Following The Resurrection.4

"No one has ascended up to heaven, except he that has come down from heaven, the Son of God who is in heaven.

Go, tell my brothers that I will ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."

--Jesus

I opened a box of old photos we'd dug out of my deceased mother's storage unit. The box (and her earthly belongings) had been sitting in storage for several years before we finally took the time to retrieve them. The box is really the only keepsake that stayed with me after recently purchasing a new home near where I grew up and cleaning out years of accumulated stuff.

Needless to say, I hadn't seen many of the items in the box

for years. I discovered photos of my father I didn't know existed -- for he died at an early age, I was only seven. I have very few recollections of him. The photos revealed qualities and questions I'd never pondered. Along with photos of his mother and brothers, I realize I know very little about their stories: the influences, values and experiences that shaped the things they hoped for, the conversations they had, the values they lived by, the quality of love they shared, the legacy they hoped to leave.

In a previous blog I shared a quote from Hugh Ross on the difficulty of a visitation from another solar system specifically in keeping generations of whatever lifeforms on board a spaceship focused on a mission. I realized I barely knew my own father, never met his father (who also died at a young age), and couldn't tell you the name of my great grandfather! So whatever "mission" they felt they were called to got swallowed up by the reality of death prohibiting them from passing much of what really matters on to their posterity.

So what really matters? What are the things that are worth passing on to our posterity? Three things stand out from these words of Jesus:

Ascension.

Every human being is called to higher things. MacDonald observes: "There is this difference between the growth of some human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous dying, in the other a continuous resurrection." The apostle Paul refers to the "hope of the resurrection" not meaning simply life after death but the call to an ascending life whereby we live with an awareness that we are constantly undergoing newness of life (even when we don't feel it so).  The seeming chaos and brokenness of this life is being led to the higher, deeper, greater by our Big Brother, Jesus.

Brotherhood.

"Shall a man love his neighbor as himself and must he be content not to know him in heaven? Better be
content to lose our consciousness and know

ourselves no longer. Shall God be the God of the families of the earth, and shall the love that he has thus created towards father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child go moaning and longing to all eternity? What will resurrection or life be to me, how shall I continue to love God as I have learned to love him through you, if I find He cares so little for this human heart of mine, as to take from
me the gracious visitings of your faces and forms?
And in the changes which, thank God, must take
place when the mortal puts on immortality, shall we not feel that the nobler our friends are, the more they are themselves; that the more the idea of each is carried out in the perfection of beauty, the more like they are to what we thought them in our most exalted moods, to that which we saw in them

in the rarest moments of profoundest communion, to that which we beheld through the veil of all their imperfections when we loved them the truest?"

MacDonald, God of the Living, Unspoken Sermons II

I uncovered another old photo album out of the box. An

album I'd put together while working at a summer camp during my high school years. The pictures tearfully reminded me of the sweet and "profoundest communion" with dear friends. I was reminded of how I've tried, throughout my life, to recapture the depth of fellowship and friendship and purpose I felt during those wonder-filled seasons . I've come close at times and wandered into dry desert places at others. What a powerful promise: to be in a place where that kind of fellowship is the rule and not the exception!


Father and Godhood.

"The very Godhead lies in the giving of life. Therefore [those who've gone on before us] must be alive. If he speaks of them, remembers his own loving thoughts of them, would he not have kept them alive if he could; and if he could not, how could he create them? Can it be an easier thing to call into life than to keep alive?

What is the use of this body of ours? It is the means of Revelation to us, the camera in which God's eternal shows are set forth. It is by the body that we come into contact with Nature, with our fellow-men, with all their revelations of God to us. It is through the body that we receive all the lessons of passion, of suffering, of love, of beauty, of science. It is through the body that we are both trained outwards from ourselves, and driven inwards into our deepest selves to find God. We cannot yet have learned all that we are meant to learn through the body. Is all that we have learned to be lost? Who that has loved this earth can but believe that the spiritual body of which St. Paul speaks will be a yet higher channel of such revelation? 

Our God is an unveiling, a revealing God. He will raise you from the dead, that I may behold you; that that which vanished from the earth may again stand forth, looking out of the same eyes of eternal love and truth, holding out the same mighty hand of brotherhood, the same delicate and gentle, yet strong hand of sisterhood, to me, this me that knew you and loved you in the days gone by. I shall not care [what form you may take] so long as it is yourselves that are before me, beloved, sons and daughters of the Divine!" MacDonald, ibid.

Whatever I did not know about my earthly ancestors and their hopes, disappointments, character and faith, this I do know: I have a Father who is unchanging and incorruptible in his plans and purposes for every human being!

Thank you Jesus for your willingness to do His Perfect Will demonstrating His Perfect Love for me, my family and friends and all the family of those who know and love you!

Following The Resurrection.3

"I know from where I have come, and where I will go. You cannot tell from where I have come, or where I am going.

You are from the earth.

I am from above.

You are of this world.

I am not of this world."

--Jesus

The Ultimate Extraterrestrial

Long before mankind would spend hundreds of billions of dollars investigating and speculating on whether there is life in outer space, a carpenter turned itinerant preacher in a remote country of the Roman Empire made an extraordinary claim to an extraterrestrial life!

Suppose this very Man-God had delayed His visit to this uniquely designed life-sustaining planet (supposing, of course, that His actual timing had nothing to do with the advancement of civilization). With today's 24/7 news cycle, can you imagine the debates that would erupt about the legitimacy of His message? What governmental agencies would NOT be employed to investigate His outrageous claims? What scientific bodies would not covet the chance to research His miraculous command of natural phenomena?

Hugh Ross, anthropologist/astrophysicist, makes a startling observation:

"Given the limitations imposed by the laws of physics and the conditions of interstellar space within the Milky Way Galaxy, a trip by physical intelligent aliens from another planetary system to Earth would take at least 25,000 years... That length of time implies multiple generations. As challenging as it might be to keep one generation focused on a single mission for their entire lives, the possibility of maintaining that focus throughout hundreds of generations seems hard to imagine. A more fundamental problem for interstellar space travelers, however, is that a trip of more than 25,000 years exceeds any reasonable extinction time for the onboard inhabitants. It’s one thing to keep a high-tech, intelligent species alive on a good-sized, resource-rich planet for that long (although even that possibility seems doubtful); it’s quite another to keep such a species alive, healthy, and goal-oriented for thousands of years within the confines of a spaceship."

Ross, Hugh. Why the Universe Is the Way It Is (pp. 60-61). Baker Publishing Group. (Emphasis added)

That certainly puts perspective on the words of Jesus and lifts the accounts of angelic visitations to a whole new level of wonder. Given what we know about the ubiquitous laws that exist throughout the billions of galaxies in this universe, Jesus' claim to come from outside this world confronts humanity with this choice: was He a lunatic or the Lord Creator God?! 

Think about what we could do with the billions of dollars we could save not listening to the stars but rather broadcasting Jesus' message to this world!

"For God so loved the world,

that he gave his only Son,

that whoever believes in him

should not perish

but have eternal life."

-John 3:16

FOLLOWING THE RESURRECTION.2

"This is what I have told you from the beginning, that all things must be fulfilled which is written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and by the Psalm-writers, concerning me!

Christ must suffer, and then rise from the dead on the third day; that repentance and forgiveness of sins might be preached in his name among all nations, beginning in Jerusalem."

--Jesus

"To see a Truth, to know what it is, to understand it, and to love it, are all one....To see one divine fact is to stand face to face with essential eternal life." --George MacDonald

Eternal Goodness Itself Suffers in the Fire of God's Redemptive Plan

The Consuming Fire is God working through the ages in His science, history and poetry to impart His vision of the Truth of essential life, that is eternal life, to every human soul whose eyes have not been opened, whose child-heart has not yet been born in him.

• A burning bush transforms an eighty year old man from lawless fugitive to premiere lawgiver 
• A smoking mountain makes a slave-bound people fit for
  
  nationhood
• Fiery visions warning of impending judgments turn hearts from sin
• A hellish, blood stained cross purifies a ragtag group of men who turn the world upside down 

For our Creator regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, towards that image after which he made them that they might grow to it.

Therefore a thousand stages, each in itself all but valueless, are of inestimable worth as the necessary and connected gradations of an infinite progress.

Growth toward the divine nature is accomplished through the divine process: repentance (agreeing with the Creator's indisputable right and necessary duty to judge how our actions measure up to that image) and forgiveness (accepting the bonding of our hearts with His by releasing our revealed inner corruption into the Fire of His Perfecting Love).

This, follower of Jesus, IS Good News worthy of our efforts to proclaim to everyone: that the Living Savior is at work with His father, tirelessly transforming every individual into His Goodness!

(adapted from The Consuming Fire, Unspoken Sermons I, George MacDonald.)