Tongues of Dust

I've been watching a series on television called "Eternal Egypt." Somewhere in Egypt at this very moment, Egyptologists are crawling through dark, dusty caves gasping for breath as their rib cages are squeezed between heaps of solidified mud and the rough cave ceilings and walls. They squint into the darkness and trace scratches on walls that once showed great paintings in
bas relief but are now washed away by ancient floods and barely visible.

They trace these faint etchings with pencils then go back to their laboratories in the heat of the Egyptian sun and painstakingly try to recreate some tiny fragment that will give them some small clue to the life of someone who passed to dust eons ago. That night they will go back to
their air-conditioned hotel rooms and crawl between comfortable sheets, falling asleep soon after they turn out the lamp. That lamp is on a nightstand beside their snoring face; and inside that nightstand is a Bible from the Gideons with the Word of GOD freely available to them.
How ironic. Rather than reading the Bible, the very Word of GOD that the True GOD of Eternity provides freely, they search for answers in the dirt and the remains of humans no more knowledgeable than themselves whose death and whose destruction prove the failure of their own gods. (Exodus 12:12 " I am the Lord; I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt.")

JESUS said in John 5:39 that the people surrounding Him while He walked on earth searched the Scriptures for clues about Eternal Life yet disregarded Him, about the Scriptures testified. In the same way these Egyptologists ignore all they could ever need to know about Life, Eternity and the Almighty through the Bible in the bedstand by their heads in order to
scratch in the decay of the dead for answers they don't have.

Over and over again, humanity ignores the Voice of GOD and chooses its own diversions instead, listening to and speaking with tongues of dust.

Getting Home, Not Getting Through

Many people seem to be confused about what the Gospel really means. So many think it's to get us through this life easier. "Since I became a Christian I can deal with the trauma of..." Divorce, drugs, loneliness, death of a loved one...finish that sentence any way you'd like. And it's true. Christians can usually deal with the trauma of every day life, like sudden or chronic disability, better.

But that's not the Good News. The Good News is not about getting you through this life, but getting you into eternal life. That is what puts everything in perspective. Knowing you have eternal life with GOD makes anything this life can throw at you bearable because you know it will end and there is a far better existence to come. But the Gospel is that you have eternal life, not a plan to get through this one.

Christianity is not about gaining "excellence" in this life, budgeting your time better, losing weight, dealing with your emotions better. And it certainly is not about selling or buying everything from tie tacks to underwear to calendars to books with some Christian gimmick through some purpose-driven, promise keeping marketing plan. JESUS did not die to give you whiter teeth, cleaner laundry or better smelling armpits through snake oil, vitamins, honey or any other temporary things of this life. He gave His Life so that you would have eternal life and not perish (John 3:16). To Lazarus sitting at the gate, infested with sores and being licked by dogs,JESUS does not offer a "new! improved!" healing cream. He offers death and resurrection and entrance into eternal life with Himself.

John 6:27 "Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

I John 2:25 "And this is what he promised us-even eternal life."

You, like everyone else (no matter how "together" their lives seem) have sinned, chosen what is not of GOD. The moment you did that you became tainted in a way that can never be healed on your own and sealed your fate for eternal pain. Even if you had not gone off track into your own ways you would be stained with the choices of the original man and woman. There is no way back by anything you can do or say or buy. Nothing. Zero. You are perishing, hurtling toward death, both mortal death and an eternity of deadly darkness for your soul with no hope of your own making.

Your soul will exist somewhere forever but the only hope of it being an existence of joy and not the pain you chose in your rebellion is through Jesus Christ. He is come that you may have life, abundantly (John 10:10). The Life JESUS came to give you is forever life of the soul, not a middling life here and now.

That knowledge of what He has done for you in saving you from yourself and your rebellion and choice of death will give you joy once you realize it. It will give you the strength to deal with anything this life can throw at you "whether heights or depths or any other created thing" (Romans 8). But that ability to get through this life is just a shadow, the by-product, of the Life JESUS gives you by paying your debt to the Father and bringing you back Home to Him, stinky armpits, sores, bad breath, low energy level, off-balanced checkbook, wimpy body, and all now (but giving you a new life and a resurrection body in the Life to come). (I Corinthians 15:44) The Good News is not about here, but Home!