A Way of Release

While literature may teach us how to read words, life’s moments of futility and shifts in perception teach us how to read ourselves. We often assume that because we can sound out sentences and follow a plot, we’ve also inherited the ability to grasp the layered truths that great writers embed in their work. But mechanical reading is not the same as mindful reading. The ability to truly grasp the deep thoughts of literary minds often comes only when our own lives have been marked—and sometimes reshaped—by loss, disillusionment, or awe.

It’s not just that we learn to read literature, but through apprehension and appropriation literature begins to read us back, holding a mirror to our evolving perspective. Discipline is required in all relationships. How much we know and don’t know is a matter of consistency. A disciple (a student, a learner) is not yet an expert, and many things that needed to be learned were quite vague. One such challenge came around an obscure passage like in Luke 12:49-50 in which Jesus spoke about his “passion”, that there was a fire to be kindled, and a cup which had to be taken, and how He wished it already been had.

All of us sit with a blank stare when reading this. Seems a little bleak. In the moment, like the disciples none of us sees or understands while right up against a problem or solution. It always requires us to step back a bit. Some things require space and contemplation. Those who are best trying to either understand what Jesus was saying, or what our own difficulty is trying to tell us – the requirement is the same.The work of Christ’s Passion can be most easily blocked by our own resistance; it’s a daily lesson in learning to step aside.

He who knows the end from the beginning, has a wish to have been completed. But in relationships, learning and failing are both arts of a disciple. The passion of the Cross is the way of our release. Your own spiritual experience, and those of you who have walked with God, you know that it has been through times of deep and acute suffering that you have found the fresh releases; the oasis after the bitter waters. Isn’t it true?

Yes, we’re entering a time (personally and culturally) of agonizing spiritual and soul pain. Much in part because of the Age and the fluid corruption we’re seeing across the spectrum. In relation to understanding the obscurity of that passage above and our own, Christ has been on the mount (seated in Heaven) praying. Now just as Christ drew near to the boat in which the Disciples rowed hard against the storm, so also does Christ wait until that 4th watch of the night to visit us in our difficulty. And maybe you’ve felt that, straining in the dark, unsure if help will come.

We often don’t know what the Lord is doing, what He means by this, or what He is after in our situation. All we can acknowledge at any point, is that we’re going through it. In studying the “purposes” of God in the Bible, we do know somewhat there are reasons of our experience and why we are suffering (due to the fall). Paul would go on experimentally to prove that these are actually gifts and privileges of the calling. (Phil. 1:29)

You and I then, need to have a fresh, new understanding of the Cross.  We must gain a better knowledge of the meaning of our Lord Jesus’ Cross and what its end could accomplish. It completes a work of redemption, having become slain from the foundation of the world. We must with spiritual eyes, see what Christ saw when He spoke what He did regarding the passion. The Lord Jesus’ Cross is intended to be a means of release, growth, and escape. The Cross is the law of life, the way of life, and the way to fullness of life. Not just a historical event, but a guiding way of life that through surrender, sacrifice and suffering, ultimately what would emerge is – new life.