Beyond

As a follower of Jesus, we have the opportunity to operate in two worlds.

There is the world as informed by our physical senses and cultural influences. This is the first world we encounter and as a result is the primary world that informs us of life.

When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, the glory He sheds on the way reveals a different world within and beyond the first world. Here, some of what appeared true in the first world is revealed to be lacking, incomplete and distorted.

An example of that is in the area of relationships. First world perspectives on them would indicate that chemistry is involved in intimate ones and it’s difficult to understand the opposite gender because they are so different and weird. First world perspectives state that happiness and contentment can be found in meeting felt needs, but often there are incompatibility issues that mean infidelity should be expected and monogamy is a pipe dream – the exception not the rule.

If I followed some of the people around me when it came to a loving relationship with my wife, there’s every chance I wouldn’t be married now. It’s a certainty that if my wife followed some of the people around her, we would never have married in the first place.

The community of Christ followers should be the location to live beyond the first world. The single experience of a believer living beyond that world shared with the gathering should encourage us in our walk. As those single experiences become communal so our first world should be impacted by the world beyond, so that love for enemies – a strange quality in the first world – is the norm for the community of believers who live beyond.

Love as an act of the will, not merely a conditional, emotional feeling is the norm. Faithfulness and fruitfulness in abundance for the blessing of that first world around us is the norm. Supporting and caring for the social outcast is the norm. Orphan and widow embraced and part of the family is the norm.

Thoughts, values and behaviours we felt were beyond us are within us when we live beyond that first world.

I speak having seen and experienced what it is to live beyond. When Jesus tells Pilate that His kingdom is not of this world, He points to the beyond living that the early church got a glimpse of and lived it by the Spirit.  Through the power of that same Spirit, as we love each other and the world around us, we see those glimpses, and rejoice in the kingdom come and still yet to be fully realised.

As we read scripture together and see beyond text to the Kingdom beyond, then the precious Holy Spirit that brought the beyond into being can realise it in our lifetimes.

For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden