This scripture helped me deal with a difficult news story in recent current events. This picture was based on the news story out of Oklahoma of the fraternity bus that was singing racist chants. This is an image depicting societal sin and helped me process that God can use acts of evil and create good. The fraternity bus (the greeks look like zombies without eyeballs!) are enclosed in a dark black/white image driving down the root system into death. “But if it dies”….it can bear fruit. Through this act of darkness and evil, God can create fruit. First, awareness then repentance (see figure praying “Lord, forgive us”. Some fruit are: people of different ethnicities having coffee together, discussing race, churches opening their doors and singing different styles of music, Unity tables coming together to have difficult and challenging conversations of reconciliation, Neighborhood diversity levels rising, schools tasking diversity as their main priority and people reading books to becoming more aware of life in other people’s shoes.
“Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone”
The grains of wheat flow with the wind, taking themselves wherever the wind takes them. Ultimately the grain of wheat ends in nothingness. It ends up in darkness and in space, floating. It’s redemptive process has been unfulfilled. It’s purpose is non-existent. It has not died. There will be no fruit.
The grain is alone in space, floating. Without ground to lay down on, without soil to grow, without sunlight to bloom. Just darkness….nothing.
“He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal”
This man is climbing the mountain of world glory looking for his pot of gold. He is covered in sunglasses and a nice suit, but also is a bit free-spirited. He is weighed down with his “bag o’ routine” that is full of a dumbell – his empowerment, a bottle of control, a naproll of comfort, a fancy “image” watch that makes him look good, and his handy iphone that brings him all the “security” that he needs. He wears “indifference” on his head to keep him ignorantly blissfull of anything that would he doesn’t need to know that would bring him down. He climbs the mountain in his own power and is equipped with all the good things that the world offers him. This is how I feel myself living my life sometimes, these can be my strongholds.
This is how climbing up that mountain works in the world!
I continued to process this verse and kept questioning “What do sins, what do struggles, what do strongholds become when we hate them? I struggled with the part of the verse that says “he who hates his life in this world” – that is a tough – what does that mean and how can hate turn into good? I saw this man completely focused on Jesus and looking at the rainbow that symbolizes God’s covenant with us, not a pot of gold.
I looked at my strongholds and kept turning them into books that I read and then mastered, into phone calls with friends who helped and supported me, into communities that guided me towards Christ. Ultimately, I saw them as:
testimonies
transformations
miracles.
Victories!
I tried to think of strongholds that I had experienced in certain situations that I knew that were dead in my life. Then this image came into my mind. This portrays my struggle with having adopted and biological children. We started trying to have biological children while at the same time starting an adoption process. We expected both to happen fairly quickly and nicely so we could start our perfectly timed family. Nothing happened on either side for 3 yrs. I struggled with control which included a refusal to wait while insisting to move straight to a foreign country across the world to pick up our child while bothering many people with persistent phone calls. I was trying to make adoption happen in my own control. I struggled with empowerment, thinking that I had the power to make a biological baby through doctors, IVF, drugs, fertility diets, and acupuncture. I struggled with disbelief thinking, “Does God love me? Is God good? Am I being punished?” I struggled with image and was concerned with other people pitying me and wondering if I would be considered a real woman or a real mother. I wondered if I would make my husband happy or my family happy and if they would secretly resent me for not having children. I had to let all of these things go. And thankfully I was able to do that through the grace of God. He gave me freedom and faith. Through our adventures, He has reminded me to depend on Him.
He has brought miracles -after I buried control, empowerment, disbelief and image. God showed His awesomeness and reminded me that yeah… He is in control and not me. He reminded me that He has the power and not me. He reminded me that I need to believe and depend on Him instead of all that other junk. And then came… 4 little miracles named Smartypants, Sparkbomb, Spunkylove and Sweetcheeks.
