Day 89 - Future Focused
Scripture focus: He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:2-5 TNIV
Last year I took on the project of studying the last week in the life of Jesus. What I learned certainly altered my Easter-reality. (For more details, order Insight, Finding Your Way Back To God, Part 3 at www.northstarcommunity.com) Anyway, Isaiah 53 prophetically sums up what the gospels reveal - we didn't understand Jesus' ambition. He was passionate about living out his story. His story invites us into a world larger than ourselves. His story speaks of suffering and serving, kingdom and community, belief and betrayal, madness and maturity. Even Jesus himself had to seriously pause to prepare in the Garden of Gethsemane before the final curtain call, when the last scene of his story on earth would be revealed. I continue to marvel at his desire to call the whole thing off. Three times he asked his father for a cancellation of his story. But in the end, he rose above the stress and the cravings of his mid-brain. He ignored the shouts for self-preservation. He accepted his place in the story. Why? It wasn't because he felt like it! I think it was a four letter word that compelled him to obey. He possessed hope.
"When there is no future, there is no hope. Where there is no hope, there is no reason to live. There is only despair. Our souls are not designed for despair. It's not where we are intended to live. If we live there too long, we will find ourselves soul-sick." Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 9, Destiny. You and I have come to understand that prolonged seasons of stress cause our brains to break. Specifically, the pleasure center of our brain goes haywire. Our brains become neurologically impaired. Despair is a stressor; part of soul-sickness is related to brain distress.
"When we have no dream, it kills us." Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 9, Destiny. You want to know why? Because it takes an entire, intact, communicating-with-all-the-parts kind of brain to dream. When our mid-brain goes bonkers, it causes a thing called "hypo-vigilant" response. Literally, the mid-brain refuses to talk to the pre-frontal cortex (the seat of reasoning, delayed gratification, ability to see cause and effect) and the other parts of the brain that help us find profound meaning in our daily lives.
"It's the same way with hope. Hope pulls us into the future. Hope is rare, but we don't need much of it to experience its power. When we are full of hope, it's not because everything in the future is certain to us, but because the future itself is filled with promise. At the same time, like the promise of a future, hope comes only from something we do not yet have, something we have not yet attained. In other words, how much you have in the world has no bearing on how much hope you have. In actuality, everything you have no longer qualifies as a conduit of hope. Once you have it, it's out of the arena of hope. Hope pulls you into the future because it comes from there. " Soul Cravings, Erwin McManus, entry 9, Destiny. Jesus suffered AND he hoped. His story provides a reason to hope - even in the midst of a messy chapter in our own story.
Recommended reading: Deuteronomy 10 and 11 in the morning; Luke 9 in the evening
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