The Alpha and the Omega # 7

Christ Makes Sense of Life (continued)

Let me repeat: Until you have your letters, your basic characters, there is no beginning, and there will be no sensible, meaningful end at all. Jesus just supplies that need - a beginning and a sensible end. He leads somewhere! When you and I at last reach the end, the end in glory, it will truly be a meaningful end, will it not? It will be an end that justifies everything, that gives meaning to everything, that explains everything. The thousand "why's" of life will be answered, will all be explained. Why this experience and that? Why this sorrow and that? Why this disappointment and that loss? Why these strange ways in our life? It will all be answered in the end - and Jesus Himself will be the End! Yes, it will be a "sensible" end. We shall have no quarrel with God then, because Jesus will have put it all straight, and brought us to an end beyond our wildest expectations and altogether beyond our merits.

God Speaks To Us, and Through Us, By Life

Thus we may understand why, in the Bible, Jesus is called "The Word of God" (Revelation 19:13). God speaks in Him and by Him; always and only, and finally in His Son. Perhaps you say, "That is all very interesting, but after all, how does He speak? Are we to hear Him with our ears?" No. If you come back to the context of these titles, you will find that it is resurrection life. "I am ... the Living One; ... I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore" (Revelation 1:7-18). How does He speak? How do we know Him? How is life delivered from its tangle and confusion and brought into pattern and meaning? By His becoming our life! He makes us partakers of His own risen life. He puts that life into us which is an ordered life, a life of wisdom and understanding: a life, not of confusion, but of pattern. It is a life within us.

When His life is within, that life answers the questions, explains things, gives meaning to life. And while, to natural ears, life may be inaudible, life is really a very, very powerful speaker. It speaks loudly, much louder, than words. Some poor suffering child of God may not be able to say much in coherent speech, but you have only to be with them for a little time, and the life speaks to you. The very life that is in them speaks far more powerfully than words. It is the life that is within us which is the communication, the explanation, the wisdom of Gd: the power of that life working in us. By that life, God speaks to us, answers our problems.

So often, the answer of God to us is not in something that He says, but in something that He does - in some new touch of life. It is strange how, if we get that new touch of life in our inner man, we cease to worry about the problem - the problem is solved! We may not have got the answer to our questions, but we have got the answer: it is in life! It does not matter about the problem now; it is answered in this new touch of life. Life is God's way of speaking to us.

And life is God's way of speaking through us. People may come into a meeting, and they may have no idea what the speaker is talking about; and yet they might go away and say - "I didn't understand a word, but ... but ... there was something there!" They may not be able to describe it, because they are not familiar with the language and the phrases and the terminology. But they feel that they meet something thee - something that answers to a need. Well, if they only knew, they would say: It is life, life, life! And that is the way that God really speaks. We would sooner have it that way, would we not, than that people should be able to understand a lot of words and phrases, and not feel the impact and registration of life. Better, of course, if both; but if we have to choose, better this way - that they go away and say: "There is something there that you cannot get away from; I can only say, it is God!" And what they mean is - it is Jesus Christ, the Living One!

That is the way God speaks through us. Oh that we may be, in this sense, the voice of God, the speech of God: the expression of Christ, Who is the Alpha and the Omega.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(The End)