Christian Living
Larry Lilly's Letter Monday August 15, 2011
Due to an aversion to bare knuckled Biblical truth concerning Soteriology (complete teaching of salvation) many Christians do not grasp the wondrous grandeur of our faith. I came across a statement the other day that covers, briefly one aspect of the so great salvation that makes this reality even more precious when we understand. Jot down this truth from the pen of Anatole France:
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another."
I suggest that you could spend a great amount of time meditating on the depth and breadth of this little gem. You will recall that Moses was raised up by God to lead the Children of Israel from Egypt to the Promised Land. While on the long journey the people became melancholy of neat things they had walked away from, things that seemed to satisfy certain physical longing.
So it is with us, we are thankful to be counted as one who is on a journey with Christ onward to better things. Yet, every now and then we get wrapped up in memory from yesterday in Egypt. It may be a good thing or something no so good, but it is behind and is to be left there. We march on.
Years ago while auditing a course on the subject of grief at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore I was amazed to listen to several men and women talk about grieving over a disease that had been healed. The affliction had actually become a part of their emotional life and they missed certain aspects connected with the experience. The same thing happens to prisoners of war or regular long term prisoners. I know it sounds strange, but this pain is more common than we think. Home sickness falls into the same category.
Anatole France uses the well-worn metaphor of the caterpillar/butterfly to powerfully state the truth of the necessity of leaving the now life for the new life. The principle is stated many times over in the Bible.
Jesus stated the principle in Luke 9:23 "And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." The principle is made brutally clear by the reference to the cross, as it represents the ultimate form of death to the old. In Christian experience it also is the entrance to resurrection to a different higher life. The New Creature is the term used biblically.
Colloquially speaking it means simply, "You cannot get to second base if you keep your foot on first."
Larry Lilly Copyright © 2011 Use with credit
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