A reflection on I AM

This week at church, we are starting a new series on Revelation. At the service tonight, Pastor Blake asked us to reflect on the first chapter (which I've included below) and to listen to what the Spirit was highlighting and drawing our attention to. This is what came from that time.


I AM who was, is, and is coming.

I AM the Human One.
I AM the one who loves you.
I AM the warrior who has freed you.
I AM passion and peace, fire and water.

Do not fear, for I AM
with you forever and always.

You are no longer like a dead woman.
In me, you are alive: you have life.
So do not be afraid.

I have looked fear in the face.
Look, I am alive - fear did not win!
I have the keys of Death and the Grave.
Do not be afraid.

Listen to my voice of peace:
I am the one who was, and is, and is to come.

Revelation 1**

A revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. Christ made it known by sending it through his angel to his servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the witness of Jesus Christ, including all that John saw. 3 Favored is the one who reads the words of this prophecy out loud, and favored are those who listen to it being read, and keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

4 John, to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace and peace to you from the one who is and was and is coming, and from the seven spirits that are before God’s throne,5 and from Jesus Christ—the faithful witness, the firstborn from among the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To the one who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 who made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be glory and power forever and always. Amen.

7 Look, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. This is so. Amen. 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the one who is and was and is coming, the Almighty.”

9 I, John, your brother who shares with you in the hardship, kingdom, and endurance that we have in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and my witness about Jesus. 10 I was in a Spirit-inspired trance on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice that sounded like a trumpet. 11 It said, “Write down on a scroll whatever you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”

12 I turned to see who was speaking to me, and when I turned, I saw seven oil lamps burning on top of seven gold stands.13 In the middle of the lampstands I saw someone who looked like the Human One. He wore a robe that stretched down to his feet, and he had a gold sash around his chest. 14 His head and hair were white as white wool—like snow—and his eyes were like a fiery flame. 15 His feet were like fine brass that has been purified in a furnace, and his voice sounded like rushing water.16 He held seven stars in his right hand, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword. His appearance was like the sun shining with all its power.

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man. But he put his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m the first and the last, 18 and the living one. I was dead, but look! Now I’m alive forever and always. I have the keys of Death and the Grave.19 So write down what you have seen, both the scene now before you and the things that are about to unfold after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven gold lampstands, here is what they mean: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

**emphasis added by the author.

numero fifty and God-with-us

Hooray! This is officially the 50th post on this blog!

I guess that really isn't that many considering that I've been writing for 3 years but I'm going to celebrate the occasion anyway. My original intention for this blog was to write about my travels studying abroad, which never happened. I guess in a way, I did eventually travel away from home so at least I have fulfilled that purpose somewhat.

On a completely unrelated note, I was going through the files on my laptop tonight, cleaning and organizing (yes, you can do that on a laptop), when I came across a reflection essay that I wrote for my Christian Doctrines class.

And I thought I would share it with you. It is a reflection of Matthias Grünewald's "The Crucifixion," part of his larger piece the Isenheim Alterpiece.

So, without further ado, here is my essay; enjoy!

A very human death of Yahweh: God-with-us

The Crucifixion, Matthias Grünewald

What difference does it make that Jesus died?

Instinctively, I know that it does make a difference that Jesus died…I just don’t know how to put into words what that difference is.  The painting is very graphic.

It isn’t like a lot of crucifixion paintings where Jesus looks more like a super-human who hasn’t been truly affected by his suffering.

No, Grünewald’s painting is very much in touch with Jesus’s human nature and what it means to suffer to the point of death.

Rather than portray God-with-us as a God who is all-powerful, Jesus is battered and grotesque and wasting away and beaten and weak at his end.

So, why does it matter that he died? First off, I think it matters because it shows that Jesus lived the entire human lifespan from birth to death.

He didn’t skip out on any aspect of it but instead lived it all.

I think what it is even more awe-inspiring in that knowledge is that he didn’t sin at all even when suffering and dying. I know for me, when I was on the brink of death I struggled to even be able to have the thought of mind to even think about sin.

My energy was spent on just surviving – the bare minimum necessary to make it through the day – so I didn’t have any extra energy to devote to loving God and others above myself.

And yet, Jesus did that. 


Another aspect that stands out to me is that if Jesus suffered and died, then there is no amount of suffering that I could go through that Jesus has not himself experienced. You could argue that his suffering was taken to completion in his death.

There is no more suffering after that point and he went there.

So, no matter how much suffering I go through, Jesus has taken it further than that because he took it to its completion.

When I was extremely sick, my body was shutting down: I was dying. Jesus knows what that is like because he was in that same place.


There is no aspect of the human life that he did not live fully.


He conquered death and that means that there is nothing that has not been conquered by him.

There is nothing that does not bow in submission to God – God reigns supreme over all including death and the depths of Hell.



My dear brothers and sisters, I pray that you will come to know Jesus, God-with-us, in ways that you never could have thought or imagined. I pray that you will rest in the knowledge that the God of the universe is with us in our lives - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

dreams and my savior

In my Italian class, we have to write one paper every week with the theme of the paper focusing on the vocab and grammar that we learned the past week. So far, they haven't been that difficult. Easy topics like, describing my relationship with a friend, or telling how a friend and I met. Quelli temi sono facili! (Those topics are easy!) 

However, this week's theme is the future so of course the topic for the paper is my dreams. (Not the sleeping type dreams either, more like the hopes and desires type of dreams.) The problem with this topic, I don't know what my hopes and dreams are anymore. In high school, if you had asked me what I wanted to do or what my dreams were, I knew; I had a plan. Sure, I didn't have all the details worked out but I had a general outline of what I wanted my future to look like. And then my senior year happened. Everything that I had thought I wanted, I discovered, in a matter of a few weeks, I didn't want anymore. In a few seconds, I had gone from knowing exactly what I wanted to not having a clue about the future. At the time, I remember feeling like I had just fallen overboard right smack dab in the center of the Pacific Ocean. I imagine it looking something like this: 

{

You open your eyes, slightly confused for a few seconds at where you are and why you woke up. And then you remember. You're on a the sundeck of the cruise-ship M.Y.L.I.P.O, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. "Aaaa, life is good," you think happily and start to drift off back to dreamland. Suddenly, there's a piercing scream and then the splash of something or somebody hitting the water! You quickly jump up, race to the side of the ship and look down trying to find the source of the disturbance. Oh, there! You found it, whatever it is.

"Quick, help!" you shout, and hurriedly look around, searching for somebody that could help you. There are a handful of other people on the deck with you but each of them is completely absorbed in their activities, that nobody hears your shout. You whip back around to the rail, and scan the water, searching again.

There. This time, you get a better look and your eyes widen in recognition. Its one of the girls that was on the ship with you! You squint against the glare of the sun on the water and notice that she doesn't have a life-jacket on. At that very instant, you realize from the way she is flailing about that she has no clue how to swim; she's trying to stay afloat but its like there's an anchor attached to that is dragging her down. 

"Help!" you yell again and again. Surely there must be somebody on this ship that will come out of their self-absorbed state and hear you. 

Quickly, you grab a pair of binoculars lying on a chair close by and direct your eyes out onto the water, this time to her face. Suddenly, she looks directly at you and you gasp, you can see the panic and hopelessness in her eyes. She knows that she is going to drown.

}

I think at points in our life, we can all feel like the girl in the water; utterly hopeless in the outcome of our situation. So why, why do I write about this? I honestly have no idea. 

Lately I have been struggling with surrendering everything, including my hopes and dreams and aspirations, to God. It's a daily challenge for me, giving them to Him and then like a toddler, grabbing them back and crying "mine!" at Him. When somebody asks me what my dreams and aspirations are, how do I respond? Do I tell them all of my dreams even though I say that I have given them to God? Or do I tell them that my desire is to do what my God asks me to do; that my hope, my feelings of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, is God; that the thing I want most in life is to follow, with total abandon, the One who saved me.

 

{

You're crying now, tears coursing down your cheeks and onto your shirt. 

"Why won't somebody come help?!" you scream silently in your head, angry at every other person on the ship. "If nobody will listen to me, I'll go make them listen to me," you say angrily and run to the nearest person and shake them forcefully, sure that they will realize the urgency of the situation.

Its only been a couple minutes but it feels like hours. After trying the people on this side of the deck, you stumble back to the railing, gasping for air as your eyes quickly sweep the water and stops on the girl's floundering form. She's tiring, you can see clearly how her arms and legs are moving slower and slower. "Come on," you whisper, "You can do it. Don't give up."

Wait! 

What was that? Your eyes pop open. You must be seeing things!

You rub your fists against your eyes and look again at the girl. There is someone else in the water with her! 

"Where did he come from?" you puzzle. 

You glance around the sundeck, hoping to find someone to come make sure you're not seeing things. Just as all the other times you looked for someone that isn't absorbed in themselves, nobody hears you. You turn back to the ocean and scan for the girl. 

The man has maneuvered the girl onto his back piggyback style, her hands clasped tightly around his neck, and is swimming with strong, quick strokes towards a small inflatable kayak about a little ways away. Your legs suddenly become like cooked spaghetti and you crumble to the deck, your hands still gripping the railing. Your tears have turned from tears of grief to tears of relief. You want to make sure that the girl and the man made it to the kayak but you when you try to turn your eyes on the water, you can't see through all of your tears.

Eventually, your crying gradually calms down enough so that when you wipe your eyes, you can see. You press your face against the rails, squinting against the glare on the water, and scan for the girl and the man. "They couldn't have gone that far, could they," you wonder. 

Just as you're about to give up on ever finding them, you see something in the distance that could be them. Once more, you bring the binoculars to your eyes, focusing on the speck you had found. Even with the binoculars, you couldn't make out much. The one thing you can tell is that it is the girl and the man. You smile widely for you just witnessed a rescue like none other. You turn from the railing and wander back to the lounge chair you had been sitting in before the rescue. Still thinking about all that happened, you sink down onto the chair and lean back to look up at the clear blue sky. You still aren't sure of everything that happened but there is one thing you are a hundred percent positive on. 

The man that rescued her from drowning, he is, without a doubt, her Savior.

}

 "Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave."   
               ~ Psalm 107:19-20

grad parties and what is needed

Have you ever been to a high school graduation party? If so, have you ever noticed how certain groups of people congregate together? You have your family group, your coworkers, your friends from that one class that you invited but really didn't think would show up, your band/sports/art/newspaper/specific activity friends, your friends that graduated before you that don't know many of your friends now, and your friend friends - the ones that you have the most memories with. Now the way most parties that I've gone to go is this: you get to the location where the party is, go in and try to find either the graduate or other people that you know, talk with the group that you know for a little while, and then leave and go to the next party, all while not really talking to people that you don't know. Why is it that most people don't go out of their comfort zone and talk with other people at these parties? Is it because meeting somebody new requires vulnerability? Is it because you have to put yourself out there for the other person to "judge?" Or is it because, in our culture, we have gotten really good at compartmentalizing our lives so much to that point that we put our friends into boxes or lists? That's how we keep our busy lives organized; its the way we are able to do so much more than we did 25 or 30 years ago.

I have several friends who are very organized. They have their planner with them at all times and have every task that needs to be done written down on a list. Now I'm not trying to bash on planning and making to-do lists, my life would be so much more crazy and hectic (in a not so good way) if I didn't use my calendar and to-do lists. The problem that I see with planners and lists is when our lives are so planned out and we are so boxed in that we don't know how to survive without it. It reminds me of Luke 10:38-42, when Jesus comes and visits two sisters, Martha and Mary. Now Martha, I see her as the biblical version of the modern "superwoman" or "supermom," the one who does amazing amounts of tasks each day. I would bet that a modern day Martha would be the one with multiple planners, several to-do lists, and basically lives on caffeine. Yet, Jesus tells her, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed." As much as I love being organized and being able to acomplish a lot in a little amount of time, I think this is a lesson that I need to remember. The only thing that is needed is to spend time with my number one, Jesus.

Jesus, help me to remember that you are the only thing that is needed and nothing else that I do matters if you are not.

pointers and life questions

In my programming class, we are talking about pointers. Without getting into too much detail, a pointer is exactly what it sounds like; an arrow pointing to something else. Now you might be thinking that I'm pretty weird and most definitely a nerd (which I kinda am) for talking about my programming class on my blog. But I really do have a point so just stay with me. We're going to talk a  little about programming.

If you were to ask a pointer what its value was, all it would do is point to what the variable that it's pointing to. For example, let's say that a pointer, we shall call it p, is pointing to a variable, called v. And let's also say that v = 25. If we were to ask p what its value was, it would say "whatever v is, that is what i am. My value is 25." In a way, a pointer is an anology for our relationship with Christ.

Every single person has asked the life questions: Why am I here?, What is my purpose?, Where do I belong?. Maybe those questions that don't seem to have an answer are like pointers. Maybe instead of trying to figure out the exact "value" of each question, we need to look to what the questions are pointing at: Jesus.

Why am I here? To point to Jesus.

What is my purpose? To become more like Jesus.

Where do I belong? In Jesus' arms.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says, "So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image." Jesus, I want to reflect Your glory. Help me to be like a pointer and point to You in all that I do.