Coexist.

"COEXIST."

It's a bumper sticker I see all the time on all kinds of cars. 
First reaction: "Nice, yes, let's Coexist."
Second reaction: "Well, yes, that's nice, but not very realistic is it?" (I have a British accent here for some reason)
Third reaction: "People suck.  Religion sucks.  Organizations suck.  It's too much, I mean have you seen people?  Even if it's not about religion, beliefs or lifestyle, in general people are hard to be around!"
Fourth reaction: "Sorry.  That was a bit harsh."
Fifth reaction: "But seriously...c'mon people!"
Sixth reaction: "But still, in spite of how hard it may be, we should make an effort to understand each other.  I love Jesus, I believe that the power and goodness are all his, so I owe it to my salvation to understand my fellow man and woman, their belief systems, their backgrounds and invest in people in the hopes that something in me will spark something in them to ask about Jesus and what he has done for me...for the world."
Seventh reaction: "But man, as a Christian, it feels like more and more I don't have a right to say anything, and anything in our country or western civilization that was built on a belief in Jesus is being wiped away.  Is there tolerance for my views?"
Eighth reaction: "Wait, wait, wait, what the hell does that even mean?  Coexist?  WTF?"
Ninth reaction: "Coexist: To exist at the same time in the same place.  Aren't we doing that already?  Coexist peacefully you mean? <see Second reaction layer>
Tenth reaction: From the Coexist Bumper Sticker website...I think.
There is a crisis of understanding that tears at the social fabric of societies around the world. Globalization has outpaced understanding, creating divisions that plague societies with prejudice, misinformation, hate, and violence. The Coexist Foundation is a non-profit organization creating understanding across divides.  Since 2006, the Coexist Foundation has forged a range of inspiring initiatives to create understanding through education and innovation.
"Well that sounds right, I got no problem with that...we should be doing that right?  Yes, Let's Coexist!" <see first reaction>
Eleventh ("Eleventh" that doesn't even look like a real word...it's like what you would call an Elf Tent) reaction: "Well, wait...shit, that doesn't feel like enough.  That's not quite right, is it? (British again)  We are just treading water here.  Coexist here just means to occupy the same space at the same time.  Like we are all just trying to get through Thanksgiving dinner without anyone offending anyone else.  My soul and my heart and my mind want more.  I want reconciliation, I want real and comprehensive understanding!  To coexist feels like I have to accept that Truth is relative, that "Your truth is your truth and my truth is mine."  But I don't believe that.
Twelfth (even less real than the elf tent) reaction: "Just take it easy, take it easy, Scotty.  Sounds like you are about to make a stink.  When you start talking about Jesus as the only way, people get pissed.  People get uncomfortable.  You start losing friends and alienating family.  That is decidedly NOT coexisting.  Maybe you should just pipe down...whatever that means."
Level Thirteen:  "Jesus, I'm sorry.  I'm not strong enough.  I'm not good enough to carry your name to the places people need it.  Forgive me."
Level Fourteen: "Yes!  I'll simply be responsive!  Go where I 'm asked and keep quiet until called upon.  Live a good Christian life and hope that it shows through."
Level Fifteen: "But still, there is that nagging feeling.  Yes, I can't quite shake it.  I really do want to understand other religions and belief or even non-belief systems.  I love people, I like figuring out what makes them tick, but it's all kind of surface stuff, this Coexisting.  We are agreeing to disagree and walking off.  I had an old boss that would get enraged when someone used that phrase, 'Agree to disagree'.  'Bullshit' he'd say, 'We are going to figure this out until someone is right!'"
Level Sixteen:  "But he was kind of juvenile.  I'm beyond the need (most of the time) to be right.  It's just not that important.  But still I can't say that Truth is relative.  Because if it is then nothing really matters.  We can Coexist, but what's the point....ahhhhaahh!!!"
Level Seventeen:  "We sail about having complicated conversations on belief, religion and truth hoping to get to some unsatisfactory place where we all Coexist.  An endless limbo land of holiday with the in-laws, where no one is right and no one is wrong.  But do we ever stop to ask "Why?"  Why the urge to Coexist?  Why the movement?  Does it matter?  If you Google "Why do we need to Coexist?" there is no clear response.  Why?  Why?  What is it about us that drives towards some level of unity.  Even those forces in the world that are destructive are still compelled by a desire for unity, some sort of perverted reconciliation.  People that aggressively assert their will are still seeking one-ness.  Have you asked yourself why?  Do you just want to get along until next time, or is the desire for coexistence rooted in something more? 
Level Eighteen :  "We struggle to coexist because we are people and we are broken.  We still yearn for it because there is a hint of the reality of reconciliation alive in our eternal soul.  God is perfect, but we are not.  Jesus Christ is God, on earth, here for us to make things right.  Although his death and resurrection sealed the deal, the struggle isn't quite done.  As a Christian I am compelled by his Great Love to want that Love for you.  I'm awkward with his Love and often abrasive, but it is no less sincere.  He is coming back and that should terrify us, because when he comes back it will not be to Coexist.  It will be to make the world right, and One, by his Power and his Judgment."
Level Nineteen: "Phew.  That was hard.  Jesus I love you. Thank you."
Level Twenty (spelling out numbers is just bizarre): "Here and now, I do have an obligation to Coexist.  This world has been given to us to be stewards.  I will Coexist...sitting behind folks in traffic, parents at my kids school, different people at work, the people I serve in my job.  I will Love them all, because He asked me to.  That greater Truth overrides everything else."
Level Twenty-one (now we have hyphens):  "But then again, we weren't called to just "occupy the same place at the same time", we were called to tell the world about Jesus."

Well now, that is quite the rub.  This is gonna take more than a blog post isn't it. (again with the accent)

Matthew 22

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[a] 38} This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^{[b] 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Level 42: Was an under rated 80's band.

Leap!

Our hearts,
Pregnant with the Spirit of our Savior,
Leap...
When we come into the presence of Christ,
Gestating and maturing within another.
Waiting to be born of the heart,
Born again.

Luke 1
41When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

Quarantine

Quarantine. 

A strict isolation to prevent the spread of disease.

A father leans his forehead against the cool glass of the hospital observation window.  Inside his 5 year old son sweats in a chilly room all alone.  Wrestling in the sheets with tubes coming out of him he shrieks against the persistent beeping and calls weakly for his father.  Nurses come in and out of the room,  but are of little comfort dressed as they are in protective white suits and masks.  The father would do anything to be with his son, giving his very life for a moment of comfort for the boy.  But he knows he can’t.  If anyone is exposed to what the boy is carrying they will in fact die.  So the father waits.

Is there any doubt as to the viral nature of human behavior?  For the Christian, this seemingly unstoppable force of infectious brokenness is Sin.  Both in nature and in culture, it is pervasive.  Sin is passed from parent to child in both heredity and by contact.  It is unavoidable and we live with it.  Like cancer ravaging a healthy body, Sin is the corruption of something good, the perversion of purpose.  We know we are sinful from the Creation story, but we also know it because of experiential evidence.  We see it in our neighbors, and if we are honest we know it about our own hearts.

Adam and Eve chose something other than God and therefore Sin entered God’s creation by the mere act of failing to trust Goodness.  With a flaming sword, God lovingly set us aside, out of the Garden, out of perfection.  Without understanding the nature of a perfect and holy God it is hard to see this act as loving.  But though he loved Adam and Eve, they became an affront to his goodness and holiness.  Though he loves us, we must remain just out of reach.  Our sickness could not and cannot be tolerated by his perfection, he would cease to be perfect if our sin was to be ignored.  However, instead of destroying us, he set us aside.  God is the standard, every thing else is a reaction to that standard.  Eden and Heaven are the ultimate reality, the quarantine of our earthly existence is a distortion of this.  We are judged by heaven’s standards.  Confusion comes when we try to judge heaven and God by our standards, which is ridiculous when you think about it.

In this quarantine, the story becomes God’s pursuit of his people and his desire to protect the remnant of his chosen people. What is the Law of Moses but a protection from the very thing that infects us.  The Law points to both the survival in this quarantine and the perfection of God.  The Law is not about who we are, but who God is.  It cannot be met, but remains necessary of we are to survive in this world plagued by sin.  The story of God and indeed the story of the Bible from Genesis 3 on is his pursuit of his people: shaping, molding, culling, revealing, directing and loving.  A good and gracious God desperate for his creation to be redeemed that they might be with him again.  He sees our pain from beyond, not able to absolve but still merciful.  The plan is in motion and has always been in motion.  We will be his people and he will be our God.  Through the shaping of his people, the antidote is produced.  Jesus Christ is God himself strapping on flesh and all its failings to deliver salvation into the quarantine itself.  He chose to be with the hurting in his time here: the sickest in spirit and in flesh, the poor and the destitute.  The weakest are the ones he ached for the most.  It is Christ’s Love that changed the world, for in that short time God’s eternal love for his creation was on full display.

Sin is passed by blood.  Blood reaches every cell of the body and every organ.  Christ is the perfect specimen, introduced into the quarantine to create a chain reaction with his blood.  With his blood he brings the cure and with his resurrection that blood is released in and by the Spirit.  Salvation has been exposed to the world and it is the job of the Church, the body of believers to deliver this blood and flesh to the world and throughout history.  The Word is God and the Word became flesh and now we the Church deliver the flesh of Christ through the Word and through communion, proclaiming his death and resurrection.  By the blood we are healed and in his death we may enter back into Eden and walk with our Father again in the cool of the day.  

There is no denying that some have a greater burden to bare.  Some nations, some tribes, some families, some individuals suffer beyond human comprehension.  This is the reality of living in quarantine.  For some this makes the possibility of a Loving God impossible.  The world is too atrocious and it assaults their inherent sense of fairness. "Injustice would not prevail if there were a just God."  Where does this sense of fairness and justice come from?  How do we know that things aren’t right?  It is the very revelation of a loving God that proclaims this injustice to us.  It is because we have a God that we even know that things aren’t right.  Believer or not, we are right to yearn for something better, to hope in something good.  We were made for something more and inherently we all know it.  Our failures begin when we search in the wrong place for our hope, much like Adam and Eve.   C.S. Lewis says it like this “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”  If there were no God our present situation wouldn’t be better, it would be hopeless and we would be in despair.  Our quarantine would become a wasteland, with no hope for life.   

There is something to hope for; it is the renewal of this world by the blood of Christ.  For our Eternal God this redemption is one motion, one big bang in which we were conceived in love to be in eternal community with our Father.  Until we can see it and are beyond the chains of time, we must endeavor to Love our God by Faith, accept the work of Christ through no effort of our own, and because of our acceptance realize that we must Love all the people of this world and make every effort to make things better and to spread the Good News.  Just as Christ prepares a place for us, so must we prepare for his return.  Though we are sick, there is work to do.  And though we are infected, Jesus is planning to accept us out of this reverse quarantine and (back) into paradise.