John 6:5-10
H,
There is a point where the words of comfort
have no real bearing on reality. We have all these things we need to survive
that if taken from us, we are told, we become savages. If we have no place to
sleep, no clothes to wear and no food to eat, no way to access our comforts or
to feel we are making progress, we are at the very least prone to panic and
worry. If we put on this the state of poverty and pain in the world it all
seems a little reckless, to be honest, to assume that all things are as simple
as a job in hand and money in the pocket and those who do not have do not want.
We are confronted with everyday situations
even as we claim to have found the source of all truth and the nature of all
reality. We may say it is a fallen world and so there is seedtime and harvest,
rich and poor, trust funds and starving babies and it all will make sense in
the end. Will it? Can we hold on to that in any real way in the face of the
most strangling oppression of ourselves and of others within the only world we
have truly seen apart from dreams, visions, desires and hopes?
Our faith tells us to trust. It is not a
blinking faith. It does not say to shut your eyes to pain and suffering. It does
not claim that the scales are balanced on the side of justice as earth is
today. In fact it tells us that this is a dark place covered up by a veneer of
civilization and self-actualization. The latter is a tricky thing because there
is much sacrifice needed in becoming who you should be or who you think you
should be that it may seem godly to step on others and say stupid things like “overtaking
is allowed in the Kingdom”. It may seem alright to be selfish and to put your
best rotten food forward because progress in your life is a feel good drug and
how else will you put down, finally, these walls of emptiness?
Yet the King of Kings bids all of us to bring
our loaves and fish and let Him feed the five thousand with it. We do not need
as much as we think we do. We will not carry our castles to the sky above. We cannot
avoid that place in scripture where Christ told an honestly rich man to give up
all he had to follow the way of the cross. This is where our true selves are. The
trouble is our old selves must come to an end. The friction between that and
the other is the grand adventure every Christian is on.
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