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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

Hasten

Hasten

Survival. That is the concept to which I keep returning as I ponder over Daniel’s sermon this week. As we look at the grueling grasp that death has on all the meaningful relationships around us; as we are tortured by the inevitable march toward our own demise; as we look back on the death and ruin of the world around us; and, even more, as we look forward to the day that the world will be made right and death and pain to be extinguished, I cannot help but think that all this points to survival. To merely survive.

If the world is so bad now, and if I am only to be hurt by the loss of relationship, but there is a day to come where things will be good, why then should I seek anything beyond just getting through this life and getting to the other side? Why would I try to do much more than just survive for a time, and just hope toward the future? But Daniel incisively caught me up from this humdrum survival with the last lines of his sermon.

“We look forward and say there is a better day coming because of Jesus. And not only do we look forward, but we hasten it by living today as a renewed people in the midst of that broken world. You see, it is in living out the life that we share with Christ in the daily spheres and relationships that we engage in, the people we like to be around, and the people we don’t like to be around; the situations that we were hoping for, and the situations we wish we could avoid; it’s living out our faith in Christ in the midst of those situations that allows us to serve as the presence of God’s love in the very absences of our city. Remember the Gospel!”

Two pieces of those lines really struck me. First, it was especially poignant to hear Daniels’ usage of “hasten” - that we hasten the coming of Christ and the renewal of the world by living out the Gospel in our lives. How vivid a picture and how high a calling to consider how my living of the Gospel today is bringing the Kingdom of God to bear on this world. It is hastening of the reconciliation between the “now and the not yet.” Peter writes in 2 Peter - “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming”, otherwise translated, that last phrase reads “as you wait eagerly for the day of God to come.” I see an immense disparity between theses exhortations from Peter and Daniel and my proclivity to just survive. How much greater and more difficult and more worthy is a life to live when it is eagerly oriented toward the day of Christ’s coming?

The next piece of Daniel’s closing thoughts were his allusion back to the sermon series on Daniel - Daniel: A Faithful Presence of Love, as well as a reference to our mission and vision as a church - to be the faithful presence of love in the absences of our city. For me, this set the stage for the immensely practical outworking of this sermon. We see the grip of the curse of the death on our lives and the lives around us; we see the grace of God in giving us life despite our sin; we see the grace of God in allowing us to die and not be eternally bound to these imperfect, pain-filled bodies; and we look toward the final coming of Christ and His redemption of this broken world. And in all of that, in all of those truths, we see that our lives, when appropriately oriented toward an eager expectation of the Day of the Lord, are used to embody the Gospel and point toward the glory of God through our faithful presence of love. It is hard to miss that there are a multitude of absences in our city, but it is ever so helpful to be reminded that in those absences, our living is bringing the Kingdom of God to bear on our city.

As we see the pain from death, be reminded of the life and redemption to come, orient ourselves to that day, but in doing so remember that we are not called merely to survive, but to thrive and in doing so, bring the Kingdom of God to flourish. As Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10). Remember the Gospel!

~ Josh Spare

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