Resurrection II: Sorting our Mess ...

Wednesday, April 23, 2014. We have been talking about the resurrection yesterday. The events which took place around the cross are truly breathtaking. They are difficult to comprehend and to translate into something we can live and do today, in our daily challenges and problems.

Not that easy …

With a family and as active member of our social environment, there are plenty of severe challenges in my immediate neighborhood. I know that many of us have plenty of challenges - starting with the need to get along with different characters and different ways to work and do things, to the difficulties of chronical or even deathly illness, and not ending with the need to compete with our company or institute in a global market, with difficult side conditions locally.

How does the power of the resurrection fit into all these little and large challenges and difficulties? We talk about God's might, and at the same time we feel and experience the frustration of a daily mess. As an elder in the church you get into involvement with many personal difficulties of members and friends. You live with the problems on a daily basis. You pray for them, you talk about them, you suffer from them. We know, that the world is far from being perfect!

Prayer seems the main tool (or perhaps I should rather call it a “state” than a tool), to deal with the challenges. But of course many of our problems also need practical steps to sort them. You need active involvement, to help and to do and to arrange.

Biblical Approach …

The bible tells us to pray. And it tells us to work hard, to be reliable, to be truthful, and to be modest. We are called not to go for becoming rich with respect to money or worldly posessions, but to be rich with respect to the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of heaven. We are called to be rich in terms of God's wisdom, his love and his mercy.

Some of the problems, we are faced with, can be sorted. When people are on social aid and suffer from it, they can find a job. Addiction problems can find its solutions. Psychological illness can be cured. There are a lot of problems which can find their solution within the environment of this world. There are other problems, which will not find a solution within this world. We all have a limited life expectancy - and there will be the moment when life is over and when we move into a different realm … the way God has chosen.

But in all parts of our journey, we are called to be filled with the spirit of the Lord! Only he can give us the center and purpose, we need. Only he can define our personality in a way which would be sustainable and everlasting, free of illusions. We need the death and resurrection gain real power in our life, in the sense that we start to live what he calls us to be, full reality within a fantastic world and beyond, filled by him! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts