I am currently selling my car.
I have mixed feelings about this car. It gets me about, and I am grateful to be in the top 5% of the worlds population who can afford the luxury of driving. However this car is the interim replacement for my previous car.
I love hot hatches, if your not a car person that may not make loads of sense to you but I saved and searched for my last car for what felt like ages. Finally when I found it and bought it I was super made up. It was a dream to drive and felt so good to be driving one of the cars I’d wanted to own from being a young lad.
5 months later Unfortunately on a trip down to Cork the engine fell out. It was an incredibly disappointing moment as I lifted the bonnet and discovered the engine mounts had completely collapsed. I had spent everything on it and I had no budget left to fix or replace it. 10 months later after I’d saved enough money, I bought a replacement, my current car, it is not a hot hatch, it is not a car I had wanted to own since I was a boy and nor is it particularly nice to look at but at least it usually gets me from A to B dry. Now I am selling it because a friend is selling me something closer to my ideal.
In reflection I wonder if sometimes this resonates with how we feel about christianity.
Very often I hear people talking about the days where they could do whatever they pleased and how they had a great time, reminiscing as if it was more fun before they chose to follow Jesus. And I wonder whether at times we treat being a christian now a little like I view my car, an interim life while we wait for something better. Something that may not be quite as fun now but if we can just make it through there is the promise of something better to come.
The gospels record Jesus saying over and over and in all manner of contexts “the Kingdom is near” Perhaps if we are treading water waiting until things get better we have missed the point. Jesus is in the business of restoring all things. As we engage with the nearness of the Kingdom it begins to reawaken that which lays dormant, it begins to realign who we are with who God created us to be, in short we become more alive!
I’m wired with a future mindset I am constantly looking for what’s coming next and very often I forget to enjoy the moment because I am so wrapped up in thinking of the future. The Kingdom is the one constant in this life, it spans the past, the present and the future. Paul the apostle wrote “God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
The crazy thing is, the things very often we think will make us come alive very often are the things that disappoint us the most. Jesus said whoever tries to find life will loose it but whoever chooses to loose their life for him will find it. In another context he said put my Kingdom first and everything else will be taken care of. The truth is as we live out His Kingdom first, each day will be the greatest day of our lives. The best may be yet to come, but living His Kingdom first now engages us with the best in the here and the now.
So may we come alive in the present as we put His Kingdom first. Choosing to live the greatest days of our lives not looking over our shoulders or looking ahead but looking around in the here and now asking God for His heart and perspective in the everyday, everywhere and every how.