God Rocks!
If you jitterbuggers go back to the Jan. 15 post you’ll find a word we published here from Marvin Knox of the mighty fine Baptist Standard about religious rights in this country as opposed to the extreme lack of such rights around the world.
You might want to go back and re-read that post to best appreciate this reflection that it inspired from our JFJ research assistant, chief of staff and occasional contributor to the blog, and that would be the mystic contemplative and flaming librul (Old School/Joan Baez Libruls Div.) L.K., who prefers to go only by her initials in order to preserve her air of mystique.
With no more of that ol’ ado, here’s what my spiritual soul mate L. wrote in response to that Baptist guy:
Talking about Marv Knox, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights etc. has lead me into another thought:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A CHRISTIAN BILL OF RIGHTS!
We have no rights!
We give up all our perceived rights to our possessions, our bodies, and even our very lives when we follow Jesus.
Yes, at first it may sound harsh, but it isn’t. It’s really quite wonderful.
We need to give up ourselves and give ourselves to Him.
We need to remember that Jesus Himself gave His rights when He left heaven to come to Earth.
He then gave up His right to his life so that He could give us eternal life.
When He tells us to “Take up your cross and follow me,” I don’t think that just means that we should bear our earthly burdens without complaint.
“Take up your cross and follow Me” means the willingness to die, figuratively or literally, in body or to die to self, in order to follow Jesus, just as He was willing to do all of it for us.
It means absolute surrender to Jesus.
Even though we may have rights as citizens of our country, we need to remember that MUCH more importantly, we are citizens and subjects of the heavenly kingdom.
When I was first getting some of my understandings about God, I had a dream. In my dream I was frantically searching all around my house, looking under and over and everywhere for a check for a very large amount of money that I wanted to give to God. I kept searching and searching for the check until I finally realized something. That check never ever existed! There was nothing that I had that I could give to God except what he wanted . . . . me. A freely given gift of myself to the God who is the giver of all gifts. I remember waking from this dream with such a feeling of peace and — expansiveness is the best word I can come up with right now. Like my skin really wasn’t where my body ended.
Of course, being very human, I still sometimes find myself looking for that check knowing full well that even if I found it, the check would be worthless because there is nothing in the bank to back it up. It’s all God’s from beginning to end.
I will keep on trying to remember His gift of Himself on the cross and not my imagined rights.
Because really, why would we want to insist on our rights when instead, we can have the right and privilege to be with and praise God in heaven for all eternity?
Sometimes the wonderment and awe I feel when I think about God makes me vibrate with happiness.
God Rocks!
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