Are You for Real?

Years ago, Scott and I were given the responsibility to care for two beautiful little children. We loved them with our whole hearts. We protected them fiercely. To us, they were ours. Until they weren't. Circumstances changed, and those two beautiful little children were removed from our home. We were devastated. But, even in that emptiness and the ache of loss, I determined to keep my eyes on my Deliverer, my Redeemer; I refused to say "it" was over. As a matter of fact, I told a coworker one day, "God slammed that door so hard and so loud, I know He is going to do something fabulous." The coworker, who had mocked my belief in an "imaginary" God time and time before, looked me directly in the eye, curled his lip and hissed, "He's not. He's not." Oh, how wrong he was! Praise God, those two beautiful little children, their sibling, and their parents are a beloved part of our lives today. Restoration. Mercy. Redemption. That, my friends, is reality!

I say all of this because, so often, we place our eggs in the wrong basket. We look at the calendar, we fixate on our circumstances, we live and die by the balance in our checking account, we invest our time and worry in things that are part and parcel of our physical world without even considering the spiritual realm. We take our first breaths in the physical world; our bones grow, and our muscles become stronger. We go to school to develop our minds in preparation for what is known as "adulthood." We experience seasons and failures, our first kiss, the flu, sunburn, the spray of a waterfall, the death of a parent, the birth of a child, corn on the cob. All the beauty and heartache of the natural world; but it is only a picture of the spiritual part of us. It is real (for now), but it is not all. Our bodies and our minds are not the end of us. Our spirit is that which is eternal --eternally living or eternally dying. 

Look waaay back to the Garden of Eden, and you will find an event that changed the course of human history, The Fall of Man. Romans 5:12 says that through Adam, sin infected us all; by this, as well as our own sin, we are responsible to pay the penalty demanded by moral law --death. There is no option, the moment we are conceived, we are obligated to pay. However, and this is the Good News, Jesus (God) came as a physical being, died in our place, was resurrected and now sits in Heaven, the Mediator for all who would believe. What does all of this have to do with spirituality? Read it again, starting with "Look waaay back..." The physical existence of the garden, of humanity, of the cross and the empty tomb cannot be separated from the spiritual consequences of sin, from the Eternal God who ransomed us or the eternal life (or death) that is a part of our personal stories. We may not pay it any mind, we may not think about hell or the spirit realm, but like it or no, we are spiritual beings --even more so than physical beings! We are physical beings for a short time in light of eternity; we are spiritual beings forever. How we live in this physical world for this brief cycle of life is not the end of us, and when we live as if it is, we miss the point entirely. To fail to hope because "too much time has passed," or to fall into depression because of our circumstances, to hold back our tithe because of the little numbers at the bottom of the page, to spend time ranting and raving, worrying and fretting, plotting and planning when we should be praying and fasting, to live our lives as though the physical world is paramount (or even, tantamount) to the spiritual realm is foolishness and an affront to God who is Spirit and is most certainly not imaginary. 

I pray, of course, that eternal life is a part of your story. I pray that it's a part of the way you live today, in light of eternity, in obedience to the Holy Spirit, and not by the demands of the physical world. I pray that your spiritual eyes might be opened to all God can do in your situation, and I pray that God will become more real to you each and every day as you trust and submit to Him.