I HAVE COME TO GIVE YOU LIFE

So many things of life these days have been delegated and out sourced to others and I become a spectator, an audience, who simply observes the performance, the product of the work.  This happens in Churches, in schools, in our entertainment, and in our homes.  All in all many folks have outsourced our lives and are left filled with emptiness and wondering why.

God came to earth to dwell among His creation who had wandered far away from the life He has given them.  He came to participate in life with His people in order to draw them back to the life He had designed for them when He created them.  People weren’t born to be spectators.  People were born to be participants in life and work in tandem with all of creation.

I went to a concert put on by the Vocal Ensemble of Wayne County.  It was Vivaldi’s Gloria.  This group rehearsed for many weeks ahead and I enjoyed the performance.  I looked up some information on this beautiful piece and found the original to be a Greek hymn of the second century church that was sung daily as a morning prayer.

I went to Sunday School when I was a kid.  I loved learning about all the Bible heroes and their adventures with God.  I couldn’t wait to go back the next Sunday to hear more.  One day when I was much older I read God’s exhortation in Deuteronomy 6:6-9.  “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children.”

I went to Church on Sunday and sat listening to sermon after sermon prepared and worked through by the minister.  When I entered school Bible School and began learning how to prepare sermons I found that the blessing and feeding of my soul was not in the finished product but in my actual work of preparing it.

I went to school and learned by sitting quietly and listening to what others had discovered about life.  I learned about nature inside the classroom, dissecting dead frogs.

I went to concerts and watched others play their instruments and sing their songs and then purchased their records for more listening entertainment at home.

I live in a home where the only culinary skills I need is opening precooked food, defrosting it and reheating it.  There are times when all that is required of me is dialing my phone and my dinner appears at the door all ready to eat.

I am not saying I don’t appreciate these advances in life; but I think something very precious has been lost along the way.  There is an emptiness in simply being a spectator, of not being a hands on participant in the process of creating something, of not living into my image of a very hands on and creative God.  There is no true sense of connection; no sense of intimacy or ownership with the product; no sense of commitment or communion with anything or anyone.

I want to be a participant in life, not merely a spectator.  I want to be hands on in all of it.  I want to write and sing my own songs; I want to live out the heroic adventures of people who love God in my own live experience;  I want to live out my faith every moment with my family and my friends, basking in the love and goodness of God; I want to write the sermons and share them with other sermon writers; I want to learn by experiencing for myself all that God has for me; I want to learn about nature by being in it and observing live critters; I want to play my own instruments and sing my own songs and enjoy the company of others doing the same, enjoying our individual work as I work with others; I want to eat food that has its life energy still running through it.  I want to be a full participant in life and be filled with the Spirit of God that created life and animates it.