Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Finding Jesus in the real world

A recent comment on this blog got me thinking. How do we find Jesus in the real world? More to the point, what makes this the real world in the first place? I guess we mostly use “real world” to define what we experience day-by-day. But just because it’s our daily routine, it doesn’t necessarily define what’s truly the “real world”.

As a Christian the kingdom of God, not my usual daily experience, defines my normality. As Jon Ortberg might say, what I experience as normal is actually usual, normality is the kingdom.

So, with that in mind, finding Jesus in the real world becomes an expedition to discover examples of the kingdom of God breaking in to our current “usualness” and transforming it into God’s normality. I don’t believe in a fully realised kingdom, I believe in a now-and-not-yet kingdom. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t expect God to break in and change my reality into his reality.

Perhaps then, finding Jesus in the real world isn’t as hard as it might look. I can see Jesus in the work and ministry of the church as it seeks to serve and care for the community, as it seeks to share the good news of Jesus in both practical and verbal ways. I see Jesus in the real world when the church gathers to pray for someone recently diagnosed with cancer. I see Jesus in the miracle of their healing and I see him too in the gentle ministry of the church as it offers comfort when healing doesn’t come.

As a minister of a local church, I’m privileged to see Jesus at work through his people almost everyday of my life. The truth is I’m not very observant so I don’t readily recognise it. Oftentimes I'm so preoccupied with the state of my own soul that I just don’t see the hand of God in anything. But then I remember a man called Jacob, whole stole his brother’s birthright and as he ran away encountered God in the most unexpected place. His comment was simply this: Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.

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