It is quiet at my desk in the corner of the basement. Dawn has not yet broken, and new snow softens the world outside the window. Lucy the Yorkie must have heard the deer coursing through the trees beside and behind the house. She rarely barks, except at the deer and the fox that loves to trot from east to west along the front of the house from time to time. Her bark this morning provided the motivation to end my tossing and turning and rise to write.
There is so much to think about, so many issues and concerns worthy of attention and commentary. The implications of government transition consume many. The social fracturing phenomenon gathers pundits galore. Social justice issues abound as we struggle to decide whose lives matter. Violence, addiction, relationships all cry like starving children to be meaningfully addressed, their need resolved to their satisfaction. Even here in “the coolest small town in America” we work together to discover what we will be in days to come given the changes that swirl in the world around us.
Each of these effects and more deserve the attention of thoughtful, purposeful people. But my task in this quiet moment is not to turn your attention to the turmoil that surrounds us but to the turmoil within us. Each of us stands on the threshold of eternity. One moment we are here and in the next…not.
The Bible reminds us that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” Despite the enormity of the issues that surround us, because of the precarious nature of our personal existence, well, like my Southern friends are wont to say, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Letting others lead you for the moment in your thinking about the world we live in, I want to lead you to the cross. God created you, as He did the entire human race, to know Him, to experience His love and His joy in His perfections, His grace, His goodness, His kindness, His holiness, His righteousness, His justice, His wisdom, His infinite, unchanging Person.
Regardless of the motivation for the human relationship that led to your conception and birth, you are God’s personal handiwork. It was He who formed you in the womb. It is He who gives and sustains your life. He gave you as a gift, for the Bible reveals, “Children are a gift from God.”
But, in spite of all that God has done bringing us to be, by nature we choose to reject Him and turn away to selfishly follow our own heart’s desire. It seems normal to us to relegate God to irrelevance, or even to actively dismiss His claim upon us, even to the point of denying His existence. Our heart pursues independence and self-determination as if we alone are responsible for our own existence and we have no purpose beyond serving our own need.
Rejecting the relationship we were created to have with God subjects us to God’s judgment, a judgment, a deciding, based on perfect justice but guided by infinite love. We are guilty, every one of us, without exception, of denying the worthiness of God for our committed devotion. That denial is our guilt, a guilt for which we are held responsible when, as we cross the threshold of death, we stand before the Creator and give an accounting of our lives.
What, if anything, can save us in that moment of divine justice? What can sway the righteous hand of God to mercy instead? We have no defense sufficient given that our guilt against God is as big as God is. We would have to be God to be big enough to offer a counter to the sin we bring to the table.
And that is why I bring you, today, to the cross. Knowing that no human being could offer a sufficient payment for sin, God became a man, the man Jesus Christ, and personally took on Himself the punishment perfect justice demands.
Jesus went to the cross and died for us. For each of us. For our sin, for our rejecting of God and His claim upon us, for the reasonable judgment we are all due.
And all God asks of us is that we come to the cross and believe. Put our faith in Jesus and trust that God will honor the sacrifice He made on our behalf.
God forgives when we put our trust in Christ and His death on the cross for us.
The implications of life in our day are vast indeed, but the implications of death and eternity for each of us are much bigger. The answers for life are complex. The answer for eternity is much more simple: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”
That’s the Good News.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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