Category Archives: Remembering God

Remember the hope of glory

I’m pretty sure I’m one of the most forgetful people on the planet.

I joke that I think I have early dementia, but it might not be a joke. I forget the names of people I’ve known for a long time. I forget what I was doing when I walk into a room, and have to go back to where I started to try and jog loose some clue that will send me back to the room to do what I set out to do in the first place. And I forget about God.

I have this nagging ache for Jesus to break through in my life in a visible, tangible way. I want so badly to see the evidence that he is alive and changing the hearts and lives of those I love. Even my own life. I want to see that I have an actual desire to love those who I feel unloved by. And I forget that he is here, with me, unseen, and working to transform me. I also forget this means I will actually need to make intentional changes and stop in the parking lot at the grocery store to tell God out loud in my car how angry I am, how frustrated I am, how tired I am, and then thank him for the promise that He won’t leave me or abandon me. I forget that Christ lives in me. In ME.

So tonight, I’m intentionally remembering the miracle that it is in me, even now.

 “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” – Colossians 1:27 ESV

I read somewhere recently, or maybe I listened, I don’t remember, that the meaning of glory in the Bible has to do with substance or weight. Glory isn’t just getting attention or honor or being at your peak in performance or potential. Glory is weight. Glory is substance. (Oh, I remember now, it was the book God Of All Things by Andrew Wilson). As Wilson put it, “To speak of God’s glory, in biblical terms, is not just to speak of his splendor and beauty (though that too) but also to speak of how weighty, heavy and substantial he is.”

The lyrics to the song by Switchfoot come to mind here.

I can feel you reaching
Pushing through the ceiling
‘Til the final healing
I’m looking for you

In my restlessness, in my longing to see God’s substance, his glory in my life, my changed life, and in the lives of those I love, I forget Christ in me.

This is why I need the Church. This is why I need the disciplines of meditating on scripture, praying, all the time. Or like the Bible says, “without ceasing.” This is why I need to remember.

Father, it’s quite miraculous that I wake up still being held by you. Jesus still has hold of me. I still love Him whom I have never seen. It’s a miracle. Please, let me see your glory. Let my children see the weighty substance of your actual life-changing reality. Don’t let me forget you.

Remember the mystery

There’s a handmade wooden sign in the hallway leading to my bedroom with these words in black:

” And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:20

I walk by that sign daily and don’t give it a thought, but the other day I stopped and read it over and over. I considered whether I really believed what it said. I mean, Jesus told his followers to go out and tell all kinds of people all over the world about him and what he has done and taught. He told them to baptize them and teach them, make Jesus-followers out of them. And then, he said, “Hey, pay attention (which is what I take “Behold” to mean). I know what you all are thinking. I know this will feel, and is, impossible for you. So get this: I WILL BE WITH YOU. All the way to the end.”

Do I believe that? Do I believe Jesus is with me? The Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus who told a storm to stop after being woke from a nap, and it did. The Jesus who touched untouchables and healed them. The Jesus who suffered the torture of Roman execution and the rejection and abandonment of his friends and came back to life after three days of rigor mortis in the grave. Do I believe this Jesus is with me?

I am surrounded day in and day out with people I love who don’t turn to Jesus as, “…the way, the truth and the life.” And I can’t explain my belief to them. I just know, even in the midst of my own lack of faith, that he’s with me.

In Colossians, Paul wrote that there’s a mystery going on in those who follow Jesus, the mystery is: Christ is in us. I can’t explain this mystery. I can’t even get my own mind around it. But I know, something greater than me and my tired pea-brain compels me to, cry out to a God I’ve never seen but love, reach out to a people who look at me with condescending sighs (because I’m their mom) and constantly seek to love God and love people better. For Jesus’ name’s sake. Because he’s worth it. That is happening in me. And it’s a mystery.

So today, I’m remembering this: The God who said, “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word,” is the God who said, “Behold, I am with you always. To the very end.”

Christ is with me. In me.

I need to remember.