A BLIND ANIMOSITY

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you."  (John 15:18-19 NIV)

A short story by the Spanish writer Carmen Corde tells of a young woman who gives birth to a blind son.  "I do not want my child to know that he is blind!" she informs family and neighbors, forbidding anyone to use telltale words such as "light," "color," and "sight."  The boy grows up unaware of his disability until one day a strange girl jumps over the fence of the garden and spoils everything by using all the forbidden words.  His world shatters in the face of this unimagined new reality.

In modern times, Christians resemble the strange girl who brings a message from the outside.  To a skeptical audience they bring rumors of another world beyond the fence, of an afterlife beyond death, of a loving God who is somehow working out His will in the chaotic history of this planet.  As in Carmen Corde's story, the news may not be welcome.  "We forget that what is to us an extension of sight is to the rest of the world a peculiar and arrogant blindness," the Catholic novelist Flannery O'Connor admitted.

-- Philip Yancey in “Rumors of Another World”


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COME, LORD JESUS

“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with Me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city… I, Jesus, have sent My angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.”  (Revelation 22:12-17 NIV)

So, for many there is no emotional yearning for the return of Jesus. The best hope they know is a kind of intellectual, theological hope. But an intellectual knowledge of what the New Testament teaches about the return of Christ is surely a poor substitute for a love-inflamed desire to look on His face!… The crux of the whole matter is this: our wonderful, created world will be restored to its rightful Owner.

I for one look forward to that day. I want to live here when Jesus Christ owns and rules the world. Until that hour, there will be conflict, distress and war among the nations. We will hear of suffering and terror and fear and failure. But the God who has promised a better world is the God who cannot lie. He will shake loose Satan’s hold on this world and its society and systems. Our heavenly Father will put this world into the hands that were once nailed to a cross for our race of proud and alienated sinners.

It is a fact. Jesus Christ is returning to earth.…

I bow my head and continue to pray with the humble writer of the Revelation: “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”

--  A.W. Tozer in “The Tozer Topical Reader”

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