It’s summertime again. It’s raining. A lot. We are under a flash flood warning right now. I was driving to work this morning and it was raining so hard I decided to Indian- Jones-it the way up and followed behind a truck loaded down with about 400 tanks of pressurized gas. It was raining so hard that the only thing I could see in front of me was the bright colored gas tanks a couple hundred feet in front of me so I just decided to follow that and hope they wouldn’t break too fast anytime soon. I was thinking on the way, how many summers have been likethis? Rainy, with days of extreme heat. Happened before. Life is cyclical in a lot of ways. Nature sure is. And God made nature. I’ve been listening some stuff about Jesus returning and howJesus views time. And I do not mean to demean our Lover God at all by talking about how he thinks (his ways are far beyond ours of course) but I just desire to understand how he looks at things (because he’s incredible and beautiful in all he does) and a lot of people think he looks at time cyclically. I think that’s beautiful and poetic, if true. It would be the mark of an artist who loves his work. Someone who wants to enjoy over and over what he has done and made. Forever.
So my wife and I are made for each other (What else is new? J) We discovered even more so how much God had woven our lives to be destined to each other this weekend. My wife has an old friend from high school who was having her daughter’s birthday party this weekend. So we decided to go; it would be fun. I’ve never met her before. So we’re driving to church yesterday with my parents and we casually mention we are going to a birthday party and my mom asks who it was. My wife says her friend’s name and my dad suddenly got excited and said, “She is Joel’s cousin!” Crazy! They are a branch of my dad’s family who we have never talked too much in the last 20 years even though the live 10 minutes from where I grew up. So we go to this birthday party. And my wife and I are just chillin here and out of nowhere casually ask if they knew who I was and they said, “No.” I tell them my dad’s name and I immediately have 20 people all saying excitedly and uniformly, “I’m your cousin!!” It was really cool. Yay for having more family! And our daughter now has another cousin she can be friends with! It’s fun when God does things like that in our lives.
Life with God is a lot like the ending line in the movie Dan In Real Life(starring Steve Carrell, one of my wife and I’s all time favorite movies), “Prepare to be surprised.” How true. God has setup this world that in many ways is very cyclical. We go through cycles. Seasonal, lunar, solar, meteorological, even emotional and spiritual (we all have our highs and lows in our relationship with God; Jesus said in this world we would have trouble, John 16:33, and we also have ecstasy and intimacy with Jesus and a wonderful rush of blessings from the Father as well). Yet, we also live with surprise. We don’t know what God will do in our lives later today. James said, “Now listen, you show say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.” (James 4:13-14, NIV) How true is that? I make so many plans myself based on ‘knowing’ what next month will be because of cycles in this world. How quickly God can change things? Instantaneously. Right after this verse James says, “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As is it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.” (verses 14-16). The most obvious thing James is saying here is, don’t think you know more than God when he made this world to be unpredictable. But I really think that one of the main heart points here is, Don’t make your plans above Jesus’ spontaneity. Our God loves to dote on us. Even if that means sending a storm our way. One way or another, he will get us to be close to him. Our thing is that we have a propensity to make our business more important than our relationship with Jesus. And we do. We’re human. Our business is an integral part of who we are and our relationship with Jesus. Of course, work is good. We were created to image God through our good work. But as fallen humans we often make it our cause, instead of something we share with Jesus.
But when Jesus does return it does away with the nature we have. First, imagine just our normal schedules being interrupted by our Lover’s return to sweep us off our feet. Named the rapture, the word itself has just been completely overrun with social usage. We don’t go in rapture to the church house to mill around the lobby for an exciting time. Our hearts start racing and our pulse gets quicker in a rapture like a moonlit secret rendezvous between two lovers. Rapture in definition means a state of overwhelming ecstasy, joy, pleasure. God, in his way to ‘show off’ to us how much he loves us, tells us to plan for a rendezvous with him in the clouds. We need to look at the Bible here about the rapture as a love letter passed to us under the desk for a secret rendezvous instead of as doctrine or reasons as to why Jesus is returning soon, etcetera. This is a romance we are in with Jesus! Not a mechanized storyline from a distant god.
The Rapture
When? Anytime now!
Where? In the clouds.
What? Our first time to see him, to hold him, to worship him; a first kiss in the clouds is a pretty good way to start off our courtship before the wedding!
Why? Because he’s passionately in love with us.
Who? Us, him, and everyone who’s already died in him before.
How long? Forever. Well, after enjoying our rendezvous with Jesus for awhile, then we will go back to the Father’s house to get settled in for our new life with our Lover Jesus.
And then life begins forever with our Love. We will have a never ending marriage with Jesus. For all time. The wedding comes, the honeymoon, then we are off to our new home back on earth. Where Jesus will reign forever and we will live with him as his beloved forever. Forever knowing, loving, and worshipping Jesus, intimately, passionately. We’ve had intimacy with Jesus’ Spirit here, but what we have coming to us when he comes to bring us home, oh my! It’s like Frank Sinatra's song The Best is Yet to Come:
Come the day that you’re mine,
I’m gonna teach you to fly,
We’ve only tasted the wine,
We’re gonna drain that cup dry!
Finally, when we get home, we will no longer have to worry about living for the moment. Remember, God has setup our world in cycles (See Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). We will forever live in God’s created world. Married to him forever. But we will have so many surprises too! Life will be perfect with our God Jesus Christ forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment