Embrace the Fade

"All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.  People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.  Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them." ~ Hebrews 11:13-16

"But our citizenship is in heaven.  And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body." ~ Philippians 3:20-21


This morning the Lord impressed on me the reality of how temporary this life is and the joy we receive from that realization.  I was reading Psalm 103, and the first thing God brought to my attention was verses 2, 5, and 9: the Lord has been good to me, and I must not forget it.  He has done much that I can bring to mind in order to remember His faithfulness when I am in distress.  And He does not make us suffer constantly.  Though He does use trials to refine us and grow us more into His likeness, not all of His blessings come in disguise.  And I am grateful for that.  I would not be able to stand under the weight of a constant barrage of trials, and I enjoy receiving good things from God in the midst of His discipline.  As verse 5 says, He gives us these good things so that we can be refreshed and strengthened for the new work He has prepared for us to do.

That was the main theme I picked up from Psalm 103, but verses 15 and 16 also caught my attention, leading me to the above passages, which took the majority of my focus.  The point that came from it was this: We are temporary; rejoice in it!  The Spirit's signature statement was, "Embrace the fade," or, "Welcome transition."  A lot of times I have a hard time letting go of certain groups or positions within a group, but God stressed to me that I am made to last only in eternity.  My position in this life can change at any moment.  And that's good in His eyes.  It's humbling to know that I have a valuable role to play where I am at any given point in time but that God can work just as well without me when I am gone as He can while I am here.  Even when I leave here, wherever here is, I still have a role to play: welcoming whoever is to take my place and leaving without regrets or reservations.  I must welcome the transition because it is a necessary step in my journey toward heaven and in the advancement of the Kingdom here on earth.

Sometimes I'll look around and see people, things, or interactions between people and/or things, and it will feel surreal.  I get the sense that my perception is that of a shadow, as if this present reality is only a dream from which we will eventually wake up to see true reality.  My grandfather's death was one such occasion, when the reality that he was "gone" never really sank in because he's not actually gone for good.  Eternity is more real to me in that case than this present reality is (see 2 Corinthians 5:16-18).  In fact, this life is the preparation stage for heaven.  We are collecting our eternal belongings—our character developed in Christ, the blessings we inherit by sharing blessings with others, our talents and abilities refined for our specifically assigned form of worship, etc.—and packing our bags, with the Spirit as our sturdy Vessel and our Father's side being our destination.  We can pack all we want, but unless Christ is our Vessel, all our belongings will fall through and we will not make it safely to the table of our God for the feast He has prepared for us.  Only dependence on Christ will ensure our arrival in heaven.  We can keep our belongings in our earthly containers and try to force them into our heavenly Vessel, but just as packing individual belongings in a suitcase is easier than packing entire unorganized bags of belongings into a suitcase, so removing our spiritual belongings from their earthly vessels will make it easier to store them in Christ.  All of life encompasses this process of packing and unpacking and repacking.  And it's a wonderful process, though it can be painful at times.  But remember, we are packing our bags after a long vacation on earth so that we can return home to heaven to be with our Father.  Thank God this world is only a tent for our temporary dwelling (2 Corinthians 5:1-3); praise Him for the unshakable city He is preparing for us (Hebrews 12:28)!  Welcome transition: much better is coming to replace the good we have now.  Though God made all of creation, and it is good in His sight, there is much better yet to come as this world fades away (2 Corinthians 5:4-8).

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

"—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." ~ James 4:14

Embrace the fade.

Doubting Thomas

The other day at camp, the story of Doubting Thomas came up.  As the discussion went on, my perspective on Thomas began to change.  Something about what he said when the disciples told him that Jesus had risen from the tomb just didn't seem to match the common interpretation of his attitude.  What if the "doubt" that Thomas was accused of consisted less of skepticism and more of a sense of caution?

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” ~ (John 20:24-29, ESV)

What if Thomas, of all the disciples, actually loved Jesus more than any other?  And what if His crucifixion brought such great pain and sorrow to Thomas, that the grief of the others could not compare?  Perhaps that was why Thomas was not with them when Jesus appeared to them the first time: he may have been grieving alone.  What if his pain was so great that he would reject any glimmer of hope in fear that that hope would be dashed to pieces?  Maybe Thomas desperately wanted to believe that Jesus had risen to life, but unless he saw Him with his own eyes, he would not dare to risk giving himself to a false hope.  Only the testimony of the risen Savior Himself would be sufficient to convince Thomas, because any other witness could be flawed.  What if his heart echoed the deeply pained caution of Psalm 116:11, deeming any proclamation of resurrection to be a lie until the Resurrected One appeared personally?  Then when Jesus finally appeared to Thomas, what if his exclamation, "My Lord and my God!" was not one of disbelief proven wrong, but rather one of a cautiously repressed hope joyously fulfilled?

And what about the other account of Thomas, when Jesus headed straight into hostile Judea to raise Lazarus, though the Jews there sought to put Him to death?  Could Thomas' comment, “Let us also go, that we may die with him" also be misinterpreted?  Maybe the sarcasm we infer from the statement is actually real concern and a carrying out of Peter's later vow to lay down his life for his Savior (John 13:37).  Maybe Thomas' mentality in his statement was not, "I can't believe we're walking straight into our death sentence," but rather, "Why would Jesus dare to risk His own death?  If He is killed, I will not be able to live with myself without Him.  If He is to die now, I will die with Him."

One of the counselors at camp asked another counselor a question, which he then asked me: What does "hope in Christ" mean to you?  I think hope in Christ looks like John 20:29.  We become so deeply attached to the Lord that any assault on Him or His glory is taken as a personal attack, and to be given any false hope concerning Him would be treachery of the worst sort.  We desperately long to hope for His resurrection, but we must be cautious and count all men liars (Psalm 116:11) if they would have us trust in anything other than Christ and His truth spoken directly from His own mouth.  And yet, just as Abraham hoped against hope that what God had promised would come to pass (Romans 4:18), we put the fullness of our hope in the promise that the Lord is faithful to keep every promise.  So despite the risk of pain if we are to find our hope to be false, our hope in Christ is firm and secure (Hebrews 6:19) because we know that "hope does not disappoint" (Romans 5:5).  Whereas Thomas fought the hope that he longed to cling to because of the potential pain it could bring, we eagerly hold firm to our hope because God has proven Himself faithful before, and He will do it again.  As Jesus said, blessed are those who love Me so much that they fear disappointment at finding the testimonies about Me to be false, and yet who put their trust in My testimony anyway because they know My character of faithfulness (John 20:29).

In a way, that is what I think of when I think of hope in Christ.  But that is also what I think it looks like when we hope for Christ.  To hope in Christ can also be to hope for things from the perspective of God's will.  Hope in Christ stems from abiding in Christ (John 15:5).  When we remain in Him, we begin to see things through His eyes, and thus we begin to hope based on His desires because "we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16) given by the Spirit.  "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." ~ Psalm 37:4

To go even further, when I think of "hope in Christ" I think of Colossians 1:27, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."  When we hope for glory, we hope only for God's glory because there is no other glory worth speaking of.  Our hope of glory, then, or our hope to see God glorified, is Christ in us—the character of Christ growing in us, His word dwelling in us richly (Colossians 3:16), being built up into a dwelling place for the Spirit (1 Peter 2:5), Him increasing as I decrease (John 3:30).  God receives glory when His Son is seen in us and through us.  Thus, to hope in Christ is to trust Him to make us more like Himself, that our heavenly Father may be glorified.  And we can be confident that He will do so, because He "must be about [His] Father's business" (Luke 2:49 KJV), and so must we.

So let us joyfully take hold of the hope that Thomas so cautiously repressed, because we know that "great is His steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.  Praise the Lord!" (Psalm 117:2).