In recent days, I’ve begun to “regain” my enthusiasm about my Christian faith. It’s not that I’ve turned away from God (in the truest sense) since I became well; it’s just that I haven’t felt nearly as close to him as I did when I was sick. When I spoke with a woman last week who had come to my book signing at the Olde English Tea Room back in June and who now wants me to come and speak to a cancer support group at her church in a few weeks, I told her that I might not be the best person to ask to speak. And when she asked why I would say that, I said that I didn’t feel at all like the woman who wrote the book. And her response back to me was, “And that’s exactly why you need to come and speak to our group.”
I’ve always been somewhat awed by others’ transparency and I’ve always yearned for so much more of it from the people I meet. And I’m beginning to see now that I’m not alone. Many, many others are also yearning for “realness,” for a level of genuineness that just seems to elude most of us. It eluded me too for a very long time. It eluded me until I realized that I could never really live until I chose to die (slowly but surely) to what others might think of me. This is a cross of sorts that I dance with all the time, picking it up and putting it down and picking it up again constantly. When I let me guard down this summer and shared with a women’s group the fact that I feel much guilt on and off for not feeling as close to God now as I did when I was sick with cancer, the leader of the group (who had also had cancer) thanked me and told me that she had often felt the same way; and she didn’t know that other people felt that way too. And I then thanked God that, for one brief moment at least, I had chosen to not care about people’s opinions of me.
A large reason that I think I’ve become excited all over again about my faith is the current study I’m a part of–a study of the Old Testament. I’ve been going through the book of Joshua and I’ve been blown away by what God is showing me through it. How could I have thought at one time that the New Testament was really where I needed to focus? I’m starting to see that my practice of skipping over the Old Testament might have been sort of what it would be like for my little girl if she had skipped primary/elementary school (and maybe even middle/high) and gone straight to college. The foundation of our faith is Jesus, and Jesus was back in Genesis and is in all the books between there and Revelation.
I could write a really long time about all the examples of Jesus’ presence throughout Scripture but I wouldn’t dare (mostly because I know just enough Hebrew and Greek to be quite dangerous and I’ve never formally studied theology). I will, though, share one thing that impacted me deeply. The word “Jesus” is the English of the Greek transliteration (through Latin) of the English name “Joshua” in Hebrew; in other, simpler words, “Joshua” means “Jesus.” And I am comfortable enough in my theology to say that this does not mean that the Joshua of the Old Testament was actually Jesus, but that Joshua was a real foreshadowing of our Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God Himself. How very cool is that?!
I’m becoming increasingly envious of one of my closest friends in the whole world–she is part of a Messianic Jewish congregation; and thus she knows and understands and actually celebrates so many parts of the Old Testament that are “Greek” to me (as the old expression goes). I wish I had that kind of insight into how Jesus lived while he was down here in the flesh; I feel like I would understand who he really was so much better. Ultimately, though, the biggest thing I need to understand about Jesus was what he did–he died and rose again. So, while he was a real man, a Jewish man, with so many layers, the fact that he was and is the crucified and resurrected Son of God does indeed trump everything else about him. That doesn’t mean though that I don’t want to continue gaining a better understanding of who he was and how he lived. He was, not all the time but at certain times, any and everything but the “norm” of his day–and he was certainly “real.” He got angry (in a righteous way), he called people names (in a righteous way too), he questioned people’s motives, he rubbed elbows with those who made others cringe, he felt abandonment and betrayal, he cried (more than once), and he even questioned and asked for a way out just before his death. And, his whole life long, he only ever valued one person’s opinion–God the Father’s; and, hopefully, I’ll be the same one day.
(FYI: If you haven’t, I would strongly encourage you to check out Philip Yancey’s book The Jesus I Never Knew.)
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