Tag Archives: power

Answer: The Cross

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“By His stripes we are healed.”
There it is again.
I’ve heard that so often, like I’ve heard, “By the atomic bomb Nagasaki was destroyed.”
Let me rearrange it:
We are healed by His stripes.
Let me take care of the pronouns.
We are healed by Jesus’ stripes.
Let me personalize it for this blog.
I am healed by Jesus stripes.

Why? What about Jesus getting beaten senseless is so healing for me? I’m sick. I consider the deepest cause of my sickness is my own self-salvation, my own self-righteousness, my own self-service, or simply, my own “sin.” Is it just a matter of Jesus being beaten for that, that I am healed?

“The stripes that wound scour away evil.” All the brokenness of the world He scoured away in his body. There is something to that, because His resurrection proved that God was coming not just to crucify the world, but resurrect the world. The world will burn. The world will be remade. We will die. We will be changed. Every pain I face isn’t just a reminder that it hasn’t happened yet. It’s a chance to go to the cross and embrace it and say, “I accept your mercy to righteously judge my brokenness and my sinfulness because of your great love, and I lay down my life again, the way Jesus did on the cross, and ask you, that I may take it up again to serve you a little longer.”

The Cross is the door; only the dead can pass through it. That means I can’t save myself, I can’t heal myself, I can’t rule myself, I can’t love myself, or keep my relationships or my family, my church, even my own life for myself. “God you can have me, but you can’t have my family.” You haven’t gotten a hold of it yet. It’s Christmas, the “Family Holiday” it has become more so than Thanksgiving. Everything needs to be nailed to the cross, even family. Right?

So how does this practically apply? I am going to wait patiently for the Lord to completely heal me. Seems simple. People of the “Faith” tradition will say, “Proclaim it!” I do indeed. Just remember God doesn’t listen to the proud. He listens to the humble. 🙂 The humble are those who embrace the cross. It’s perfectly in keeping with God’s plan for the world to work supernatural healing in the world. I kinda want someone to come to my house and teach me a bit more of how this works, but the cross takes care of all sickness. And if there’s a sickness still, then He’s bringing part of the world to the cross, until it’s completely put to death. I guess.

The Cross is the answer. Thoughts?

Politics Play

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I feel like I should apologize for this. But history as my witness . . . I will not lest one can show me I am wrong.

The Generation rises to take their stand
Upon the political world stage
To fight for justice and freedom’s brand
That has inked the Declaration’s page.

The stage is set with prop and dot
Where powers quoth their scripted lines
And decisions break like winds of plot
Entangling their opponents in jungle vines.

How proud the idealist takes the floor
His eyes glazed by the light above.
He cannot see the long-locked door
Where no one cares to see or move.

The plays play on, the powers clutch.
The bills are passed, the upstarts fail.
But mighty arms of play power touch
Not the women who weep and men who wail.

Outside the theatre people starve.
The rich feast preying on the undeserving.
The French Revolutionaries carve.
A guillotine for the nerve-less head’s un-nerving.

So men will cast their ballots down
Like tickets to a show they’ll never see.
May God have mercy on the clown
Who thinks the world thus better will be.

The theatre will close. The powers scatter.
The people will seek out the purpose of living.
Then they will remember the soft pitter-patter.
Of the child they lost in their taking and giving.