Priorities

My brother Caleb and I were sitting in church after having prayed for each other and with each other. And I think we were both a bit dazed at the emotions and fervor that swept over us as we clasped our heads together and interceded for one another; I know I was. And as is the want of humans when they have experienced a great and precious thing, that should reduce them to holy, reverent silence, I began to babble. It was truly like I'd had my eyes closed for hours or days on end, only to open them and be confronted with dizzying and brilliant colors; to see, as it were, the world again in a whole new way. 

So there I sat, my mind swimming with all that Jesus had said to me and through me, His embrace that Caleb got to act as His bit of body to give to me. And I began to marvel at the sheer joy and life that we as believers are now a part of, and have access to if we would only let go and abandon ourselves to His Spirit. I was amazed at the total bankruptcy of life without God, and how the world hadn't just killed itself in sheer despair and hopelessness. Caleb mused on his co-workers and their preoccupation with the details of this world, TV, movies, etc. when something so much better is literally a sentence away. And to say that sharing the life of Christ is so much better than the things of this world is such a infinite understatement that I can barely write the words. But you know what I mean (I hope).

I jumped in and drew the analogy to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in which men are chained in a deep, dark underground chamber, chained hand and foot with their heads rendered immovable. They watch shadows on the wall in front of them, since other men are acting out scenes with puppets in front of a fire behind them. And the story is of the one man's release from his captivity, his discovery that the shadows aren't real, his discovery that the men playing with puppets aren't real, his ascension up to the top of the cave and out into the real world, and experiencing what is most real in this world. He'd seen a representation of a tree, but never the real thing. He'd heard tales of the sun, but never been blinded by its radiance. And the tale ends with him descending into the gloom to try to free his fellow captives. They, however, refuse to believe his stories of "real" trees and lakes and the sun, preferring their comfortable imprisonment. And that is what people in this world are like, prisoners who watch shadows of puppets on the wall and imagine that it's real. We are to be the fellow captives now free imploring them to come up into reality, the life of Christ.

And what's really sad is if those who have gone up and experienced reality come back down and get caught up in shadow puppets. All too often I find myself preoccupied with the things of this world instead of the things of Heaven, and sit back and argue with the other prisoners about the scene being acted out on the wall. It's ludicrous. And silly. And tragic. And far too prevalent in the modern Church.

But hearing about an African village in Swaziland, where the number of people with AIDS is 40% of the entire population, where women are sexually assaulted more often than not, where a pastor has to live on $100 a month and have his parishioners donate to him, and where a Canadian entrepreneur and believer began to rehabilitate a mining village and together with his team are beating back the forces of hunger, despair, death, witchcraft, and poverty, puts my recent woes of finding a job into a little more perspective. Which is ultimately more important: my inability to find a job that pays me what I think I need to subsist in the richest country on earth, or that a woman with no health care, no medicine, and severe pain and ailments in her leg gets healed and screams her praise and thankfulness to High Heaven while running laps down the aisle?

Thank you, Jesus, for the gentle humbling. May I never forget.