Miracle Maker

Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem.

Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years.

When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?"

The sick man said, "Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in."

Jesus said, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking." The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.
John 5

The crucified God must be the tuning fork of all our words.
The resurrected God might have a few things to say for Himself.

A year ago, I was in a weekend prayer meeting with three friends. I was taken back to the cross. The scent of wine filled the room. I had a vision. I was standing at the broken, pierced and bloody feet of Jesus while he was nailed half-standing there upon that vertical altar suspended between heaven and earth. The resurrected Jesus was standing next to me, to my right, at the foot of his own cross. The present Jesus was taking me back to the event of his own crucifixion and showing me something of Himself there. My eyes were inches away from his pulverized feet. It was a deep moment. I wept and quaked. He was reminding me of his person, at that broken place and time and he won't ever let me forget to proclaim this part of Him. How much more beautiful are the feet of Christ?

All of creation is coming through the body and blood of Jesus Christ into the new creation or will forever be lost as "nothing" - totally void of meaning. For the saints, following after Jesus Christ, with His Holy Spirit flowing through us and between us, everywhere we walk and everything we see, smell, taste, touch, feel, say, and know... we are all witnesses of the eternal God, who was once crucified and is now making all things new.

What was it like for Jesus to walk barefoot after his resurrection?
What was it like for him to not be touched by his friends?

The bodily incarnation of God in Jesus Christ teaches us that God takes being physically present seriously. Touch is important. God did not come to us in a human body just to deal with the sin of the world.

God showed up in human form, and still remains in human form, because it was and is God's intention to walk and talk freely amidst God's people growing into God's new creation. God is really and presently making things new and we are welcomed into that process of redemption and reconciliation of all things into Christ Jesus. His hands and feet are busy and he's employing ours in the process.

Every time we pray for the aborted, broken and marginalized people of the earth, we bring meaning to their thirst for life and dignity. We join in their suffering. We lift a bit of water to their lips and allow them the dignity of living and dying in the arms and prayers of a loving friend, as we would desire for ourselves as well. True witnesses of the kingdom of God never know anything about anyone else from a safe distance.

Authentic prayer narrows the gap between us considerably.

The more we pray the less meaningless our actions become.

A baby being born isn't something out of nothing. She's a whole lot of living being coming out from within another beautiful living being who may be in love with another living being who helped her co-create this lovely little being. All three beings are now filling this holy place with all their new life. There is life in this blood. And when it's time for the little one to arrive no one can put off her birth, not even her mother. Pain one moment is hopefully joy the next. There is something so complete, finished and irreversible about new life! No one can resist the time of fulfillment. It's finished. We can't go back to receiving life through our navels.

When a seed germinates or a child is conceived there is something new and beautiful growing into a very personal time and space - nine months of becoming within a warm quiet place - a thousand years of becoming a cedar giant - a few years of becoming known as the Messiah in what appeared to be a spiritual leadership vacuum.

When someone is miraculously healed, is it more that something happened to them "out" of nothing, or that God's holy presence fully embodied in Christ entered and deposited life "into" the person needing healing?

Revival (life into no life) has always been about the presence of God amidst God's people - the creator and completer, the witness at the beginning and end of life, who is present amidst and throughout the entire process of the masterpiece coming through.

Some preach sin into a substance, a "thing" to be purged out of a body for the sake of a soul. We don't have a body, we are a body. We don’t have a soul, we are souls. Sin is not a "thing" within an isolated individual. Sin is the empty hypnotic gap, the "distance between" the three divine persons of heaven and the self-mesmerizing isolated individual's distrust of it's Creator. That individual was originally created to be a person hungry for God's presence and companionship! It was God's original intent to make friends out of us.

Sin attempts to destroy God's original intent.
Sinners burn garbage rather than incense.

Maybe an "individual" is an isolated self and a "person" is only given identity and value in God’s new humanity. Maybe sin is nothing (no substance no value) and the fear of that very nothing (lack of substance lack of value). There is nothing worse than solitary confinement over a long period of time. Maybe there are those who think they are people and are not. Maybe there are those who think they are managing the kingdom of God and they are "nothing" but lonely isolated individuals.

Sin thrives on confusion and manipulation which are the manifestations of stubborn rebellion and pride. Sin is the peace breaker, sucking at life and reaping death like some relationship dementor: a passive aggressive, self-induced, destructively delusional, poisonously manipulative, dangerously independent “nothing” where lonely isolated individuals have no-time and no-space for God or anyone else.

Bottom line: Sin is non-intimate with and non-proximate to God? God’s first question in Genesis: “Where are you?” Planet is the Greek word for “wanderer”. The spiritual inertia of the wanderer minus the glorious gravitational pull of God's holiness and peace equals nothing.

If availability and vulnerability don’t
lead into accountability and authenticity
individuals end up in shallow co-dependent affairs.

If willingness and openness don't
lead into holiness and peace
people will die.

Psalm 94:8-15
Well, think again, you idiots, fools—how long before you get smart?
Do you think Ear-Maker doesn't hear, Eye-Shaper doesn't see?
Do you think the trainer of nations doesn't correct,
the teacher of Adam doesn't know?
God knows, all right— knows your stupidity,
sees your shallowness.

How blessed the man you train, God,
the woman you instruct in your Word,
Providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil,
while a jail is being built for the wicked.

God will never walk away from his people,
never desert his precious people.
Rest assured that justice is on its way
and every good heart put right.