If you would walk that more difficult path of Love, then consider following His leadership of Love, His way of renewal for your life. Continually reach for new heights and plumb new depths following God into the unknown, gaining new understandings of old questions and answers. But when Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me,” where is He leading us? And then, when He adds, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it,” what would He have us do?
Yet I can offer the possibility of better answers only in more questions: How can personal loss, permanent change or illness so often point to the gateway? How can the darkness enshroud cleansing light until you’re ready for light? How can despair cover consuming Love until you’re ready for Love? And what place and role the cross in all of this?
Consider also whether there are answers or better understandings of these questions in some of the Pauline reflections. The Apostle Paul poignantly shared his experience that through the failed promise of religious legalism, the misleading promises and unsatisfying attachments of the world, he died to it all that he might live to God. Then he could say, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in Me.”
Does that help clarify our understanding of these challenges? And is our understanding furthered by Paul’s corollary admonition that, “If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is…For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God”? What does that mean? Certainly, for most, He didn’t mean that we should disengage from the world, judge it, or see it as anything but God’s creation. What do you think, can we find a more transcendent recognition of God in all things and people, and in the process grow closer in character and identity to Him?
These questions and understandings, in context, provide meaning, direction, challenge and change to my walk with the One who calls me. They enrich and make more intimate my prayer and contemplative time with Him. They inform and animate my life, my thoughts, and my writing. They are now part of the stuff of a relationship that grows ever closer with Him. Perhaps you could use some good questions, too? Then you might more often look for God in all the places He takes you. And more often you might encounter Him there.
First written: May 2006
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
