By Drake De Long-Farmer
December 14, 2016
Lately I have been thinking about this question: Have we lost our focus? As I scroll through my news feed, I am inundated with posts of political alignments, opinions, and fears. Though these things are important and should be discussed, I wonder if our attention is in the wrong place. Or better put, our attention is focused too heavily on the influence of temporal things.
See, as a follower of Christ, we have a higher perspective and a higher calling in the world. This means we can’t just put our heads in the sand to ignore the world. Instead, as we engage the things going on around us, we must view them through a very different lens.
Consider what Paul wrote in Colossians:
Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory. (Colossians 3:1-4 NLT)
Now, let me be clear. I am not advocating for a passive escapism. When Paul wrote of setting our sights on the realities of heaven, I don’t believe he referred to ‘going to heaven’ sometime in the future, while hiding in a bunker until that time comes, but that we are to be agents of heaven on earth.
This means that our perspectives, lives, actions, and mission are to be higher than the temporal things we find on earth. I am not saying we shouldn’t engage the variety of concerns around us, our neighbours, and our world. It’s actually the opposite.
In our higher calling, we become change agents for the betterment of this world. Our prayer is truly to see heaven’s realities impact and transform this physical reality we live in. We are citizens of both the earthly realm and the heavenly realm, and as citizens of both we are in a partnership with God to see these two worlds reunited and reconciled.
Paul believed this:
“And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-21 NLT)
I wonder what would happen if the Church were to live in and out of the Kingdom reality that Christ calls us to embody? Far too often, we live our calling in half measures. It is easy to fall into the daily motions of, what Dr. Jonathan Welton calls, the Average Christian. It is safe, it is easy, and it doesn’t require much of us.
“An Average Christian is like a thermometer, in that he or she can describe the spiritual climate to you. Normal Christians, however, are like thermostats, because everywhere they go, they shift the atmosphere. Consider Jesus, the first Normal Christian, after the wedding at Cana (the beginning of His ministry). He was never again able to walk into any atmosphere and be a wallflower. Normal Christians affect change in every environment. This type of lifestyle is not accidental; it requires constant, personal responsibility.”
Our internal survival guide says: Why push the limits if we don’t need to? The problem with this state of being is it misses the desperate need in the world around us and in our own soul. We may have fallen prey to the lie that the life we live is ‘good enough,’ but if we were to do a real gut check, we would uncover a growing unsettledness towards the status quo.
In our human effort, we may see the world through a blur. Much like someone needing glasses to correct their vision, the Gospel gives us the lens to see the vision God sees for His creation.
It corrects our vision and allows us to see more clearly. It is with this new vision that we have new purpose and see the opportunities through love, fuelled by faith, and hope.
This is the Kingdom impact in our lives. We are no longer satisfied with the state of our own lives, of our soul, and the world around us. We see the hopelessness around us and are wrecked to see a change.
That change starts with all of us, but we are not putting our hope and stock in the state of the world around us either. We are not driven to fear or become agents of hopelessness because of the world around us. Instead, we are a called and enabled to be light in the darkness and agents of hope for the hopeless.
What would happen if we accepted the invitation of God to His mission of reconciliation in this world? I wonder…
