I wonder if coming to this realization is what it truly means to be lost. We see our own lostness when we are able to finally see that we are not the author of the story of our own lives. We start to suspect we are lost when our poor decisions and bad behavior catch up with us and we are living with the consequences. We often make the mistake of thinking that that is the entirety of being lost. But our lostness has a persistent subtleness that continues to whisper to us that there is more to discover about “our” life. It may be that what we are seeing as being lost has more to do with our awakening to a directionless life than it does with our “sinfulness” and our sins serve to awaken us to our lostness.
But what do we do when we realize that we exist in this world and so far, our existence has just been one of experiencing and consuming? We find ourselves wondering if we have ever offered anything back?
We all have an instinctive drive to live a life of meaning. But everywhere we look for meaning is so overgrown with options, we stand almost no chance of choosing the right path.
Up till now, we chose for ourselves who we thought we should be and how we thought we should live meaningfully. And it has only brought us to a point of realizing how lost we now are. Jesus offers us direction but it comes in the form of a roadblock.
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:25-26
It seems the starting point for living a meaningful life, which can be defined as a life where we live into the purpose for which we exist, is when we give up all that we are currently striving for, we renounce our own image that we have created for ourselves and let it die as an act of faith that God will resurrect us in his image and we will begin to live the life that our soul was destined to live. The direction of our lives no longer comes from us and our values but from the creator of the universe pouring into us life and love. We no longer sustain our own existence but we look to the heavenly father to lavishly shower us with all that we need. The body we have been given we care for it as a gift from God that allows us to exist and live out a purpose that reflects God’s generosity and love and we no longer live a life that serves our body and its desires but our body serves the purpose and desires God has for us.
19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. John 5:19-20
How did Jesus see the Father “doing”? How do I see the Father “doing”? This implies that whatever I see Jesus doing, I see the Father doing. But there is so little recorded of Jesus’ life. I believe that to understand the idea of, losing our life that we may find it, begins with imitating Jesus practice found here in John 5. Jesus surrendered his life to his Father. Jesus operated from a place of submission to God’s will and purpose for Him. He submitted to this even to the point of losing not only his life in terms of the life he could be living but he submitted to the point of losing his physical life. Trusting God to that point, He was resurrected from the dead, His physical body included. Jesus calls me to that kind of trust and submission!
24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. John 5:24
I have heard His word and I do believe. In fact I probably spend too much time thinking about His word and all that it means. But I don’t feel like I have “passed out of death into life”? I don’t feel like anything special has happened or is even happening. I want eternal life, who doesn’t, but it would seem to me that I should be able to point to a time when I passed from death to life and there should be evidence to support it. I brought this up to my Book Bros group and Greg had a way of looking at this that like. He reminded me of the response of the sheep in Matthew 25:31-46, they were unaware that the simple acts of love they were doing had anything to do with Him. If we have passed from death to life it is likely that we will not be aware or recognize it.
I was taught to understand passages like this, that speak of “eternal life” as speaking of going to heaven after I die. But here, and is so many other places Jesus speaks of eternal life as in contrast to death. But I was taught to interpret that as heaven in contrast to hell. That idea falsely lead me to believe that eternal life starts after I die physically and I will spend that eternal life in heaven or hell based on my faith and deeds in this life. When Jesus is speaking of eternal life, He is speaking of how we experience life in this present realm.
Discovering our lostness is discovering that we are dead. Jesus saves us from that death by calling us to follow Him. Yet ironically we are to follow Him into death! Jesus calls us to “die to ourselves”, “carry our cross” and “lose our life” and the promise is that we will “receive eternal life”, “be born again”, “pass from death to life” and “find our life”. So how do we carry our cross, die, and lose our lives? Jesus is speaking metaphorically but also literally if necessary. But metaphorically speaking, how does He want us to give up our lives? I think perhaps we can look again to Matthew 25:31-46. Every act of love is an act of dying to self in which we lose our lives. Every time we sacrifice our will or our time or our desires because a friend or loved one or neighbor has needs we can meet, we are sacrificing ourselves. We are in a sense, dying. When we choose willingly to die in this way, as Christ willingly chose the cross, we are carrying our cross.
In discovering this way of understanding the life that Christ calls us to live, I mistakenly expected to find my life. In other words I was expecting a moment, an aha moment, when I will have discovered or found the life offered in exchange for losing the life I was living. It sounds ridiculous to me now as I hear myself say it. We never actually find a new life just as we never actually lose the life we are living. We give up our orientation and reorient ourselves. A life where I am at the center, I plan to do what I want to do because it satisfies my desires and I win and I am right and I am comfortable and I come first and my goals and my time and me me me. That is the voice of my ego telling me how to live my best life. It is seductive. Its hard to not listen to that voice. But what does it look like to drown that voice out with the voice of Jesus, the voice of God, the voice of Christ, the voice of love? Putting love at the center and planning according to what satisfies love’s desires, and love wins because love is always the right thing to do and love is what is most comforting and the goal of everything. Living from an orientation of Love, I am no longer driven by results. What matters most to love is the moment, the now. Agenda is replaced with Love. Love is not an agenda or a goal. All that the past has brought to the present and all that the future is clutching at, Love connects and reorients that present moment to be a miracle of God. But if I am not oriented in Love, it passes right by me unnoticed. Each present moment when we are able to erase the agenda of our egos, we see a different moment filled with the presence of God. We restrain all our impulses to own what’s ours and experience the presence of Love.
This is perhaps eternal life, infinite life, the abundant life that Christ offers. Every time we put to death our “selves” we pass from death to this eternal abundant life of loving neighbor and seeing Christ in everything we do. Living life, from a non-agenda Love based orientation is best illustrated for us in the Beatitudes.