The Truth We Know – Even in the Dark

God has been having one long hard conversation with humanity since the fall – not the season – the decision, the moment we chose our way over God’s way in the Garden of Eden and were thrown out.

Every boundary, every law, every rule reminds us He is perfect, wise, and holy. Every story of every flawed human who dared to try to connect his or her story with His greater story, reminds us there is hope for us, forgiveness, relationship, redemption.

Jesus on His knees in the Garden of Gethsemane choosing God’s way over His followed by His long walk to the cross, into death, and back into life provided the open door for each of us to enter this hard conversation and come out whole with God. And it demonstrated His power and His love.

Individually, our stories don’t begin at our birth, not even at our physical conception. To know the beginning of our story, we must reach back to the moment when the idea of us was conceived in the mind of our God.

You were conceived in God’s imagination. And He cherished the notion that was you and considered where He would want you to enter His story, precisely the moment, precisely the place, precisely the manner in which you would impact the rest of us by fighting your way out of darkness into the light of this outpost of glory. And then, He breathed His life into you and launched you into the conversation.

Of course, we all experience some confusion because we’re born in the dark. Just as we do whenever we come upon an ongoing conversation, we must listen for a time to catch up.  Studying God’s Word and listening to those who came before us provides context for what we’re hearing. The sooner we listen, the sooner we’re able to contribute wisely and with love. If we neglect this listening, we just add to the noise and misunderstanding.

But there comes a moment for each of us when we comprehend Jesus. We embrace the truth of Him, and we distinguish His voice from among the others. And in that moment, we grow unafraid. We follow His voice and we find Him. Whatever we were before, in that moment we make eye contact with Jesus, we become warriors in the battle for souls this side of glory.

And all that came before was just our way of finding our way back to connecting our story to the greatest story ever told. And when we make this connection, our story makes all the sense in the world. Even the pain, even the suffering, even the missteps we find have simply become story threads that He weaves into His epic tale.

The day we become warriors we lose our fear of the hard conversation. We rise to it. We know it is meant for our healing and for our salvation so we endure every discomfort, every hardship, every brutal truth like soldiers who remember the reason they fight, what is at stake, how everyone we love depends on us standing this ground against dark forces.

We are light warriors and we illuminate the battlefield so others clearly see the hideous nature of the enemy and can find their way to the greater story, the only one that leads to life.

It was no mistake that your story passes through a pandemic. You were designed for this, assigned to it, and equipped for it. Your story began in the mind of God and will continue in His great heart but right now, it passes through great tunnels and dark valleys. Do not let the times make you afraid and do not let them make you silent.

Give voice to your experience of God during this time. Continue to engage in the hard conversation – the one that tells us we all fall short of His glory, that we have all selfishly chosen our own way rather than the truth of God. But God in His great love, provided a way for us to be saved and that way is Jesus Christ.

We live in a fallen world and so wars, disease, disaster, and death come upon us all. The enemy of God exploits these times to interject lies into the great conversation, to whisper rumors that God is not good or ineffective or dead.

But we are the ones who know the truth. We are the ones equipped to speak it into these times. We have made eye contact with Jesus and in that moment, we became fearless warriors armed with truth and light.

Our lives are our living worship. We honor Jesus’ resurrection most when we allow our lives and words to testify to it even as darkness presses in and as the enemy tries to convince us we isolated, small, and alone.

Your story has connected with the greatest story and you live as an integral part of something greater than any one of us alone. The truth of our lives is what we add to this ongoing conversation.

Wherever we celebrate our risen Lord this weekend, let us remember now more than any Easter that has gone before that our presence here is no mistake, we were assigned these times. We know that our Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand on the earth and after our skin has been destroyed yet in our flesh, we shall see God. Job 19:25-26 (paraphrase)

We know this truth even in the dark because we are the light of the world.

The Truth We Know, Even in the Dark https://t.co/FmVqAWKKO3 #Easter #COVID19Pandemic

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) April 11, 2020