Mixed Emotions

When watching a movie of a runaway train picking up momentum as it rushed towards disaster for all the passengers, I felt panic even though I was restfully sitting at home.  It sounds crazy having two contrasting emotions going simultaneously but it has happened for me and maybe you as well.   

I feel somewhat like that this these days as momentum builds for our nation rushing towards certain economic, social and infrastructural disaster unless God intervenes.  On one hand I’m feeling increasingly anxious about what is ahead, yet I sense a profound peace that God is working out His plan for the church, our nation and world. 

Abraham must have experienced something similar when God tested him (Gen. 22:1).  What would it feel like to genuinely encounter God then to have Him say to you as He said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you” (Genesis 22:2, NLT2)  God had proven His love and faithfulness to Abraham but until this point God had never asked him to sacrifice God’s priceless promised gift, Isacc, his son.  He must have experienced a torrent of mixed emotions!  We can talk about being profoundly tested but really going through it is a whole different matter.

Perhaps you can identify with Abraham’s deeply mixed emotions because all the wheels have fallen off your tricycle and your world feels like a frenzied mess.  I can only imagine when God looked at the earth as a shapeless, chaotic mass (Genesis 1:2, TLB), it was worse than what you are looking or the disaster I see us racing towards.  In God’s case, the encouraging fact was, and is also today, God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above [that] watery abyss (Genesis 1:2, MSG).  And when He (the Spirit) began to intervene, in time it came out looking like perfection—the Garden of Eden.

It is essential for us to fix in our sight that the very same Spirit that worked on that mass of chaos is the very same Spirit who is alive and well and brooding over your chaos and that which I see the United States headed towards.  Yes, what we see can cause anxiety to rise but at the same time we can have the assurance the Holy Spirit is in total control even when it does not look like it. 

The truth is, if you reflect through the whole of the Bible, whatever the Spirit touches is eventually reshaped into something absolutely stunning.  Case in point, what did He do with all the tragedies in Jesus’ passion week?  Yes, Jesus died but three days later the most astonishing and magnificent thing happened.  Jesus arose and walked out of His tomb.  From that point forward He worked on earth through other humans who bled red blood just as you and me, to turn the world upside down.  To be sure, He continues to bring authentic, radical and total life-change to rebels just as He has done through the last couple millenniums.     

Paul tells us in the midst of our chaos, Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven [God’s total authority to reign], 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, NLT2).  This truth is what we can find experiential rest in while watching the terrifying chaos around us.      

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