Imitation of Life

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John 1:4

 I have heard that someone once tried to fasten a boutonnière to the lapel of the famous evangelist Smith Wigglesworth, which the preacher vehemently refused.  He said he didn’t want that death, that dying flower, on him.  At the time I heard this, I thought, “How strange.  That’s really weird!”  These preachers get so eccentric, it seems.  They act most peculiar.

 Recently, though, Mr. Wigglesworth’s reaction, if true, has actually begun to make sense.  Death is all around me.  I see small animals’ rotting carcasses on the highway I take to and from work.  I hear death in the news every day.  Every single day.  I watch people I know grow ill or old and die.  And all of this, all of this dying that some say is just part of living, has become very unnatural to me.  It’s out of order, unintended by God.  A curse.

 Maybe watching The Passion Of The Christ brought it all together.  The Passion is a powerful film, full of death, the death that put this Life inside of me.  When Jesus walked out of that tomb, something new walked out into the world for the first time ever.  Life walked out.  Indomitable.  Infectious.  Eternal.

 It still walks the earth today in every single person who is born of the Spirit.  Many of us just haven’t figured that out yet.

 I believe the Life of God, zoe if you will, is an active, growing force in the earth.  I believe Life is pushing back the darkness (the darkness that does not comprehend it).  I believe Life enlightens people’s minds and produces all the wonderful things we enjoy, things unimaginable a thousand or even a hundred years ago.  Life steadfastly resists hatred and poverty and sickness and meanness.  Life counters superstition and fear.  And you know what?  Life doesn’t do all of that just floating around in the ether.  Life uses human hands and human minds and human mouths.

 And the last enemy Life will crush under its godly heel is that ancient adversary, that old thief, Death.

 Religion tries to imitate Life.  But religion just can’t quite live up to its promises, can it?  In the end it seems to always lead down the same old road to small thinking.  Thank God we don’t have to be religious.  Thank God because He has given us, through the power that raised Jesus from the dead, all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).

 I pay attention when I see Life in people.  I don’t care if they don’t have an ounce of religious thinking.  Life crops up in the most unexpected places.  Who would have thought Mad Max would lift up Jesus?  Who could have expected a rogue like Oscar Schindler to hold out Life in the midst of a Death-fest in the last century?

 Do we want God to work through us?  The Life is inside already, Beloved.  Just toss off that basket and let it shine on the hillside and in the city.  Hold Life out in a word of grace, a prayer, a smile, a kind gesture, or even a dollar bill.  Open your hand and give a little.  Forgive.  Freely give.  Give it vent and you may soon find Life bursting out of you like water from a dam.

 It wants to.  It’s waiting.  It’s yours.

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