Tolstoy’s Three Questions – Reflections (2)

 

The king’s first question is, “When is the right time to begin everything?”

 

The hermit’s answer is, “There is only one time that is important— Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”

 

What do you think of the answer? Are there elements that are true, and others perhaps not true?

 

Is it true that we have power? What do you think about that?

 

Jesus asks us, “Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?” (Mt. 6:27).

 

Jesus tells us, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28:18). If this is true, do we really have any power?

 

To say that we have power, or possess power, is to say that we operate independently of our Lord Jesus Christ. If we claim to follow Jesus, this is a problem, for without Jesus, the Vine, we can do nothing – and nothing means nothing (John 15:5). If we have not yet met Jesus and we claim to have autonomous power, we are deceiving ourselves and others.

 

Christians who operate independently of Jesus Christ build with wood, hay, and straw (1 Cor. 3:12), the foolishness of their independent lives will be manifested on that Day.

 

On the other hand, Jesus does gives us power and authority to be His ambassadors and His Presence, the Holy Spirit clothes us with power to witness to Jesus Christ and to be a blessing, in His Name, to the world and to the Body of Christ. However, this is not our power to do with as we please, it is His power and His authority to be exercised under His Lordship; we are stewards, we are not owners.

 

Jesus, as we especially see in Gospel of John, did nothing on His own initiative, all that He did was “out of” the Father. This is, in some measure, part of the Great Mystery of kenosis that we read of in Philippians 2:7, Jesus “emptied Himself” in the Incarnation. As we abide in Him, the Vine (John 15:1ff), He teaches us to allow His life to live in us and flow through us, so that we learn to do nothing out of ourselves, but rather live by His life, “doing” as we see Him do within us and through us. This is a learning process that unfolds in our relationship with Him.

 

One thing we do have “now,” always “now,” is opportunity to listen to Jesus, see Jesus, respond to Jesus, and be a blessing to others according to the grace given to us, a grace that typically has a pattern of moving us onward and upward into Jesus, leading us out of ourselves, our comfort zones, and into Him.

 

This opportunity includes the marriage of word and deed; we must speak as Jesus and act as Jesus. Paul writes to Timothy that “in season and out of season” Timothy is to be sharing the Word in its many facets (2 Tim. 4:2). So it is with us, for we are commissioned to make disciples of all peoples, “teaching them.” Those who constantly wait for the “right time” to live and speak as Jesus spend all their lives waiting. Those who wait for the right time to do the right thing will die having never done the right thing.

 

I had a friend, Harvey, who used to say, “There are two thieves always trying to steal the “now” from us, the past and the future.” He meant that if we are always looking backwards or always looking forwards – often fretting about the past or worrying about the future – that we will miss what is right in front of us, we will miss the people who are with us, who need us, and who we may very well need.

Yes, as Christians we look ahead to that City, we seek growth in ourselves and others, we desire (hopefully) to alleviate the suffering of the world; we desire that tomorrow be a better day than today for others and ourselves. However, such desire and hope can only be fulfilled by living today, by living right now, in the I AM THAT I AM, in Jesus Christ.

 

Paul writes, “Forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13b – 14).

 

Perhaps we could substitute the Hermit’s word “power” with the word “opportunity.” Now is the only time we have opportunity. Opportunity to know Christ, opportunity to be a blessing to those whom we are with, opportunity to pray and intercede for others, opportunity to touch others.

 

Learning to recognize the nature and form of opportunity takes time and practice, and it also takes desire and love and compassion, and a willingness to obey our Lord Jesus by offering ourselves to Him without reservation, in surrender – and surrender means unconditional surrender, we reserve nothing for ourselves, we give all to Jesus and for Jesus, laying down our lives for Him and others.

 

There will be times when we could have done things differently, there will be times when it seems as if we’ve made mistakes, but this is part of life. And let me please suggest, that if we love people and desire to serve them, that our love will be the thing that they remember – our imperfections are what they are, but our love for others will remain.

 

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves” (2 Cor. 4:7).  God’s greatness dwarfs our imperfections! As one of my professors used to say, “Be yourself and forget about yourself.”

 

As I wrote about surrender above, I realized how foreign that word is today among Christians. How can this be? The nature of our life in Christ includes surrender to Him, a continuing offering of ourselves to Him on the altar of sacrificial living (Rom. 12:1 – 2). Yet today we hear little if anything of surrender in our teaching and preaching. We are inundated with self-centered messages, self-improvement messages, “how to” messages – but we hear nothing of surrendering our lives, our hearts, our minds, our souls, our bodies, to Jesus Christ.

 

“Now” is the most important time because “now” is when we are to surrender to Jesus Christ.

 

A life of sacrificial “nows” in Jesus, a life of intimate “nows” in Jesus, a life of “nows” in which we give our lives to others and for others, this is our calling as sons and daughters of the Living God.

 

What other Bible passages speak to us of “now”?

 

What other thoughts do you have on “now”?

 

Most importantly, how am I living now?

 

How are our congregations living now?

 

O yes, and how are you living now?