After this I looked and there before me was a great
multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and
language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were
wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they
cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the
throne, and to the Lamb.” -Revelation
7:9-10
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor
female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
-Galatians 3:28
Reconciliation.
I was asked to choose a word for 2013 that in some way
represents what God is teaching me during this season of my life, and this is
going to be mine.
The American Heritage College Dictionary (my personal
favorite!) says that to “reconcile” means “to reestablish a close relationship
between. To settle or resolve. To bring (oneself) to accept. To make compatible or consistent.”
So reconciliation implies that there was a relationship to
begin with that was broken in some way.
Looking around at our world, anyone can tell that we desperately
need reconciliation. There is division
and conflict everywhere, between students in school, between family members,
between political parties, between nations, between ethnic groups…and the list
goes on. People cry out for “world
peace,” but the conflicts just keep coming.
What we need is to go back to the point before we were
broken. So when was that? When were we not divided…by “race,” religion, class, or political party? We have to go back…really far back.
God created us in His image, to be in a relationship with Him. But like any healthy relationship, there was freedom…for us to choose whether we wanted that relationship or not.
We’ve all chosen ourselves over our relationship with
Him. And once that relationship is
broken, there is nothing we can do to restore it on our own.
I love this mural, not only for the story it tells in its pictures, but for the story behind it. It’s such a great symbol of unity and reconciliation in the Uptown neighborhood. And yet, there are still gangs in Chicago. There are still children growing up in broken homes. There are still thousands of people without a place to lay their heads at night. And there is still racism.
That’s because our ultimate need, beyond reconciliation with
each other, is reconciliation with God.
Until that relationship is restored, true peace between men is not
possible. We are incapable of bringing
about reconciliation on our own. It is
only possible, as depicted in the last portion of this mural, through Jesus
Christ, who bridged the gap between man and God (Romans 5:10).
Even though I know the brokenness in the world is a result
of sin and separation from God, I still struggle to understand why He has
allowed it to continue to the extent that we now see it. As I sat at a dinner table at Cornerstone
Community Outreach talking to J-- about the things he’s seen on the street and
what my life might have been like if I’d grown up in the streets of Chicago
rather than the suburbs of St. Louis, my heart was totally crushed. It’s so unfair; why has God blessed me so
much and allowed others to have so little?
Ultimately, I know that God’s ways are higher than mine, and
I’ll never understand the full picture of His plan until I get to heaven
(Isaiah 55:8-11). But lately I’ve been
thinking that I might have to accept some of the blame myself. Because even though Jesus is the one who has
done the work of reconciling us to God, we
are the means by which God has chosen to spread that message.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of
view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the
new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ
and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world
to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has
committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s
ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on
Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for
us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
-2 Corinthians 5:16-21
If we don’t share this good news, how will people know (Romans10:14-15)?
If we truly want to see peace and reconciliation in our world,
then we have to point people to Jesus. It’s
what God commands us to do. It's not a message for us to keep to ourselves; He means for us to share it. So reconciliation
will be my word for 2013. I don’t
presume to think I can change anyone’s life; only God can do that. But if He wants to use me, I want to let Him.
