THE PARADOX THAT WASN’T

For several months now, we have been talking about how Jesus gets us. This past Sunday, Pastor Harry asked us if we get HIM. He is relevant, but in what ways?

Aside from the fact that we are finite in understanding, there are certain things that God has chosen to reveal about Himself over and over again. The greatest of these is love. Another is that, despite humble beginnings, Jesus is King, as evidenced by God’s power manifested in the resurrection. So far, there isn’t anything new to most of us or paradoxical.

I love words, just for their own sake. Finding authors who use language richly is one of my great joys in life. So please forgive my propensity to constantly define terms, but I’d like to think about what relevance means. Without contemplating further, we might just have a vague sense of something simply being connected to something else.

I absolutely LOVE the definition found in Merriam-Webster’s: a. having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand and b. affording evidence tending to prove or disprove the matter at issue or under discussion. 

Let’s apply this definition to Jesus. How does this definition speak to His relevance? He has a SIGNIFICANT and DEMONSTRABLE bearing on the things that concern us. I think here of a sort of pressure that He applies, without forcing. There is EVIDENCE of His working in our life, especially when He brings us peace amid great discomfort, injustice, and turmoil.

Of course, this does not mean that we don’t feel all the things. He certainly “gets” that. It’s all relative. In relationship to who and what He is, things don’t have to have the influence over us that we let them have.

So what is the seeming paradox?

His relevance makes everything else irrelevant. Yet somehow, everything is MORE relevant because all of the things that torment us are somehow used for the Kingdom. Used for GOOD. Amazing.

O soul, are you weary and troubled?

No light in the darkness you see?

There’s light for a look at the Savior,

And life more abundant and free!

 

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of His glory and grace.

Through death into life everlasting

He passed, and we follow Him there;

O’er us sin no more hath dominion—

For more than conqu’rors we are!

His Word shall not fail you—He promised;

Believe Him, and all will be well:

Then go to a world that is dying,

His perfect salvation to tell!

Helen Lemmel-1922