Chaplain's Corner

Back in November I was at church and we had a guest speaker from Caronport’s Briercrest Bible College and Seminary. The speaker, a Dr. David Guretzki has done a lot of study on the topic of forgiveness. He began his first message with this question: “What is the greatest theme of the Bible?” Good question. He then went on to say:  It is not – “God helps those who help themselves” (not a biblical theme at all) or “Try to do your best”(not a biblical theme at all) or “Accept Jesus so you will not go to hell” or “Accept Jesus and your sins will be forgiven”. The greatest theme, according to Dr. Guretzki is that God desire to walk among us and be our God and have us as his people. I believe he is right.

We have a tendency to lose sight of the big picture in just about every area of our lives. Our attention seems to be captured most of the time by the immediate and when we are focused on the immediate, we can lose sight of the big picture. Much of the preaching in churches tends to focus on immediacies, pinpoint foci that we look at so intently that we lose sight of the big picture.

Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t that those pinpoint foci are not important – they are. But they are only important as we recognize that they are part of a bigger picture. It would be like a doctor who was treating a fever focusing only on bringing the fever down and not paying attention to the bigger picture: the infection that underlies the fever. Or the doctor that focuses on the intense pain a person has in his abdomen treating it with powerful pain killers and ignoring completely that ruptured appendix that is responsible for the pain. If a doctor would do that, in many cases the results could be fatal. When pastors and teachers do that, the results can be equally disastrous.

As we start a new year, forget all the resolutions, most of which probably focus on some immediate issue and fail to see the bigger picture and take some time to ponder the biggest picture of all:  God’s desire to walk among us and be our God and have us as his people. The big picture is all about relationship; our Creator desires to live in relationship with us.

Now, I doubt if this is the first time anyone who reads these words has thought about relationship with God. Even folks who are not what one might call ”religious” think from time to time about relationship with God. But is this the big picture in our minds? Is that what all this is about: “a relationship with God”? Well for many it is not what life is all about. For many “religion” is about keeping God appeased so that we can fly under his radar. This approach to religion is actually the opposite of “relationship with God”. Religion for many is the means by which they can keep God at bay. The means by which they do “just enough” to keep God from paying much attention to them.

Now to be honest, this entire line of thinking is deeply flawed on many fronts. It is flawed because it views God as finite. If we believe that God is omniscient (all-knowing), then there is no such possibility for our lives are always open books to God – there is no escaping his attention. It is flawed because it assumes that the chief end of man is to appease God so that we might evade God’s attention instead of finding our greatest happiness in God. It is flawed in that it is self-centered as opposed to God-centered.

So, if the big picture if seen accurately, is all about God walking among us as our God and our being his people, why are we so resistant? Well, the resistance has to do with the fact that we are born, it is our nature, apposed to God and his desires. That is after all what sin is. Too often when we think about sin we focus on particular sins: lying, stealing, greed, adultery, murder, and the list goes on. But the Bible often uses the word in the singular: “sin”. When it is used in the singular, it addresses the fact that by nature we are set against God and his desires. We often pretend not to be – there are many reasons for such pretense – but every person comes into the world naturally opposed to God and his desires. Religion is often more about pretending to care about God and his desires than it is a real desire to care.

So, for just a moment, assume that this premise may be correct, that God’s desire is to walk among us as our God and having us as his people. Why are we so resistant? What is it about God that causes us to resist his desire? Or what is it about us that we find this desire so abhorrent? It is, as I have already stated; sin. And this is what the Bible’s teaching about Christmas is all about: how to overcome our resistance so that we can desire and enjoy having God among us and relish in the privilege of being one of his people.

So, go ahead and put the Christmas decorations away, but don’t put the Christmas truth away. Jesus came to “save his people from their sins” he came to be God among us, God with us – Emmanuel (Matthew 1). If we have any hope of 2013 being better than 2012, the best thing we can do is embrace Jesus, allow him to save us from our natural opposition to God and his desires (our sin), and allow him to bring us into a real and living relationship with God. If we have already trusted in Jesus, then let 2013 be a year in which we make it our highest aim to find our happiness, our joy in the fact that God is our Father and that He is with us always and in the fact that by his Spirit’s presence, we can resist the inclination to want to resist his desires for our life.

Far from wanting to rob us of joy, God’s desire is to be our Joy, to lead us into a life of joy and to direct us away from choices that will bring nothing but heartache. If we embrace the big picture, that God wants to walk among us as our God and he wants us to be his people, it will make a remarkable difference in the way we come at life. It may not change the activities of our life, and then again it may change a lot of the decisions we make. But what it will change is instead of staring at one small part of the picture, we will be able to stand back and see the big picture.

Imagine just for a moment that you were taken to a art museum and stood before one of the great masterpieces. But you were only allowed to look at the picture through a small hole punched in a piece of cardboard. You could look for hours at small portions of the picture and never really get a sense as to what the big picture was all about. Many of us have been doing this spiritually. This year, 2013, why not make it your aim to do everything within your power to throw away the piece of cardboard with the small hole and take a few steps back and look at the big picture. God wants to walk among us, to be our God and to have us as his people. That is what the Bible is about, that is what faith is all about and if we have been living with a view of just a small portion of the picture, isn’t it time that we see the big picture? Here’s to a new year, a new perspective and a new purpose in living!