envisioning the christian walk

Such a vast and nebulous topic... what to say, what to say. Basically, along the lines of a few things I have been thinking and reading over the past week or so, I've been coming to grips a bit more of what it is that I truly feel it should look like to live, act, and think like a Christian - the way Jesus showcased for us. Between musing about the heaven/hell concept, pondering about living in community, and wondering about feeling God's love, I think I am starting to get the bigger picture that Jesus was smacking the apostles over the head with.

Jesus didn't have any formulas, nor did he have any 3 or 7 step plans for salvation. Jesus never really talked about being there to get people to Heaven or saving people from the fiery depths. Any rhetoric that implied those kinds of images were really ways for him to try and explain what it is like to be fully in the embrace of God's love, or to turn your back on it. Think about it, have you ever tried to explain to someone what being in love is like? The feelings, the mindset, the emotions, the physical implications and reactions, how do you explain it? Now step back a level, how do you explain love of a community? Not why you love a community or what you do to love a community, but what does it feel like to love a community or to be loved by a community? We have a hard time explaining any of this, and often times we have a hard time loving in general. But God, there is a different story, His entire being is love. He loves the universe, the galaxy, the solar system, the earth, the seas/mountains/plants/animals, and most of all He loves us. The problem is we like to try to justify and validate our existence ourselves and through our peers, which results in a rather limited, finite, fragile love. When we truly turn to God and show Him that we recognize that He is the light, the ultimate source of love, and that we love Him, then we get true validation and a constant source of love and grace to which we can turn when times are rough. This is infinitely better than what Donald Miller refers to as the lifeboat mentality we have constructed for ourselves. In order for us to be important, we exercise a self-preservation mode of operation. We constantly assess ourselves against other people, those we deem "less valuable" we shun and belittle, and we look to those we deem "more valuable" for validation of our worthiness.

Thinking this way, I find it rather enlightening and ironic that Jesus walked on water. It's almost as if he was saying, "Hey guys, you don't need the boat, it doesn't work. You are all valuable and worthy if you would just turn to God,and love, trust, and obey Him. It's safe out here, I made it that way so just come on out of the boat. See I even took the initiative to jump out first, me the one you are giving your lives over to follow and learn from."

I think when I started I had a completely different direction I was going with all this... funny how the mind wanders. Regardless, I think I made a point in there somewhere.... perhaps something along these lines. We need to stop measuring ourselves and others against this human standard we have constructed that places value on trivial attributes. When we can learn to do that, and truly love God, trust Him and stop to listen for His voice from time to time, we might just have a chance at mending that rift we each have to deal with. Notice the we... I include myself there because I struggle with this daily.