The Basics
Psalm 104
O the confusion that ensued that week. It's like on the ice breaker learning about someone called two truths and a lie. Which was it?
• He is risen.
• The gardener came while we were sleeping and took his body.
• We ate with Him.
Some followers say they saw Him. Other followers don't believe it, won't believe it until they see and feel the wounds for themselves. Some even said He walked with them a few miles and they didn't even recognize Him. They even told Him that they thought Jesus was going to be the new king who would throw out the Roman occupation . Yeah! Sure! Tell me that one again. Can someone tell me what is going on?
Who among us really knew Him. Those who walked with Him the longest, at least three years? Everything we had learned all our lives before meeting Him, being called by Him, everything our parents taught us that they were taught said that the Messiah would establish His kingdom, and didn't that mean throwing out the Roman government? What else could it possibly mean?
As a widower a pastor reminded me that God Himself was the one who said that "it is not good that man should be alone" and that there are possibilities on web dating sites. (If I'd been told that in high school I'd really of thought him nuts!) But now having been on one or two for a few months there's much I have learned. What is written, even pictures posted is only the surface of a person. Sometimes it's a complete lie. (I've turned in my fair share. Thank fully a small percentage.) The things said, even what I've written of myself, tells so little about all that I am. For myself I remember the nearly 44 years of marriage, a continual learning the heart of another. Words and pictures tell only a beginning. Wanting to learn her heart and she learning my heart demonstrates that who a person is is only a face to face, heart to heart process.
Person to person, face to face, heart to heart is what the disciples believed, but believed also based on what they had been taught for years before Jesus called them to follow. So everything He had taught about the kingdom wasn't a kingdom that would overthrow the Roman government? That's all they understood. But He's alive now? Now are we going to find out who He really is? What He really means? These thoughts are bourn out just before Jesus gave them what we know as the Great Commission (Matthew 28:17 - some doubted) and before He ascended (Acts 1:6 - will you again at this time restore the kingdom?). During those forty days the disciples began rethinking everything they knew of Him and expected that He would do and has come for during His brief thirty three years on earth. But very unlike me now meeting and falling in love with a new woman, possibly for marriage, for the disciples their Rabbi who was dead is now alive, is the same person excpt what we knew of Him is totally different now, and because He is God He is sending the Holy Spirit to bring to mind all things He had taught them, they began with the basics to simply know Him, who He really means for them to understand Him to be.
Working my way through the Psalms, especially what stands out quite pointed to me have been the last twenty Psalms generating thoughts like "Really? Is that in there?", "But I have called you friends", "Come, See me", "Have I been with you so long?", and "Approaching God". All were bringing me to a place of seeing God in a brand new way. Psalms 104 seems to be doing just that, beginning with the basics. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth", those are the first words we read when we read the Bible. Psalm 104 throughout it's entirety tells of the greatness in creation, of who God is, His creation, how His creation works right down to the purpose for oil, wine, and bread. Even for man the basics of His creation exist. Every so often we need to see God in a new and greater way even though wemay have known Him for many, many years.
There was an old evangelist I remember talking to not many years, maybe months before He passed on to glory. After his decades of ministry both as pastor and evangelism he told me, "I have a new definition for faith". In my mind I'm like "What? A new definition of faith?" And after I thought on it, yes, we need to see our faith in a new way as we grow in Christ. We need to see the Word of God in a new way. We need to see Jesus in a new way even as the disciples began to realize after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He wasn't different, but certainly to understand His Kingdom the disciples had to relearn what He meant by all He had taught them. And for us it's not that we have seen something brand new, but that we have seen the basics more like who He is.