Monday Musings: where are your questions leading you?

Ah Monday morning…

So much is swirling around in my head right now as I try to focus on one thing to write about…to muse on.

I give up.

There’s just too many questions to focus on just one…

What is truth…or true when I turn on the news or scroll through my social media feeds or talk to my neighbor down the street?

What is normal…is it really just going back to the “good ol'” days of 2019?

What is freedom…is the freedom we really want tied to politics, religion, or personal preference (or is it all of the above)?

When will this pandemic go away?

When will people learn to disagree without making the people they disagree with their enemy?

When will I be able to work in a coffee shop again? (okay, maybe that’s not as big of a question as the rest, but I’m still asking it)

What will the people living in 2070 say about the people living in 2020?

When is Jesus coming back?

What are we as Christians supposed to be learning from the coronavirus, the recent elections, and anything and everything else that’s creating division in our country?

What is God thinking right now?

Does He have a plan or an end game for all of this?

Are we living in an intense (and in some ways, unprecedented) season of suffering as Christians in America or is it discipline…or both?

Is God pulling out the weeds right now…or is Satan sifting us like wheat?

You see, I’ve got lots of questions with no easy or clear answers…and I’m guessing that you do to.

And we both have to choose where those questions will ultimately lead us.

This morning, these questions led me to Romans 11, where Paul says…

33 Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!

34 For who can know the Lord’s thoughts?
    Who knows enough to give him advice?
35 And who has given him so much
    that he needs to pay it back?

36 For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.

The truth is, I may never understand the answers to all my questions…

But, I know a God who does.

And that is good enough for me on a Monday morning.

Advent Musings: Is God’s Way the Only Way?

Religion is like a mountain…so the saying goes.*

And, we’re just all at the bottom of that mountain trying to figure out the best way to climb it.

My path may be different than your path, but that’s okay…

Because all the paths lead to God (or whatever you call him).

The Buddhist path.

The Hindu path.

The Christian Scientist path.

The Muslim path.

The Mormon path.

The Christian path.

(Insert your path of choice here).

One mountain…many paths…same destination.

The question is, can this even be possible?

Can all religions by true?

Or, to put it another way, can all religious paths lead to the same place?

For all religions to be true (and lead to the same place), two things would have to happen…

  1. God would have to be a universalist.**

2. We would have to be able to achieve the impossible…

We would have to be able to save ourselves.

But, the reality is, we can’t save ourselves.

We can never be good enough.

Nice enough.

Generous enough.

Holy enough.

Separatist enough.

Perfect enough.

Or religious enough to save ourselves.

Because religion doesn’t save anyone…only God saves.

So, God looks down on His creation from the top of that mountain and sees the impossibility of anyone reaching Him…

And He makes a way.

The way.

He sends an angel named Gabriel to a virgin named Mary, who tells her that she will bear a son whose name is Jesus.

This Jesus will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give to Him the throne of his father David…and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Because, as Gabriel says, nothing will be impossible with God.***

God did the impossible.

God is doing the impossible.

God will do the impossible.

He has made the impossible possible by sending His Son Jesus down the mountain to us.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

He is the way, because He is the path.

He is the truth, because He is the only path that truly leads to God.

He is the life, because the end of His path is eternal life with God.

Every religious path requires faith.

But, the Christian path is the only path where you’re putting your faith in someone other than yourself.

And, that someone is Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son, and that whoever believes in Him will not die…but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

God’s way to salvation is Him coming down to us and doing the impossible.

All of the other paths to Him require us to find a way to save ourselves…

And, that’s just not possible.

*Oprah made this viewpoint popular back in the early 2000’s, and it’s still going strong in our culture today.

**A universalist believes that all humankind will eventually be saved.

***For the rest of story, read Luke 1:26-38.