This is a story I (Harry) wrote last week when I was on a silent retreat with a group of student leaders from CBC. I reflected on my life so far and on my walk with Jesus. Through this story, Jesus helped me to process some of the things that are going on in our life at the moment.
(Tut mir leid, dass ich hier nur die englische Geschichte habe. Wenn ich dazu komme, werde ich sie übersetzen und dann hier in Deutsch posten. Wenn jemand anderes es übersetzen will - go right ahead!^^)
I started making my way into the woods. I could have stayed on the open
field with the gorgeous view of steep mountains in the back and the small farm
down below. However, something made me wanting to keep going, looking for a different
spot to sit and enjoy these three hours with Jesus. As I continued on the small
path up the hill, the bush became denser and denser, and the path ever harder
to find. Where am I supposed to go?
This is the very question I am asking Jesus today. Not in a physical sense
– I am pretty sure that He is calling me to stay in Bible College for the next
two years. My question is on the spiritual level:
“Jesus, what do you want my life to look like? You are the Lord and
Master of my entire being, after all. How do you want me to spend my time,
energy, and money? Where am I supposed to go with my life?”
I have asked him this question before. One answer he gave me not too
long after I finished school was that, first of all, I am not going anywhere
alone. No matter what path I was going to choose, he said, he will be there
with me. It isn’t my journey – it is our
journey. The reason for this incredible, life-giving, freeing truth was and
still is that he loves me so much that he longs to have an extremely deep,
intimate relationship with him.
When I first heard him answer my question like that I soaked his love up
like a sponge. I spend an hour alone with him every day, I listened to people
talk about him, and everything I did I shared with him. I enjoyed life with my
Lord to the full. It felt like an easy walk through lavishly green open meadows
with a new best friend, taking lots of breaks to make photos of the beauty
around us, enjoying the sun, bursting with energy.
Jesus then gave me another answer. He showed me that even as he is
walking with me, there are others still that we journey with. He gave me the
most wonderful, lovely, adventurous person to be my wife, and since then the
three of us have been journeying together through many valleys and over many
hills, most of the time walking alongside friends who share the way.
Then I thought: “This is it. Jesus loves me and I love him and my wife
and our friends. This is what life should look like – this is Jesus’ purpose
for us.” I was 20 years old and knew the answers. I was naïve.
Next thing I knew, Jesus took us by our hands – it did not feel like that
at the time, but this is what really happened – and we left the open, sunny
fields for a while and entered the woods. He showed us that life was more
complicated.
As I am writing these lines, I sit in the dense undergrowth of a piece
of rich north-western coastal rain forest. It is different from tropical
forests, but it sure feels like a jungle. In fact, it feels a lot like the kind
of spiritual terrain Jesus is leading us through at the moment. When I was in
the open fields I believed that my individual intimate relationship with him is
all that life was really about. Everything and everyone else just didn’t matter
as much. We are here mainly for one purpose: to know him; and then to lead us
to Jesus so they can know him, too. Now, let me explain this: I did not act
like a jerk to everyone around me, most of the time, anyways. I longed to love
my neighbor, be there for the broken-hearted and help them getting back on
their feet, as best as I knew how to. Also, as I wrote earlier, Jesus is not
the kind of guy who checks out our life style before he decides whether he is
going to be friends with us or not. He loves every single person. He created
every single person! What I am going to write is not about how good you are in
Jesus’ eyes.
Having said this, here is another answer Jesus gave me on our journey,
not too long ago: Yes, all of who we are and all of what we do is supposed to
flow out for our relationship of intimacy with Jesus. But his purposes do not
stop there. In fact, this is only like a spot of paint in a bigger picture.
There is a story going on, a story where we have a role to play: It is God’s
story with His created world and with humankind in particular. Ever since Jesus
walked the paths of Palestine, this story has been coming to its conclusion;
and even though all I see at times is Jesus walking through the bush of life
with us, we are part of that big drama.
Now, you may not see yet why this answer makes things complicated. Here
is the reason: The story says that in Jesus, the first truly human being since
Adam and Eve, God is gathering his people of renewed human beings. Right in the
messy swamp of pain, evil, brokenness and suffering that we have gotten the
world into, God is calling people to follow Jesus, and to live fresh, new, good
human lives like he did. All of these people, each being rooted in love and
intimacy with Jesus, are God’s agents of hope – because the way they live
demonstrates to the world that God is making everything new in Jesus.
Do you see now why this complicates my life? No? It is because I
desperately want to live as God’s agent, but it is so difficult to know how to
do just that! Let me tell you about the specific piece of jungle Jesus and I
are walking in, maybe then you will understand: I live in a part of the world
that consists of 20% of all humans but consumes 80% of all available resources.
Many of the cheap products I rely on, like clothes and electronics, are likely
made in dehumanizing and oppressing ways in other places on the globe. Even the
sugar and other food items I need are part of a huge network of injustice,
keeping the poor poor and the rich rich. Quite apart where my meals come from,
most of what I am offered to eat does not help my body to be renewed at all,
but can even be destructive. Even if I were to eat vegetables only, I find that
the way they are grown in most places is destroying the land and endangering
plants and animals that live there. Garbage that leaves my house is not really
thrown “away”, but lingers in some other place for hundreds and sometimes
thousands of years. The fossil fuels that power some of my transportation and
my computer, that keeps my house warm and my stove hot are largely contributing
to heating up the planet. This results in even worse conditions for many of the
poor 80% of the world, and for more plants and wildlife to be killed. On top of
everything that concerns my very own life style, there are wars all over the
earth, natural disasters are taking everything from people who have little, Christian
brothers and sisters are persecuted to the death all over the place – and the
people with power and money only care for more of the same. Closer to home
families break apart wherever I look, people are hurt and hurt others, children
are abused and learn to abuse, and neighbors never meet each other in years.
This is the reality I find myself living in – and how again am I
supposed to be an agent of God’s renewal? Should I just retreat into my own
personal relationship with Jesus? But anyone who knows Jesus a bit can tell you
that he wouldn’t have any of that withdrawal business. Where am I supposed to
go from here?
To be totally honest with you, if there still was a path somewhere
through that jungle of bush, which I had entered to spend some time with Jesus
alone, I had lost that path. So I decided to settle down somewhere where I was
just able to peak out on the mountains and see a corner of the farm below, and
that is where I wrote this story up to now. Then I turned around, struggled my
way back through the bush and, thank the Lord, I found the little trail that
lead me down the hill back to the open fields.
Just as he led me out of the bush on that hill, Jesus also knows the
path through our jungle of life. He is giving more answers to my question whenever
we stand at a fork in the trail. Usually he leads us on the path that is less
beaten and narrower. At times he lets us go one way, and then he sometimes has
to lead us back to where we came from, so we can rethink our choice. All the
while he knows what he is doing; he is teaching us how to live as God’s agents.
It took me a while to realize this, but it is really quite obvious: There is no
training seminar for walking with Jesus – you learn as you go. It helps to have
other, more experienced hikers share what they have learned in the fields and
forests they have seen, but ultimately it is Jesus who will teach you how to
move forward.
As we make our way through the messy life jungle, if we keep our eyes
open, we will see glimpses of Jesus bringing renewal to this broken world:
Missionaries who help starving families with planting trees to revitalize the
fertility of the land and to provide fruits and wood for use; local natural
farmers who care about the rest of creation as well as healthy food; courageous
brothers and sisters living with the poorest in the city or reaching out for
prostitutes trapped in hell on earth, telling everyone about the love of God
for them; friends who truly care about you. There are many beams of sunlight in
the darkness of the jungle. We may not have control of what is happening to us,
or answers to all of our questions, but we do have the King of all kings, the
One who died for the whole world and rose to new life, we have him walking
beside us, loving us, challenging us, guiding us onward, and all the while
fulfilling his good purposes on the way.
There is another answer, too, that we have, and that is the source of
our greatest hope: What God started, God will complete! One day our journey
with Jesus through the jungle of this world will end. We won’t simply retreat
back to the open fields we came from. No, Jesus will lead us out of the woods
on the other side, and then we will see a whole new kind of world before us. To
our surprise, there will be no sun at all, but God will light up everything in
the warmest colors. No more will there be hatred, or despair, or crying,
because the old way of things will be dealt with. Instead there will be total completeness:
families will be restored in love, Jesus and his people will live in closest
intimacy, and even the wild animals will become tame and friendly. No more
thorns and thistles; palms and tomato plants and orchards instead! No more will
we wonder where to go, because we will know that we are home, at home with
Jesus. Then we will see with our eyes what we believe in our hearts now – that God
is renewing this place called earth, that His-story will have a good ending,
and that we are a part of this greatest and most glorious of all dramas.
