In my case it’s most of the time that I can’t make it on own. There was a time in life, when I guess I thought I could, when the grand vistas of the future seemed to beckon, and I felt myself to be master of all that lay ahead. It all came crashing down on a calm summer evening in 1976 sitting on a rock outside Helsinki. The clear blue of the Baltic below, and the realisation of a great and mighty God whom I did not know, and to whom my soul from deep inside cried out. I was a bit like the guy who sings in Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”
"I walk a lonely road
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
My shadow's the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me
'Til then I walk alone….”
One of the profoundly amazing aspects of the cross story is the continuity through it all and the focus that the dying Christ brings to His relationship with us, fallen broken men and women. The drama unfolds gradually through the in the hours leading up to his exit from the world and finds expression in the words between Jesus and his followers.
“Having loved his own, he loved them to the end…..”
................“ I am going to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come back and take you
.......................... ..so that where I am there you may be also.”
........................................“I won’t leave you orphans, I will come to you…. “
......................................................“Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again
........................................................and you will rejoice and no-one will take away your joy”
.....................................................................“Father, I pray that all of them may be one,
......................................................................just as you are in me and I am in you.” (1)
Even on the Cross, His thoughts turn to those He loves, that they might not be confused, scattered, left empty and uncomforted. And now down the centuries, the wonderful, amazing, powerful, dramatic Presence of God’s Holy Spirit continues to be the one that comforts, invigorates and strengthens, since the moment He swept through the gathered believers at Pentecost, down to the moment when he wakened a desire for God and truth and reality in the heart of a lonely student on a rock in Finland.
It is he who then communicates all the reality of what the Cross is about deep inside of us, who helps us walk this “boulevard of broken dreams” and helps us make the choices that guide our lives onward and upward to God, and keep us from the downward spiral.
You don’t have to go it alone. You don’t have to put up a fight. The grandest most human thing that each one of us can do is to bow down before the reality out there, and admit that we can’t make it on our own and that we need Him to come in and sort out the mess we're in. And the amazing thing is ...... HE WILL!
(1) John 13:1, John 14:3, John 14:18 John 16:22 John 17:21
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