Lost In Transition

“And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what [shall be] the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Mt 24:3 AV)

I find it a bit odd that the same disciples who could not grasp the coming death of Christ and who fled at Calvary and who went back to fishing after Calvary would be asking for signs of His coming.  If one is asking for signs of His coming, that infers he has to be going.  He is present with them.  Why ask of His coming unless He has to go first?  Sometimes, we believe things in the back of our minds that have not made it to our hearts.  We know it is true, but we have a hard time coming to terms with it.  Jesus repeatedly warned His disciples that He had to suffer and die, but that He would rise again.  It wasn’t for ignorance they had a hard time accepting the death of Christ.  They knew it.  And that is why they phrase the question above as they did.

We had the privilege to minister to a unique family.  The parents of this family came from separate but very abusive backgrounds.  There was history of the two wherein both were abused by authority figures in their younger years.  When they accepted Christ, one of the two struggled with the unconditional love of God.  He never had an example of unconditional love in his entire life.  He knew, in his head, that God is not man.  He knew, in his head, that what was impossible with the people in his early life is possible with God.  Yet, he had a hard time accepting that a God could love unconditionally.  This forced him to see unfortunate circumstances of life and history as a manifestation of God’s conditional love.  If God loved unconditionally, then bad things wouldn’t happen.  He could not see God’s unconditional love in balance with man’s ability of self-determination.  God does not force His will on individual men.  At least where choices are concerned.  He does with consequences of those choices.  But not choices themselves.  Anyway, this fella, since he could not understand unconditional love, would not allow God to love him.  We had a time with him.  But he finally allowed what he knew to be true in his head to reach his heart.

There are things we struggle with.  God’s plan for us or our own usefulness to God’s plan.  We struggle with faith.  We wonder of God really will take care of us.  We wonder if the LORD can really do as we hope.  We wonder if our life is not in vain.  Many thoughts come into our heads.  But deep down inside, the LORD has given us that which we need.  We just have to let it get from our head to our heart.