Resurrection

Every morning I read the news as I drink my coffee. I have a folder on my computer, where I screen-capture, pdf, and download the litany of changes that have happened since COVID. Consider it evidence. Oddly, most of these changes swirling around us are political in nature. It’s a political disease that has infected how the world works. It makes politicians world-over say BUILD BACK BETTER as if they thought of the catch phrase themselves. At a certain point you wonder if we are being run by trained chimps, or real human beings with hearts and brains. I don’t wonder much anymore. Everything from rising interest rates, affordability issues, issues to do with personal freedoms, gets filed in the bin that now looks like a big dumpster fire waiting to happen. I guess the “Great Reset” has begun, and in a way it was inevitable. 

That is, if you believe the Biblical worldview, it was inevitable that it all goes down the tubes, before anything gets better. My file of bad news might well be labelled “What The World Wants” and if I’m smart I’ll compile a counter file called “What God Wants” because no one wants to build back better more than God, and for that to happen, evil will have to have its comeuppance and be destroyed once and for all. 

That’s not too hard to imagine anymore. In fact, it’s a very Easter theme known for two thousand years and more, as resurrection. They thought they killed Jesus but God decided to build back better. What God has been spreading meanwhile all over the world, is the counter revolution, those people who also want what God wants. Never mind rewriting constitutions - what God wants to reconstruct is the human heart. It’s a revolution that starts from the ground up with the human person. 

Therefore, I promise not to worry about all the stuff going down the tubes, God’s got this one. I know because it’s Easter again and I will note the worldwide movement, the counter-revolution on that particular day with hope, and a bit more feeling than normal. The heightened sense of evil in the news cycle, makes me want the alternative even more. They kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Eventually it’s going to happen. 

Meanwhile, we have the advice of Jesus who knew he was going to leave his followers behind for a time. He even prayed for us, knowing the writhing and twisting the world would go through. 

“I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.”
John 17: 14-24

So there you have it from Jesus’ own lips. The world is going to become an unwelcome kind of place for believers but it doesn’t mean we are without hope. We are on the winning team, just waiting for the return of the quarterback. Meanwhile, there’s a wrecking ball having at the world as we know it.