People often comment on how I "love social
justice" or that "social justice is my thing." But that's not
true. I am not driven by social justice. I do not love social justice in itself.
I love Christ. So much. I love him so deeply, passionately, with that heart-starts-racing-when-you-think-of-Him kind of love. He is my dear friend, my Savior, my God. When I think of His reality, of the revolutionary life He lived and death He died for us - for our salvation and as a radical example - my heart quickens. Tears come to my eyes.
I have to remind myself often, with a little smile, that this God who walked the earth - shaming the proud and loving the most pitiful, who with one look could make injustice stop short, with one touch could heal the most broken - this same God is the One who I will walk with "in the cool of the evening" in the Garden, in His perfect Kingdom. I will get to see His glory, delight in His presence, kneel at His feet, celebrate His salvation around a marriage banquet table with brothers and sisters from every corner of the globe.
I love Christ. So much. I love him so deeply, passionately, with that heart-starts-racing-when-you-think-of-Him kind of love. He is my dear friend, my Savior, my God. When I think of His reality, of the revolutionary life He lived and death He died for us - for our salvation and as a radical example - my heart quickens. Tears come to my eyes.
I have to remind myself often, with a little smile, that this God who walked the earth - shaming the proud and loving the most pitiful, who with one look could make injustice stop short, with one touch could heal the most broken - this same God is the One who I will walk with "in the cool of the evening" in the Garden, in His perfect Kingdom. I will get to see His glory, delight in His presence, kneel at His feet, celebrate His salvation around a marriage banquet table with brothers and sisters from every corner of the globe.
I have to remind myself (again with a little smile) as I
walk down the street in the oh-so-ordinary moments of my daily routine, that
one day this city will be perfect and all things will be made new. One day He
will come with fire in His eyes and a voice like thunder and not just stop, but absolutely destroy, the evil we see around us -
and I will get to be by His side. All the sci-fi books and movies out there will pale in comparison to the reality of what WILL
happen one day. God is real and is Truth and will end the pain in the world,
will finish what He started with Christ, and will restore His beauty and
perfection and justice throughout the world.
Christ lived, and through his perfect live and holy death we can know true Life. Both eternal and in the here and now. We can worship at His feet forever, we can walk in the garden with Him again, we can live and breathe with Him in eternity.
And we can also know Him and worship Him and walk with Him now - which will bring us the most full lifel we will ever know. This feeling of joy and peace that helps me see Truth and Reality is what drives me to do all that I do. As Lucy sat at Aslan's feet and listened to his words of love and wisdom, I can sit at Christ's feet every day, listening and learning to be more like Him, learning to spread His revolutionary love in this world now.
It is the Gospel of Christ - the true life we can know in Him - that causes me to love others and love this world. It is the Gospel of Christ that causes me to love justice.
Love, true Love, lives and breathes today and through Him I live and move and have my being.
Christ lived, and through his perfect live and holy death we can know true Life. Both eternal and in the here and now. We can worship at His feet forever, we can walk in the garden with Him again, we can live and breathe with Him in eternity.
And we can also know Him and worship Him and walk with Him now - which will bring us the most full lifel we will ever know. This feeling of joy and peace that helps me see Truth and Reality is what drives me to do all that I do. As Lucy sat at Aslan's feet and listened to his words of love and wisdom, I can sit at Christ's feet every day, listening and learning to be more like Him, learning to spread His revolutionary love in this world now.
It is the Gospel of Christ - the true life we can know in Him - that causes me to love others and love this world. It is the Gospel of Christ that causes me to love justice.
Love, true Love, lives and breathes today and through Him I live and move and have my being.
There are so many
fiction books written about revolutions - about the brave young people defying
the evil oppressors around them and standing up for something different. And
there are so many real-life revolutions happening now. So many people dying,
seeking something better. And there are so many others who seek social justice,
who genuinely care about the people suffering under the many injustices that
exist in our world and believe deep in their hearts that things should be
different. The more I grow I understand why we care, why we desire something
better and will work so hard to make it a reality:
At the core of our being, God created us to desire MORE. He created us to desire BEAUTY and LOVE and PERFECTION. He created us to know HIM. He created us to desire FREEDOM in Him, to live in His JUSTICE, to know His PEACE. And until we do, we will dream of revolutions where we can break out of the pain we see around us - or even just the mundane. We all dream of doing something big in the fight for social justice (I know I have). We will dream, and sometimes we will act on those dreams. We will always continue to seek something better, something more, because something More is what God created us for. But unless we know that He is the More, unless we see His vision for the world and understand what it is we are seeking, what it is we are created for, our dreams will not come to fruition. We will get tired, our passion and hope will fizzle. We will always be disappointed, people will be hurt, we will realize that injustice will never disappear completely.
But in Christ, we can hear His Spirit whisper "Not yet" onto the end of that last sentence. In the darkest of nights, when our hearts are breaking, we can feel His heartbeat. He will give us glimpses in the night of what WILL BE someday. Knowing the ground-shaking, sky-splitting love of Christ is what will help us see that our dreams ARE meant to come true. What we desire at our core and all seek in different ways is meant to happen. God DESIRES the world to be made right again - from every genocide, every injustice against a child, every broken relationship, every hurting person and abused animal. He desires all things to be made new. He desires to revolutionize the world. He did. And He is.
At the core of our being, God created us to desire MORE. He created us to desire BEAUTY and LOVE and PERFECTION. He created us to know HIM. He created us to desire FREEDOM in Him, to live in His JUSTICE, to know His PEACE. And until we do, we will dream of revolutions where we can break out of the pain we see around us - or even just the mundane. We all dream of doing something big in the fight for social justice (I know I have). We will dream, and sometimes we will act on those dreams. We will always continue to seek something better, something more, because something More is what God created us for. But unless we know that He is the More, unless we see His vision for the world and understand what it is we are seeking, what it is we are created for, our dreams will not come to fruition. We will get tired, our passion and hope will fizzle. We will always be disappointed, people will be hurt, we will realize that injustice will never disappear completely.
But in Christ, we can hear His Spirit whisper "Not yet" onto the end of that last sentence. In the darkest of nights, when our hearts are breaking, we can feel His heartbeat. He will give us glimpses in the night of what WILL BE someday. Knowing the ground-shaking, sky-splitting love of Christ is what will help us see that our dreams ARE meant to come true. What we desire at our core and all seek in different ways is meant to happen. God DESIRES the world to be made right again - from every genocide, every injustice against a child, every broken relationship, every hurting person and abused animal. He desires all things to be made new. He desires to revolutionize the world. He did. And He is.
In Christ, He makes us new and gives us the answer to the
deepest longings and stirrings of our hearts. As GK Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, "Instead of looking at
books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There
I found an account...of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of
lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild
secrecy of the wind...His 'how much more' [statements in Scripture] is piled
one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds."
Christ showed this world something they have never seen
before, and that we have not seen since. He pushed and pulled and changed the
world with His holy power. He challenged the status quo, peeling the blinds back from people's eyes and helping them
understand the yearning of their hearts and what it is God has made us for. He
shows us a different way to live, that He desires MORE from us and for us -
which we can see in Scripture, as Chesterton pointed out, in Christ's "How much more,then..."
He taught this world MORE and asks His followers to do the same - to challenge the world as it is and then to give the answer for what can make it right. He desires us to join Him in spreading His revolutionary love, His beauty, His glory, in this world now. He asks us to prepare the way - to prepare hearts, to help people know Who they are longing for, and to live out His truth and justice and mercy in every area of our lives, spreading a little bit more of His Kingdom here on earth.
He taught this world MORE and asks His followers to do the same - to challenge the world as it is and then to give the answer for what can make it right. He desires us to join Him in spreading His revolutionary love, His beauty, His glory, in this world now. He asks us to prepare the way - to prepare hearts, to help people know Who they are longing for, and to live out His truth and justice and mercy in every area of our lives, spreading a little bit more of His Kingdom here on earth.
He asks us to join the TrueRevolution. In it we will finally LIVE and move and have our being.
THIS is what motivates me. I love others because He has
first loved me. I love justice because our God is a God of justice. I seek
justice in this world because it is what I am made to do. It is what we were
ALL made to do. We were made for MORE, and therefore are called to live for
more and seek MORE. We see this and learn this in the Gospel of Christ. In
giving our lives to Christ, in submitting ourselves to Him and joining His
vision, we find true FREEDOM. We find hope and peace and justice.
So no, social justice
is not my "thing." And it is not the concept of social justice that I love. It is
Christ. It always has been and always will be Christ. And from Him all else
flows. I pray it is the same for you.
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
- Revelation 21:5
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