Sold for Nothing, Bought with Love

This is what the Lord says:

  "You were sold for nothing,

    and without money you will be redeemed." (Isaiah 52:3)

In the song in Oliver! when the orphan Oliver is being sold by the cruel overseer of the orphanage, he sings these words: "One boy, boy for sale, he's going cheap. . . ." For some reason this song comes to my mind at times. He's trying to get rid of Oliver and doesn't care how. Being "sold for nothing" is the story of this present age. How often have I sensed someone was eager to be rid of me? How often have I been eager to get rid of myself, selling my own birthright for nothing or worse?

How easily will I sell my integrity? Or my ability? Or my loved ones? I sell them for a small reprieve from pain or a few seconds of "looking good" or my own sense of importance. What a waste!

The irony is that I sell my life, my true self as God's beloved, for so little and I am not bought back in the same way at all. The payment is not in money or mere recompense, but in blood and sweat for my sake before I knew any better. I am not ransomed by paying back my debts, but by someone taking my side and my place. I am set free by another willing to be a slave and showing me how to serve, the "Servant of all."

And then, the irony deepens. I am set free to serve again, but to a different master. Instead of obsessive desire and overwhelming fear holding the whip, I am able to serve God and others with freedom and, therefore, love. In the end, we are redeemed not with money or suffering or punishment, but with an abiding love that will not let us go. It frees us and infects us at the same time, making us sick with a goodness like Jesus has, a goodness that flows from the inside out. 

Ears Ready for Planting

 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop - thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown. (Mark 4:20)

There are people you pour your life into and they just take and take and produce nothing. This does not stop us from continuing to fill that hole. Sometimes it is out of love. Sometimes it is out of habit. Sometimes it is merely a willfulness to make someone else into what we want.

The parable of the sower and the seed talks about such relationships. There are relationships like black holes, their are fair-weather friends, there are people who love beginnings, but have no interest in enduring to the end. But then there are some people who seem ready to hear and respond and grow. Here, the seed easily received by these people is a word from God. The smallest encouragement draws such people into deep feeling and great deeds. They do not seem to have been inoculated against Jesus and his words, but drink them like water in a desert.

Receptivity needs two wings to fly. One wing is knowing good news when we hear it. The offer to place the control of our lives under God does not sound like good news to everyone. That is because the other wing is not functioning correctly. We need to know what kind of person God is so we can understand what kind of control he desires. The scripture speaks of God like this:

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, 

  neither are my ways your ways," declares the Lord. . .

You shall go out with joy 

  and be led forth in peace.

The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you

  and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." (Isaiah 55)

It is also possible to know somewhat how good and great God is and not receive word from him. This is also flying with one wing. Such people usually try to walk with God merely from obeying commands and applying rules from the Bible to their life. The good news is that God's control is not like a writer with a pen, but like a father with his child. It is guidance with growth. God doesn't merely want people to do his will; he wants people who want to do his will with joy. This kind of shaping takes something more like raising a child than pounding on a stone.

This is shown clearly in Jesus. He came to do what his Father and he wanted to do. Ultimately the control was and is in his hands. But he did not come so much as a king who needed servants, but as a teacher of apprentices. His instructions to them were as detailed as they needed to be. They can only be carried out be someone who can both hear God personally and joyfully obey him. Without these two wings the good news of Jesus does not produce much fruit.

Child-like in Old Age

 Even to your old age and gray hairs

  I am he, I am he who will sustain you.

I have made you and I will carry you;

  I will sustain you and I will rescue you. (Isaiah 46:4)

I may not be in my old age, but I have my share of gray hair. I guess we may never completely outgrow the desire to be someone's child. Although that can create a childish person, it may also be able to make someone more child-like.

As I get older I have had more obvious examples in which I have needed someone to sustain me, even someone to carry me and rescue me. Sometimes a sickness has taken all sense of pride from me with pain or incapacity. Sometimes I am faced with horrible problems in my family that I cannot face or fix. Sometimes I am hardly able to get out of bed in the morning from sheer weariness or despair. I find I can enter such moments in childish ways or in child-like ways. I can throw tantrums and kick and scream or I can grieve and cry out for help and comfort. They can be similar in appearance, but my heart is radically different in the midst of them.

Growth into child-like humility involves letting go of outcomes without giving up. It involves having a place to stand apart from my desires without disowning them. It involves learning how to love reality more than the illusions I weave. The God of peace can be found if we know how to seek him. 

The Band of Survivors

Once more a remnant of the house of Judah

  will take root below and bear fruit above.

For out of Jerusalem will a come a remnant,

  and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors.

The zeal of the Lord Almighty

  will accomplish this. (Isaiah 37:31-32)

Man, I like this. I like calling the remnant a band of survivors. It speaks not only of desperate times, but of desperate people. People desperate for God. People in a real war. The remnant then and the remnant now will not just drift into survival. It will take some real effort.

I also love how this band of survivors takes root below and bears fruit above. There's a tenacity to following Jesus that grips the earth with both hands and will not let go. No floaty, air-headed kind of faith. If it's real, it's got to grab life and not let go. It is actually people who don't seek Jesus in life that are in the illusion, caught in the matrix of this nonsensical thinking of this world or in the empty dreams of empty religion.

These survivors also bear fruit above. Like a tree planted deeply, their branches and fruit stretch above mediocrity. The fruit is the overflow of their life. This super-abundance is not found in pain-free living, great ambitions, or impressive credentials, but in rock-solid character that holds out to the very end without ending up cruel or indifferent. The fruit is lasting and deeply satisfying to everyone who tastes it.

Most importantly, the band of survivors only survive because of the Lord's zeal. Their near-escapes, their struggles against the impossible, and their lonely deserts are not mostly a testimony to their great skill or endurance, but a story of a great love that will not let them go. The Lord wants not only survivors, but overcomers. This band does not go it alone. They go together. They go with God.

 God's gifts and call are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)

This passage does not say that God's gift and call are inevitable. For the people of Israel it wasn't. This is the idea that is often misquoted that "God works all things together for good." The verse says that In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28) For people who don't love God and live into their calling will probably find life somewhere between difficult and intolerable. Many things happen that God does not want, but nothing happens that God cannot redeem or overcome by his graceful power through our trust in him.

The good news about God's gift and call is that he does not take them away from us. We can refuse them, though. Over time our choices become our destiny. I was told once that God's will is infinitely malleable, but the will of human beings is not. God can always be willing to accept, forgive, hope, and help, but human beings will eventually come to a place of no return for good or ill. So we are told to seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:12)

God has wonderful things in mind, great hopes and joys in store for each of us and all of us. Our greatest challenge is trusting that fact and forming a life based on it. We cannot do it alone, but that is why God sends his greatest irrevocable gift to us: Jesus, Immanuel, God with us. 

 

New Birth for the World

We were with child, we writhed in pain,

  but we gave birth to wind.

We have not brought salvation to the earth,

  we have not given birth to people of the world. (Isaiah 26:18)

Going through pain and suffering only to find out that it was all for nothing is a terrifying prospect. I can see why it would make some people determined above all else to avoid pain. The picture of giving birth to wind - nothing. The struggle to conceive, anticipation during pregnancy, and the endurance of the pain of birth is all for the life to be born. The new life that comes out of the struggle is what brings meaning to the struggle. This is redemption.

Redeeming is buying back the years of toil and slavery. It is the deliverance from slavery to a promised land. It is the joy of comfort after abuse. It is the laughter of relief when we realize that the war is over. It is freedom, a birth of a life with God.

The opposite of redemption is judgment. It is realizing that the only way to deal with pain is with fear or denial. It is constantly ducking the blows of neglect and abuse. It is realizing that there is no relief, but only worry about when the next war begins. It is enslavement, the emptiness of a life without God.

What if the good news of the followers of Jesus falls on deaf ears because we live more under judgment rather than redemption? We give birth to wind in our own lives and are surprised that other people do not want to share in such a salvation with us. Of course the best is yet to come, but that does not mean that we need to live the worst way now.

Here's the thing: what if eternal life starts today? What if what changes primarily at the death of our bodies is just our setting, but not the kind of life we live? If all that is self-centered, fearful, worried, angry, and suffering gets burned away when we move on into the next life, what will be left of us? What if we are starting to build the home we will always live in right now?

I have had moments of fear about this, but the God I know is not trying to keep anyone out of the place he dwells, but trying to help each of us find our place there. The most obvious, glorious, and desirable thing about heaven is God himself. If we are interested in him, wanting to know him, or wanting to spend time with him now, what makes us think that the death of our bodies will change that? He will take whatever spark of interest we have and fan it into a fire to warm us and a light to guide us, but he will not run over us.

The salvation of new birth and new life is something we need to hear about, no doubt. But even more, it is something we need to see and hear and feel and believe. Even in an immature form, it is the light of the world. This life of redemption is simply this: The opportunity is here. Let go of whatever you think brings you life and trust this good news instead: God is working in you and on your world for good and he is as close as the air you breath. (Mark 1:15, paraphrase)

The Springs of Life

 Above all else, guard your heart,

  for it is the wellspring of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

We are still searching for the fountain of youth. All the temples to "abs" and "buns" testify. The diets, the meds, the meditations all point to this obsession. What if the source of life is not in what we do or what we consume, but in who we trust?

Perhaps the truth is that where our hearts go, our life will follow. I mean not so much our feelings, but our will. The center of our being. What does my life revolve around? The sad thing is that we often confuse the fountain of youth with the appearance of youth and then we end up with the foolishness of youth and an obsession with self-care.

However, I find myself more concerned lately with people who want to seem humble and wise enough to abandon such selfish self-care. They confuse self-hatred and self-negation with self-denial. Self-denial values the self enough to say, "No" to the self. Self-negation says, "Don't think about yourself or you'll be selfish." But instead it ends up fussing and fuming about other people or becoming obsessed with some ideology. Rarely does it come out at becoming a truly humble and kind person.

The heart, like a garden, needs care, not neglect. There are some people who do not believe in bugs and pests in this garden. They dump on the fertilizer and then guess what grows up there? But there are others who think that this garden is "stronger" if you leave it to bake in the sun with no water or care. Funny, but you still end up with bugs and weeds. Care involves protecting and weeding as well as cultivating and feeding.

Do you want to know what is springing up from your heart? It's actually not too hard to find out. What do you think about? What comes out of your mouth in unguarded moments? Likely, that's what's in your heart. That's where your life is headed.

I find I need to guard my heart because stuff starts growing there that I don't want. Stuff I don't want for myself or for other people or for God. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away. Neither does covering it up with will-powered efforts at getting better or looking good. No, changing the heart is a different matter.

I find that it begins with making some choices about what I think about regularly, my mental diet. That is where my first freedom lies: what I think about. I would recommend this as a great starting point: Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things. Whatever you have learned from Jesus and those learning from him, or seen in them - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)