Shifty or Stable

At my church we've been doing an ongoing study of Colossians. This passage is part of what we were looking at this week:

    And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister. (Colossians 1:21-23 ESV)

This week was my wife's birthday, and that day saw the addition of a new member to our household: a brand-new Wii Fit Plus setup. To play the Wii Fit game, you use a device called a "balance board." The balance board is about a foot wide and about 20" long, about the size of a very large bathroom scale, and it interacts wirelessly with your Wii as you stand or walk or jump (or whatever else the game requires) on it. The Wii Fit Plus game is designed to help you burn calories and get in better shape, and it does a surprisingly good job at getting your heart rate up and getting you on the move. We've all been having a great time playing with the board... who knew working out could be so much fun?

Several of the games and tests in Wii Fit Plus are about balance. A crosshair appears on the screen, and a smaller area in the center is colored orange, and there is a red dot on the screen that moves as you shift your center of gravity. You would think that standing completely still would be quite easy, so getting the red dot centered in the cross-hairs would just be a matter of stepping up on the board and not falling off it!photo © 2009 Sasha Wolff | more info (via: Wylio) You would be wrong. The first time you try to center that red dot, it requires immense effort to even get it into the orange zone, and almost as much effort to keep it there. It's even harder to keep it motionless. Apparently standing completely still, never shifting even an ounce of your weight from one foot to the other, requires a great deal more strength than it sounds like. We were able to do it, but it wasn't easy!

The more you practice, though, and the more you work out and gain more and more leg strength, the more and more stable you become. Even then, it's critically important to focus all of your attention on the dot. If you look over at someone in the room, your dot will move. If you relax and shift your weight, the dot will move. You have to dedicate yourself to keeping that dot still, and if you do and if you have the physical strength and endurance to do it, you can hold that dot in place.

Now look back up at Colossians 1:21-23 at the top of this post. Think about what it takes to remain "stable and steadfast" on the balance board, "not shifting" your weight to one side or the other. You have to be strong, and you have to remain focused. And that's what living a mature Christian life requires, also: you have to be strong (see Paul's prayer in verse 11), and you have to remain focused, "not shifting from the hope of the gospel." The hope of the Gospel is that God has changed us from people who are "alienated and hostile" to God, into people who are "reconciled" to God, and that one day He will present is to Him "holy and blameless and above reproach." The hope we remain focused on is that we no longer need be separated from God, but God has made a way for us to run into His arms. If you keep as your life focus that God has made a way for you to be with Him, on His side instead of camping out with His enemies, then you can grow, you can mature, and you can become strong as a Believer.

Three Days

I wonder how Abraham felt as he was walking up that mountain with Isaac? God had spoken directly with him and told him to go, but the Bible never says that God kept speaking to him all the way up there. It was a pretty incredible thing that God had asked Abraham to do; I can't imagine him not having a doubt or two along the way in a journey of over three days. Then again, just because I can't imagine it doesn't mean it's not true; the Bible doesn't often tell us the internal dialogue of the characters like modern fiction often does. Usually the Bible reports events as a third person observer.

So we don't really know what Abraham was thinking; we only know that when Isaac asked him what was going on, Abraham said something that was actually a little different from what God had said. Whether he was saying that to deceive Isaac, or whether he had deceived himself, or whether he actually had some revelation from God about the situation over the course of those 3+ days, we don't know. What we do know is that what actually happened in the end resembled what Abraham had said more than what God had said! Figure that one out!

So did Abraham feel some deep-down inner confidence every step of the way? Maybe. The Bible certainly sets him up as a giant of faith, so maybe his confidence was different from mine. But what I know from how my life generally works is that I hear from God, I believe God's words and choose to follow His instructions, but then things don't happen immediately. Things in this lifetime take time. For Abraham it took three days and a little more; often in our lives things can take weeks, months, or even years. And I'll freely admit that during my "three days" (however long those "days" may be), I don't always feel the power of God's instructions and/or promises about my situation. Sometimes I just feel sort of... indifferent.

Does that mean I'm not in faith? You know, I don't think so. I think that as long as I am still on track to do what God has instructed me to do, I'm still acting in faith. Maybe Abraham said what he did to Isaac in order to try to convince himself that everything was going to be okay. After all, all of his hopes and dreams were hinging on Isaac as his only legitimate son. Who knows? What we do know is that Abraham continued to put one foot in front of the other foot, all the way to the mountain where he had been commanded to put all of his dreams for the future to death. And when he got there, God made a way for him.

So maybe I'll just keep walking!