I know it’s been quite a bit more than the ‘few weeks’ I said it would be until my next post. Sorry ‘bout that; life kinda got in the way, as I’m sure many of you can relate to.
2010 was for me a terrific year of spiritual growth and maturation…mainly because it was also a year of relentless financial and worldly hardships. When I look back on the year, though, the hardships aren’t what I see. What I see is God sustaining us through every uncertain month, in a different and unexpected way each time. I see more than ever God keeping his promises to my family, not in some theological kind of abstract ‘God is always with you’ way, but in a real, flesh and blood, down-in-the-trenches-with-us manner. (And we would like to give special thanks to all of those people who acted as His hands in helping to sustain us).
I think one of my enduring memories of 2010, in spite of all the things that happened to us, will be Christmas night with both our families over at the house. There weren’t many gifts this year (unless you happened to be 2-years old!), but we had a great time just hanging out as family, being part of The Conspiracy, and being grateful to God for the biggest present of all.
And of course there was the joy every day of seeing my son grow from a baby into a boy, and the countless hours of fond father/son memories we shared together last year.
More than ever before, I became acutely aware of God both sustaining us through the hard times, and celebrating with us in the happy times. My faith was strengthened in ways that made me truly believe that one day everything in this life that can be considered hardship will someday be counted as nothing more than ‘light and momentary troubles’. There’s a lot less ‘Skeptical’ in me these days and a lot more ‘Believer’.
But fear not! The raison d’être of The Skeptical Believer remains unchanged. And just to prove it, here’s a teaser for my next post, which is actually being written by my guest blogger, some guy named C.S. Lewis. Maybe you’ve heard of him. =P
‘What are we to make of Jesus Christ?’ This is a question, which has, in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is He to make of us? The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it.
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We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met him. He produced mainly three effects — Hatred — Terror — Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.
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The things he says are very different from what any other teacher has said. Others say, ‘This is the truth about the universe. This is the way you ought to go,’ but He says, ‘I am the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.’ He says, ‘No man can reach absolute reality, except through Me.’
What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?
So I hope you’ll forgive the lazy copy/paste job my next post or two will be, but when it’s C.S. Lewis the one being CTRL+C’d and V’d, I think somehow it’ll all work out just fine.
–Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
Falsehood aptly defended loses not it’s falsity.