As another year draws to a close, one can hardly help but think, “Where has the year gone?”  Time overtakes us with ease.  Minutes turn into hours, hours into days, and days become months.  Before we realize it, we’ve left a trail of years behind.  And what of it all?  A certain wistfulness falls whenever we reflect on the time that’s gone by. We wonder if the life we’ve lived so far has been meaningful.  Our thoughts drift to the “what-ifs” and the “if-onlys” dotting our past.  What will the future hold?

That bittersweetness we feel evidences the longing for eternity God has set in our hearts.  Though we are yet finite, we ache for infinity — that time could no longer condemn our past or constrain our future.  We desire to live perpetually in the present free of regret or worry.  Can this be possible?

Ask God, the master of time.   He knows the beginning and the end.  Only He can satisfy the deep longing He himself placed in us.  Will you trust Him to meet your need for eternity?

Immanuel is one of the names of Christ, and it means “God with us.”  This name has more than just abstract meaning.  God is with us not only in the sense of some anonymous guardian.  He came to us in a very real way.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus had to be born as a baby?  He could have come as a fully grown man.  Indeed, the leaders of many other religions made their appearance that way.  Why did our Savior start his ministry on earth as an infant?  Because that’s what humans do.  They are born as helpless babies.  They get their diapers changed.  They learn how to walk before running.  They learn to obey their parents.  They grow into teenagers and then adults.  Each day as a man, Jesus faced the trials and triumphs that are part of the human experience–including death.  No one can legitimately tell God, “You don’t know what it’s like!”  God came to be with us, among us, one of us.  Because Jesus lived life firsthand, he understands our struggles intimately well, and has compassion to give us comfort.

Imagine the discovery of a new energy source that is virtually free to produce, clean, and ten times more efficient than fossil fuels.  It is also widely available.  The impact of such a discovery would likely be profound.  Governments, global economies, and even popular culture would change, and probably for the better, as the world adjusts to freedom from energy constraints.

Sometimes people wonder why God hasn’t done more to make the world a better place.  We see rampant poverty in many areas of the world.  Injustice abounds, as does greed and other moral atrocities.  Does God not care?  Ah, but He does, and He has sent the answer to the world’s problems, but it comes in the unlikeliest of forms–a little baby.  The foundation underlying the ills of the world is sin.  The expression of sin comes in many varieties, some clearly visible and others subtle.  All expressions of sin, however, share the common root of self-centeredness.

Jesus is the antidote to self-centeredness.  His willingness to die on our behalf disarms every argument for why we need to fend for ourselves.  Jesus shows us that God loves us unconditionally.  The potency of that truth is immense.  It means we have all we need in Him.  God’s love frees us to be who we were meant to be instead of the fronts we put up to make others like us, fear us, approve of us, etc.  One who understands what Christ did at the Cross will never live the same again; a community that understands that truth will change the world.  Joy to the world, indeed!

Some people hold God in high esteem because He’s been their helper in times of need, and for that, they are grateful.  Then there are those who are neutral toward God; they don’t see a particular need for God because they’re getting along fine in life.  Is there any similarity between these two kinds of people?  More than one might think.

In Psalm 63:3, the author (King David) says he thirsts for God.  He says his “whole being longs for [God].”   Why?  Because God’s “love is better than life.”  Note what David did not say.  He does not long after the things God could grant him.  The object of his desire is neither treasure nor health, not success or renown, but God himself.  David learned the secret of being a complete person, and it is knowing God.  We were designed to be with God, to love and be loved by Him.

Until we learn to appreciate God simply for who He is, the burden of discontent will weigh on us.  Either our satisfaction with God will be conditioned on what He’s done for us lately, in which case we’ll be disappointed when He doesn’t give us what we want (as opposed to what we need).  Or, we won’t find any value in God at all, in which case we’ll miss out on the spiritual sustenance we need.  Neither outcome is healthy.  God is not a genie or an irrelevance.  He’s the water our soul thirsts for, whether or not we realize how thirsty we are.

Christ’s sufferings had nothing to do with what Christ did or who He is. He was sinless, and so He certainly didn’t deserve to suffer punishment. He didn’t make bad choices either. He led a perfect human life. And when the Father abandoned Christ on the Cross, it wasn’t because the Son had done anything wrong. Jesus was forsaken because of our sins, not His own. And therein lies the point. The sufferings that Jesus experienced did not go to His identity, but were purposed to reap a reward for another, viz., our salvation.

We get to “partake” (share) in Christ’s sufferings. Oswald Chamber’s point is that our sufferings might not be about us as a person per se — our self-worth and the health of our relationship to God — but because God wants to fashion us into the proper instrument for His will to be done. This is sacrificial suffering. We might not see the point of our troubles while in the thick of it, but hold on — it is not for naught.

The source of Peter’s troubles was not lack of passion, but lack of focus.  The spectacle of Christ walking on water inspired Peter to do likewise.  Zeal got Peter out of the boat and into the water. But before long, Peter took his eyes off Christ and laid them on the wind and waves.  His courage sunk as he realized there was no way he could walk on water by his own power.

Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation?  God calls you to an amazing task, and you respond enthusiastically.  Then you notice the obstacles ahead and you dwell on that.  Before long, the motivation you once had is drained out of you.  Your desire to obey God’s call hasn’t changed from the moment you said yes to the call, but your level of courage has.

It’s been said that what Peter should have done is keep his eyes on Christ, and that is true.  But what does that mean?  There’s a particular situation in which one cannot bear to stop looking at a person.  When you are in love, your lover is so pleasant that you never want to look away.  And so it is with us and Christ.  When we love Him, we do not stop looking at Him.  Doing great things in the power of the Lord starts and ends with a genuine love for Christ.

We have in us a desire to belong.  We want to be part of something, to know we have meaning apart from ourselves.  We might assert our independence from any number of things — from authority, from the demands of another, from tyranny — but the need for belonging remains.  That’s why romance and family are pervasive themes in our culture.  We want to be able to say that we belong to someone or some group.  Belonging is integral to our identity.

What comfort there is, then, in hearing God say “you are mine.”  Granted, that declaration might draw a negative response.  “I am His?  Does He mean to rule over me?  Is He supposed to be my master?”  If that’s your reaction, keep an open mind and try to look at it differently.  When God says we are His, He’s saying we belong.  There’s a place in His kingdom for us.  Why?  Because He is in a love relationship with us.  In fact, the Bible says He loves us so much that He is jealous for us.  See Exodus 34:14.  Have you ever loved someone so much that the very thought of him or her loving another makes you sick?  That’s the kind of jealousy God has for us.  He will do anything to make us understand His love, and indeed He has.

When we turned away from Him, asserted our independence, and essentially told Him, “I don’t belong to you” (that happened in the Garden of Eden) God continued to chase after us.  He knew that apart from Him, we would perish (death is the ultimate end, for He alone is the sustainer of life).  How did God chase after us?  By sending His son, Jesus.  Jesus came to tell us of the Father’s love, that we belong.  And to demonstrate the Father’s love, Jesus took the fatal consequence of sin upon himself.  He died for us.  That’s how much the Father loves us.   That’s how much the Father was willing to sacrifice to get across the point that we belong to Him.

Is God our King?  Is He our Master?  Surely.  But we belong to Him as His children.  We are sons and daughters of the Lord Most High.

Eventually, I discovered that I have an innate desire for beauty.  This thirst was already manifesting in my life in various ways, though I didn’t see it that way until later.  My love for the artistry of photography is a prime example.  How did I know that beauty was a necessity in my life and not a mere luxury?  I would find myself languishing in times when it seemed like there was little beauty in my life, whether of an aesthetic nature or otherwise.  Something seems missing.

That’s how I feel now.  But I think I’ve come to learn something else about beauty.  The love of beauty can be either selfish or selfless in nature.  To understand this distinction better, I need to share a bit of what’s going on in my head right now.  I feel languid.  Unmotivated.  Dry and bored.  I won’t go into the gory details of why I feel this way, but the fact is, that’s how I feel.  This isn’t something new.  I’ve felt it on numerous occasions over the years.  The difference is that my response to it has changed.  It used to be that I would react in one of two ways when I felt the way I do now.  One would be to try to fill the void.  I would look for ways to occupy my attention with something I thought was beautiful (some of which were not beautiful at all, but destructive).  The second type of response would be to throw myself a pity party.  I would complain about my life circumstances, mope, and think, “Woe is me.”  Both responses are rooted in beauty deficiency, it is true, but both are also extremely self-centered.  In both instances, the emphasis was on MY satisfaction (or lack thereof).  I either aimed to gorge myself on some facsimile of beauty or complained of being deprived of beauty.

Although I feel dry now, I don’t want to go down either of those two roads (though the temptation to do so is there).  I realize there is some lie about myself I’ve bought into because the reality is that there IS beauty in my life; I just don’t see it.  The beauty I’m speaking of is Christ.  Christ is beautiful.  He always was, always will be.  If I am not thrilled by His beauty, that’s because something is blurring my vision of Him.  The antidote to the blahness is to remove that obstructs my vision.  It is not, as I did before, to rail against God for my present circumstances.  Recognizing Christ for who He is exhibits a selfless admiration of beauty.  It means adoring Christ simply because He is undeniably beautiful.  Such affection for Christ does not grow out of a desire to fill a personal need (though it does that), but rather, stems from a natural response to the sheer magnificence of the person of Christ.

My point in making the distinction is to chart the paths I could take in times when I feel down.  I could selfishly try to compensate for, or commiserate over, the perceived lack of beauty in my life.  Or, I could recenter on Christ and be “transformed by the renewing of my mind.” Romans 12:2.  The right choice seems pretty clear.

The ocean laid open before me, and I wanted a place where I could sit and watch the waves up close.  I found a spot near the edge of a rock ledge.  Soon after I sat down, the tide came crashing in.  Water vaulted up the ledge to the right of me, in the next instant turning into a terrific spray.  Barely six feet below me, a white wash of foam oozed between the rocks.  In less than ten seconds, it was calm again.  Not a drop of water touched me even as I witnessed the awesome turbulence of the ocean.

I was reminded of the security we have in God.   There are times when troubles menacingly approach.  We fear the impact, we are afraid the waves will sweep us into the ocean.  We want to retreat far away from the advancing tide, but God will not let us.  No, He wills us to be in close vicinity to the danger zone.  But the center of His will is the safest place to be.  Though the surrounding environment gives much cause for alarm, He places us in a position of safety.  He is with us.  Why then should we fear?