SHAKESPEARE AND HAMLET

Shakespearean Players, London, EN

Timothy Keller has written that “our relationship to God is more like Shakespeare’s relationship to Hamlet. How much will Hamlet know about Shakespeare? Only what Shakespeare writes about himself into the play. He goes on to reference C. S .Lewis who reasoned that “we’ll only know about God if God has written something about himself into our life, into our world. And he has”. Keller continues, “God looked into our world-the world he made-and saw us destroying ourselves and the world by turning away from him. It filled his heart with pain (Genesis 6:6). He loved us. He saw us struggling to extricate ourselves from the traps and misery we created for ourselves. And so he wrote himself in. Jesus Christ, the God-man, born in a manger, born to die on a cross for us. Behold who Jesus is, how he loves you and how he came to put the world right”.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells the story of a son who decides it’s time to cash in on his inheritance right now. He leaves his father’s land and soon squanders all the money. Saint Augustine observed that, “When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.” The son finally returns home to a surprisingly forgiving father who rejoices that he is back.

Jesus relates this story to show the complexity of his Abba’s love for us. God is our Abba or eternal Father, and according to Jesus, we are his beloved children. We were created in His image and He considers you and me His children. We share many emotions. When Jesus taught us to pray The Lord’s Prayer, he started with the words, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…” and he addressed God as Father a total of 170 times in the Bible. Jesus created a new way of praying that is as natural as a child talking to his father. By creating us in his own image, God truly wanted someone to love and someone capable of returning that love.

To become more like God is humanity’s highest goal, by understanding and reflecting his characteristics. The path leads to becoming less self-centered and more God-centered.

SONS AND DAUGHTERS

Madonna and Child, London, EN

During a ninety year period from 1850-1930 around 250,000 orphaned, abandoned and homeless children from the teeming cities were placed on “Orphan Trains” and most were adopted by families throughout the expanding American West. In Romans 8 Paul reveals that we received the spirit of adoption from the grace of our Creator and “by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children”.

We were created in the divine image with qualities of mind and spirit that separate us from all other living beings. One of the basic aspects of our humanness involves our relationships. When it comes to family relationships we can be a son, daughter, parent, grandparent, great grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc. But when it comes to our relationship with our Creator, we are all simply sons and daughters.

When Jesus taught us to pray The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, he started with the words “Our Father, who art in Heaven” and he addressed God as Abba or Father a total of 170 times in the Bible. Jesus created a new way of praying that is as natural as a child talking to his father. By creating us in his own image, God truly wanted someone to love and someone capable of returning that love.

And that qualifies all of us on this spinning orphan train of life as sons and daughters of one universal and eternal family of God. Ultimately, we need to take better care of each other and start treating each other like the sons and daughters we were created to be.

THE FIRST BENEFICIARY OF BLACK FRIDAY

Black Friday, Internet Domain

As we move along in the holy week, Good Friday looms ahead prior to Easter Sunday. I prefer to use an alternative name for that day over two thousand years ago as Black Friday. The sun stopped shining and darkness came over the whole land for three hours in the middle of that day as all nature mourned the impending death of its Creator. For the first time in all creation, the Father was temporarily seperated from relationship with the Son. The temple curtain was torn apart in that hour. The curtain symbolically separated the court of the people and the Most Holy Place where only the high priest could enter once a year to atone for the sins of the people. Now, Jesus’ death removed the barrier between human beings and God so that His sacrifice could pave the way for the atonement of all sins and the promise of eternal life through the grace of God.

Just before Jesus was condemned to death on a cross, however, a man named Barabbas had also been condemned to death. It was a Passover custom for the Roman ruler to pardon one prisoner. Barabbas had been convicted as a revolutionary insurgent and murderer. Interestingly, he was guilty of the same false charge against Jesus. Finding no fault with Jesus, Pilate offered the riotous crowd either Jesus or Barabbas to be set free; assuming they would chose the obvious guilty man. But Barabbas was spared certain death on that day and given new life while Jesus was sent to the cross in his place.

The names of many Jewish men of the day were derived from their father’s name. Interestingly, bar means “son of” and abba means “father”. Barabbas could be the son of any father--you or me. Jesus was crucified with two condemned men also dying on either side of him. One hurled insults but the other recoginzed His divinity and pleaded, "remember me when you come into your kingdom". And Jesus answered him; "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise". Only this man was able to see beyond the seeming devastation of the cross to the triumph of the eternal Kingdom of God. As he breathed his last on the cross, Jesus softly spoke, “Father (Abba), into your hands I commit my spirit”. We are all sons and daughters of our eternal Abba, and after the events of Black Friday, we are all now the beneficiaries of His priceless grace. Grace means there is nothing we can do to make Him love us more and nothing we can do to make Him love us less. We only have to look to the cross to understand the full measure of His love. Barabas was given another chance at mortal life, but the unknown dying man on Calvary received a last minute chance at eternal life!