Yo, la luz, he venido al mundo, para que todo el que cree en mí no
permanezca en tinieblas. Si alguno oye mis palabras y no las guarda, yo no
lo juzgo; porque no vine a juzgar al mundo, sino a salvar al mundo. El que
me rechaza y no recibe mis palabras, tiene quien lo juzgue; la palabra que
he hablado, ésa lo juzgará en el día final. Juan 12, 46-48
I have come into the world as light, to prevent anyone who
believes in Me from staying in the dark any more. If anyone hears My words and
does not keep them faithfully, it is not I who shall judge such a person, since
I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world: anyone who rejects
Me and refuses My words has his judge already: the word itself that I have
spoken will be his judge on the last day. John 12: 46-47
That was the thing about my parents, is that they
kept His words faithfully. I was thinking about those who say, “Lord, Lord,”
but do not obey, and the heart of this issue is that they do not really
believe.
But my parents believed. Which is why it made
perfect sense to make those weekend trips to the orphanages hidden among the
cardboard shacks on the hillsides of Tijuana and Ensenada. Why would we ever
keep more than 10 pieces of Halloween candy if there were so many children
without? And it made sense that they opened wide our front door to all who
wandered, even if they were a bit socially inept or smelled funny or dug
through the garbage for leftovers. Perhaps they were angels in disguise. And all
of those boxes of Bibles, big and little, that filled our cupboards and glove
compartments and front pockets. If the Word of God indeed does not return void,
why would anyone not hesitate to hand them out to the store clerk, the
hitchhiker or a boxload to the freshman Western Civ class at University High
School?
My parents’ kitchen is pretty, well, awkward. There
is this sort of odd glass cabinet that everyone over six feet tall bangs their
head on every time they walk past it, and, well, all of the Coverdales are over
six feet tall. And there are these fold-down electric burners that are kind of
hipster in a nice Modernist sort of way, but they certainly scorch wrists and
food and pans and everything else near or on the kitchen counter. And the
cupboards are deep and awkward and it is totally impossible to reach anything
under there in the dark abyss, even if you crouch down low, and they are sort
of filled with termites and little bug parts and generations and generations of
plastic sticky shelf paper. So one time mom and dad had a chunk of money and
lots of fun House Beautiful magazines
and books from the library and we measured and calculated and sketched, and we
were all good to go and about to head on over to Home Depot with our color
chips, when my dad happened to notice one of the jillions of pleas for money
that fill their mailbox. And I think this particular flyer was asking for
Bibles in Russia or China or somewhere. And 100 dollars would buy a lot of
Bibles, but 2,000 dollars would buy even more. And after the briefest of
discussions, my parents pushed all of those plans into the trashcan and wrote
out a check and stuck it in an envelope and mailed it off.
I remember a conversation I had with Marco just
before I left Italy. He was talking about the one who went out to sow, and some
of the seed produced thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some a hundred-fold. He
asked why would anyone choose anything but a hundred-fold, no matter what it
cost?
And here Jesus lays it out nice and clear: The
time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you truly that unless
a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain of
wheat; but if it does, it brings a good harvest. The man who loves his own life
will destroy it, and the man who hates his life in this world will preserve it
for eternal life. If a man wants to enter my service, he must follow my way;
and where I am, my servant will also be.
And what a sad little
line is hidden away is this chapter: Nevertheless,
many even of the authorities did believe in Him. But they would not admit it
for fear of the Pharisees, in case they should be excommunicated. They were
more concerned to have the approval of men than to have the approval of God.
And it is not Jesus who will judge us, because He
did not come to judge but to save all men. It will be His words that judge us: I
assure you that whatever you did for the humblest of my brothers you did for
Me.
Dear Jesus, Light of the World, I confess that I do not keep Your words
faithfully. I confess that I am concerned about the approval of man. I confess
that I look away from the humblest of your brothers.
Help me to follow Your way. Where You are, may I be there also.
And I still bang my head on that glass cabinet. But
at least I have no excuses. I know what His way looks like.
