You are ascending a cliff in the center of a dry, desolate wilderness, grappling with all your strength to ascend before nightfall. The smooth face seems to stare ominously down at you, a sheer wall of intimidating height. Yet you must not lose heart. At the top lies fame: you will have been the first person in the world to achieve it.
As you near the top, the red sun beating upon you and causing your hands to perspire, a man’s silhouetted figure appears over the brink, calling out to you: “Let go.”
“Let go!?” you gasp. “I’ve been training my whole life for this moment.”
Your grip is beginning to slide, but you cling all the harder, the muscles in your forearms screaming in protest. Just a little further…
“There’s nothing special up here, you know,” replies the man, “just the disheartening view of the same desolate wasteland for miles around.”
“I can’t let go,” you manage, wedging your foot into a crack and pushing higher. Every last bit of adrenaline- of determination- is beginning to kick in. You mustn’t fall. You mustn’t lose…
“That’s a shame,” answers the voice, marked now with a strange tinge of sadness. “I offer you the potential to soar higher than you ever dreamed, but you must abandon the climb.”
Whether it is from your sense of desperate weakness or from a surprising surge of trust that seems to be welling up within you, you cannot be sure, but you slacken your grip. Immediately, you begin to plummet downward, the rock rushing past in a furious blur, your body rotating awkwardly as you begin to flail. The wind stings your eyes; you want to close them. The rough, cactus-dotted ground is approaching so fast. This is it: all your seemingly endless years devoted to this futile pursuit seem to flash before you as your brace for the worst.
Yet the impact never arrives. You dare to open your eyes and find you have been caught up in a powerful breeze, bearing you up effortlessly and rapidly. The wind swoops down, catapulting you high above the tallest cliffs. You begin to descend once more, screaming with exhilaration as the force catches you anew, pushing you through the clouds. Everything below looks so different, so small- so worthless. You can fly now. Somehow you feel that this has always been your destiny. You continue to rise, soaring like an eagle into the sun, your fulfillment and joy rising to new heights, exceeding your very imagination…
This is the image I got in my head as Fe spoke last Sunday, expounding on the wonderful mystery found in Philippians 3. As Christians we have broken free of the worldly system- of the entire, miserable trial- and no longer view credentials or achievements or status as sources of value. Our righteousness is not found in what we do, rather in what Jesus has done for us. In losing our lives, in letting go of everything we might deem important and seeing it as garbage, we have found life- life to the fullest.
And so we strive forward, coming to know Christ in new ways and approaching the perfect love that he died to give us access to. For Paul, this was a matter of extreme significance- not only in word, but also in practice. He continually refused to justify himself in the sight of men, according to deeds or prominence or worthiness, while continually insisting that true righteousness comes apart from the law and is by faith in Jesus. This means we are all in the same boat. Not only is it a radical agent for acceptance and community, but it also gives us the means to live in an unshakable, eternal way. I left that service feeling, as I’m sure countless others did, liberated by a new sense of God’s grace.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 8:02 am and is filed under Missionary's View, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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