God is not a fatalist or a pessimist. God is the ultimate optimist.
He can look at such predictably selfish, self-centered, limited creatures as us and see possibilities that leave us standing with mouths agape.
When God says love one another, He knows who He is talking to. When God says be Holy, it is not a mistake or a lie. When God says forgive, He is not telling a bedtime story to children meant to soothe them to sleep while He stays up all night and worries about the future.
God doesn’t worry. He knows who HE IS.
Who We Are
He also knows who we are. He knows that we are not meant to handle the worst things life tests us with all alone. He knows what we face and has given us the toughest challenges so that we will reach out to Him and have faith.
The great and devastating charge Jesus brought repeatedly against the religious leaders of the day, and even against His own disciples, was a constant challenge: Ye of little faith!
It’s because we are absolutely certain of how things are and our model is always only how things have been. We never allow for a mighty, creative, loving, God who can change everything – starting with us!
We don’t really believe it when Jesus says He created everything. We can’t really imagine God cares about everyone, even Samaritans and the apparent enemies of God’s people.
Who He Is
His perspective is because of Who He Is. And it’s true because of Who He Is.
When Herod asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus answered this question unequivocally.
“I AM the truth,” Jesus said. And He absolutely meant it.
Jesus refused to answer a word in His own defense but he took time in his last few moments before His crucifixion to offer a word of hope and truth to a searching king.
Even with all of our years of study, theology, and faith, we cannot clearly express the truth summed up in that sentence.
Using the name that stretches all the way back to Moses’ calling at the burning bush, Jesus declared that He Is God, Himself! He said out loud that His Kingdom was not of this earth. He announced that ALL truth emanated from Him and that His words spoke the universe into existence.
It’s an idea so big and stunning that it still leaves us speechless.
And I honestly think it scared Herod, a king and ruler not used to explaining himself to anyone. He took the unheard-of step of declaring Jesus innocent, offering to release Him as the prisoner customarily freed on that day of the year, and then publicly washed his hands of Jesus’ death.
Only a ruler who holds such power could recognize in Jesus’ eyes the fearsome power that stood before him. And it shook him.
Why Cave?
So, why is it that we look at our situation today and immediately cave into hopelessness? Why do we feel helpless before such a wicked, confused, and infighting culture that cannot even figure out who is a man and who is a woman?
When we know Truth Himself, why do we fall for such lies?
And when the God Of The Universe, who created every mountain, says that with enough faith you can speak and move mountains from here to there, why do we doubt the one who spoke those mountains into existence in the first place?
Explain to me why so many, even pastors, are so ready for the book of Revelations to come true that they give up and declare all is over at the first hint of dirty politics? There have never been any other kind of politics!
Why are we so tied up with the puzzle of pronouns when we should be saying, “God loves you!”
Why do we acquiesce to the materialist drug pushers who imagine life is just a dream when we serve the Lord of all reality?
Why do we, who serve the One with all power, cling to helplessness in the face of such corrupt and weak leaders?
Why do we allow a drop-out geek with some mesmerizing computer code to dazzle us with virtual lies to the point that we forget the Author of Truth, Himself?
Why do we, who have been given such eternal hope, suddenly become prophets of hopelessness predicting the doom of all we hold dear and claim to believe?
Tomorrow Isn’t Today
If we only have the creativity to imagine that today and tomorrow bring only the sorrow and hurt and mistakes of yesterday, then how do we explain Jesus calling Lazarus from the tomb after he had been dead for three days as a lesson to teach us what He was about to do Himself?
How do we stretch out our atrophied hope to include the possibility that Jesus can easily raise us from the dead ourselves?
We don’t have enough knowledge, haven’t lived enough history, haven’t discerned enough truth, haven’t imagined enough faith, do not possess enough hope, do not contain enough love, and cannot conceive enough power to do the things that God Almighty is doing right before our very eyes this very day.
How then can we declare with such certainty that all is lost and the end is here and judgment is upon us?
We are Jonah, sitting in the dust and angry at God because the people of Nineveh repented. How will we even know if they will repent if we just sit silently and never ask the question?
At the very least, let us confess to God that we don’t have enough faith and ask Him to help our faith. Then the God who gave us sight in the first place can open our eyes to see the Truth. He, who creates all possibilities, can show us that the hope of the world does not depend on what happened to our faithless selves yesterday.
It’s Not Up To Us
God is the ultimate optimist. He sees possibilities in us that we cannot imagine. He looks at the death of hope in our lives and calls our name and frees us from the tomb of our dead expectations. He breathes life into us as He did on the day of our birth and calls us to a new and bigger life with him.
While those, who believe they are in charge, dream of being the gods of this earth, soon to be dust like so many so-called-gods before them, God opens the gates to an eternal kingdom and offers us the chance to start over as babies again in a Kingdom not of this failing world.
Without God’s life, we are ashes and dust. Let us not go to our graves while we are still standing on our feet. Let us not give up hope when we are awash in it.
Let us not die of thirst while standing in a rainstorm. Let us not close our eyes and declare the sun has fallen from the sky. Let us not put fingers in our ears and announce no Truth can be heard. Let us not hold our breath in a tantrum for fear no breath of life remains.
Breathe. See. Hear. Drink. Eat. Rest. Hope. Stand. Love. Believe.
All cannot be lost if the God of the Universe stands beside you. Though we wobble like a toddler in this brand new life of faith, let us reach up and take the hand of our Father and know we will not fall.
