“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand. There is no going back. There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep.That have taken hold.” —Frodo, LOTR

We can’t avoid pain and disappointment, but it’s something else to enter into the blackest part of it, continue the journey in the midst of it, and come through. It requires death to “self,” as in, the instinctual part of us that forfeits what’s best for whatever’s good enough, or at least, familiar.

When something so alive in us—something we felt had to be—isn’t realized, we have to let go our idea of it, or, lose our soul, bit by bit. Letting go is a sweet sadness. There’s freedom in it. Freedom that’s unimaginable while we hold on tightly.

“I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life”—if we’ll seek Jesus through our deepest disappointments and past them, we’ll find—at last—the reality of His risen life more than reason enough to continue on.

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” —C.S. Lewis

John 14:6

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I Thessalonians 5:23,24

Think of humility in terms of renovating a house—a lot has to be stripped away to make it better. The process is ugly at a point, as everything is dirty, broken down, and chaotic. To stop at that point is a shame; it prevents the new from coming in.

Pride (self-defense) turns a blind eye and says, “Mess? What mess?” And nothing gets done. Strangely, the more wrong we are, the more unwilling we are to be set right. Humility makes us free—free to accept God’s help, and the changes that must happen to make the best things real in us.

“Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.” —Blaise Pascal

Even though the writers of The Constitution of the United States weren’t all strictly followers of Jesus, they set up this nation “Under God.” They understood that creating a government from a lesser ideal would lead its people back to a ruling hierarchy and common-variety tyranny. No human ideology allows total freedom. Strong statement, but think about it. It’s the truth.

However, the idea that there’s a Christian nation, a Christian business, or a Christian structure of any kind is a misapplication. Jesus Christ didn’t lay His life down for an individual nation, business, structure, what have you; Jesus died for people, the people of the world.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:16,17

A stretch of land, a business, a building—each of these things can be dedicated to the ideals of Christianity, and, each can just as easily be wiped from existence. A Christian is a living soul—any time, any place, any condition—whether in great company, or all alone.

Neither the idolatry and polytheism of eastern cultures, the humanism of European nations and her colonies, the superstition and despotism of third world classes, nor the tide of relativism beating on America, can stop the indwelling Spirit of Christ in the heart of a person with an active, living faith.

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.” C.S. Lewis

©Cami Tapley.