Teddy Bears, Puppies, Friends, and the Word of God

Mike Hosey, An Elder

When you were a child you might have been comforted by a teddy bear or some other stuffed animal.  But as you grew older, you realized that your stuffed animal was not a living thing.  It no longer comforted you effectively because it wasn’t alive. It didn’t interact with you, it couldn’t feel your pain, the only warmth it had was the warmth you gave it from your own body, and any guidance you received from it came from your own immature mind. Because it had never been alive, it wasn’t really dead either. It was just a thing to which you, or your parents, assigned meaning. Perhaps you replaced it with a puppy when you reached a later age.  Unlike the teddy bear, the puppy generated his own warmth, and shared it with you. He recognized you, responded to you, shared and reflected your sorrow or joy, licked your face, and became a loyal and even loving friend.  He was alive. He was greater than any stuffed animal.  But as you grew older still, you realized that your puppy wasn’t alive in the same way that you were. He couldn’t really talk to you.  Your thoughts were far higher than his. He couldn’t guide you. He couldn’t keep you from trouble in any significant way. He couldn’t praise your accomplishments, and he couldn’t point out your flaws -- and he couldn’t help you fix them either. 

Then there came a time when you realized the fullness of human friends. To be sure, those friendships were more problematic than your puppy’s, but they also shared a higher kind of life than your puppy could.  Your closest friends could walk almost anywhere you walked. They could understand your life in ways that your puppy simply would never be able to do. Their experiences were similar to your own, and because of this, they became superior sources of guidance. They were able to praise your accomplishments, and share in the joy of them.  They were able to see your flaws.  The wise ones could point them out and help you fix them. The wisest ones could even anticipate your thoughts and intentions to some degree.  But not even the wisest of the wise could fully know your thoughts, and could therefore never be fundamentally and fully transformative in regards to your flaws, or your life. This is because their own “aliveness” is not that much higher than yours.  Because they are people they cannot always go wherever you go. Your life will have paths they can never share. But God is not this way.  He is the highest friend you can have. Just consider how the writer of Hebrews describes his words (Hebrews 4:11-12).  In that passage he explains to his readers how they can avoid disobedience – by acknowledging the word of God, which is alive and powerful, and sharp enough to discern between your intentions and thoughts.  The prophet Isaiah tells us this word is so alive and powerful that it will always accomplish its intended purpose (Isaiah 55:9-13).  And one of those purposes is to make you new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The War on Easter, and Why it is So Important

Mike Hosey, An Elder

In our culture, Christmas seems to trump Easter.  Just think about it for a second.  Christmas, essentially, is a month long holiday for Americans and other westerners.  Stores begin decorating in November, and sometimes in October. We have parties beginning on December 1st and they continue all the way through December 25^th. There are parties at your office, and parties at your church groups, and parties at your school. Christmas music plays on the radio, having begun sometime shortly before Thanksgiving. People run themselves ragged trying to fulfill a perceived religious obligation, while also trying to meet the dictates of their larger culture, pushed along by a hyped commercialism that is interested in cash more than it is in the birth of God to humanity. The baby Jesus is almost front and center for the month, even in secular and worldly circles. He is only partly eclipsed by Santa Clause. 

But not Easter.  Easter gets no parties. Have you ever been invited to the office Easter party? There’s no Easter music on the radio.  No one runs themselves ragged. For the most part, the celebration of Easter is limited to a single day. Interestingly, at Easter there are no images of Jesus in the larger culture – only in Christian circles. There is no Easter equivalent of the nativity scene in your local mall. You won’t find any depictions of the stone rolled away, or an empty tomb, or an empty Cross.  Jesus is not just eclipsed by the Easter Bunny, he’s simply not there at all. 

Of course this is not a dig on Christmas.  You can’t, after all, have Easter without it.  But Easter is, by far, the more significant holiday. And its greater significance likely is the reason you find Christmas being celebrated with so much more fervor. Satan does not wish for Easter to be celebrated with the same intensity. To paraphrase how one writer put it not too long ago: You don’t have to believe that Jesus is God to enjoy Christmas. You can celebrate Christmas as the birth of a great or wonderful man who taught us to love one another. But he’s still just a man.  This is not the case with Easter.  Easter shouts how Jesus died for humanity, and reconciled it to God -- and not just humanity as a collective, but every human individually. It also shouts, triumphantly, that his death (and yours) doesn't have to be permanent. If you are reading this, the significance of Resurrection Sunday is that you can have eternal life, and that your past can be erased, and that a future of goodness is guaranteed. 

You can look at Christmas and reject its divinity. You cannot do so with Easter.  The empty tomb is proof of divine involvement.  Easter is the fulfillment of God’s mission to earth.

The Focus of Jesus

Mike Hosey, An Elder

Jesus was mission focused. He set his eyes on a single goal that his father had given him (John 3:16), and did not release his focus for that goal until he had achieved it.  He intended to redeem the human race and restore its willing members back to a full relationship with God. He did this through a great deal of distress.  He knew that he was going to die a difficult death (Mark 8:31).  But more than that, he was fully aware of the suffering that would meet him on the cross (John 18:4).  The distress caused by this knowledge fostered so much anxiety, anguish, or agony that his sweat was like blood (Luke 22:44).  And on the cross he felt the abyss of an abandonment by God (Matthew 27:46).

And yet he remained focused. Consider for instance a couple of choices he made in his final moments of life. On his way to the cross, Soldiers offered him wine mixed with gall (Matthew 27:33-34), or as Mark puts it, wine mixed with myrrh (Mark 15:23).  This drink was concocted by the Romans to be a sedative, or perhaps a poison, to deaden the pain of crucifixion, or in the case of poison, to hasten the arrival of death.  Jesus refused the drink, choosing instead to complete his mission with full mental faculties. Later, as he hung on the cross, he was offered another drink, called sour wine. This wine was a cheap drink used by Roman soldiers.  It had no immediate sedative effect, and to drink it could have conceivably prolonged his life.  Jesus took that wine specifically to fulfill prophecy (John 19:28-29).  He wasn’t going to give up until he had completed the mission. Upon consuming that wine, and fulfilling the prophecy, Jesus stated, “it is finished,” and gave up his spirit. 

Jesus finished the work that God had sent him to do.  He did not lose faith or focus.  And although his mission to reconcile us was finished, his victory was not.  He rose from that death (Matthew 28:1-10) proving that we, too, can have victory over death (1 Corinthians 15:20-21, 1 Corinthians 15:50-57).

Because Jesus died and rose, you now have assurance that you can rise, not only from spiritual death, but physical death as well!

So follow the example of Jesus, be mission focused, be a part of his body in this world, and bring life to others!  He has given you the power to overcome the world (1 John 5:1-5).