a blessing, but he is marked by it. “He was limping because of his hip.” (Gen. 32:31b)
For some, the touch of the Lord is simply a sweet call through the beauty of the creation, whether that beauty is natural, supernatural, or relational, or all of these. For others, it is a more strident call, and the conscience is afflicted, bringing an interior torment that cannot rest until the malady is brought to rest; for a few more, like Jacob, the affliction is severe, perhaps involving literal bodily injury or disease. In each case, the Lord has his purpose, and that purpose begins by drawing all men to him.
Jesus speaks of the greatest transformative type of encounter that any one person in this world can possibly experience. This unique event begins when our spiritual blindness is healed (cf. Luke 4:18c) and we see Jesus’ great work on the cross clearly. “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” (John 12:32) When we see him in this way, we see ourselves and our path in life completely differently. We believe that we “shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16b) Jesus’ purpose is to draw all men away from the empty life to a full life, to life abundant, to life everlasting: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” he says, and “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” (John 10:10, 28)
In whatever way we are called out of emptiness into the life in and of God, it feels quite peculiar at first; wonderful, yes, for our affliction is relieved, but strange. It is so different from the life we knew, and we have to learn to appropriate and use the life-force within it. We no longer fit in the world we knew; in fact, we may feel as though we were always ‘different,’ but didn’t really understand why. And now, we feel as though we should fit in this new world, but we don’t quite know how. But we begin to know that judgment and condemnation must go, anger must go, and love must grow, now and eternally. “God is love” says John (1 John 4:16b), who also shares Jesus’ command in this matter with us. “Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:12)
There is a tantalizing mystery in this, for we are currently much too finite in relationship to infinity, and in too much of a hurry for eternity. We just know we can never walk in the same way again. Perhaps that is part of what Paul meant when he wrote, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:16-19)
Consider again Jacob, who walked with a limp for the rest of his life. There still lay before him many trials in life. His squabbling brood of brothers sold the favored son, Joseph, into slavery, and then reported him dead to Jacob. He and the rest of the small family of God endured hardship and famine, and finally had to succumb to penury and impending slavery before the culmination of the miraculous events that, because of God’s greater purpose, hid them inside of Egypt until they were strong enough to survive and become Israel. Jacob did not know the outcomes along the path of his life, except for his hope in his faith in the promises of God. At the last of his life, we see him in a posture of assured spiritual repose. “By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.” (Heb. 11:21)
All of us eventually come to a breaking point in life, and the way in which we respond to the extreme forces that threaten everything we know about who we are determines the outcome on the other side of the breaking. Jacob was broken away from his own greed and broken away from a prideful understanding that enabled him to manipulate others. He was broken away from who he was, and put back together by God in a way that worked far better for God’s purposes, and far better for Jacob’s personal peace. Jacob was beautifully broken.
Q. Has my perception of self been sufficiently broken to receive and respond to life through God’s grace?
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