Reflections on a Graduation and a Bike Ride

Last weekend our youngest child, Joel, graduated from UNC Chapel Hill. During those four years of college, Joel and thousands of his classmates worked hard at their academics, spurred each other on to excel, developed deep friendships, and grew to love their university. Indeed, the graduation ceremony emphasized again and again: “Chapel Hill is home. You can always come home. This place is your home forever.”

Speakers exhorted the new graduates to be true to themselves, forging their own path, not allowing others to define them; to continue to practice and develop critical thinking in order to live a good, moral life; and to continue to pursue higher learning, for in that way they will find fulfillment. Indeed, when acting like this, we were told, there is no limit to the good they can do.

Prior to graduation weekend, I participated in the 2017 Law Enforcement Bike Ride to DC, an annual ride from Charlotte covering about 500 miles in four days, to honor law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. During those four days, more than a hundred cyclists worked together, persevering through the long miles and the cold, wet weather. Many placed a picture of a deceased officer they knew personally on the rear of their saddle. A support crew accompanied us and served us faithfully; churches and volunteer fire departments opened their doors to warm us and feed us. Like Joel’s classmates, we all – riders and support crew – developed a strong sense of camaraderie, and rejoiced to accomplish a challenging task together.

I delight in Joel’s hard work and fine education, as well as in the privilege of biking last week with so many dedicated riders. Joel grew and changed in positive ways through his four years at UNC Chapel Hill; those four days of riding had an impact on me. Praise God for such opportunities to stretch ourselves, to step out to accomplish something difficult, and to be able to carry it through to the end.

Both experiences point to eternal realities revealed in Scripture. God made us for something larger than ourselves individually. He created us to accomplish His tasks together. He made us for Himself, so that together we would be His intimate family – so that we would be truly at home with Him forever.

As humans made in the image of God, we long for that home. We long for that sense of belonging, that sense of accomplishment, that sense of camaraderie in working together for a vitally important task. Throughout our lives, we experience pointers to that real home, that real sense of purpose, that real camaraderie. But these pointers are most helpful and valuable to us only if we look through them to see the much greater reality they signify. Our home forever is not our alma mater; our great accomplishment is not persevering through challenges to fulfill an earthly academic or physical goal. Our home is with God, through union with Christ, with all the redeemed from every tribe and tongue and nation. Our great accomplishment is to disciple all these people groups, and then to worship our King with them in word and deed forever and ever, never ceasing to increase our delight in Him.

Along the way, we may need to forge our own path if others are leading us away from God; but we also need to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Jesus. We would do well to develop critical thinking skills and to apply them to help us understand better both Scripture and the world around us;  but critical thinking in service of our fallen desires will lead to the opposite of the good life. Higher learning subject to God’s revealed truth can help many to understand that truth in a deeper way; but when not subject to God, such learning easily puffs us up, and God opposes the proud. We can forge our own paths, think critically, and achieve the highest standard of learning – and yet do great evil in the world.

So pursue tasks you love; word hard together with Christians and non-Christians in education, in sports, in service. Enjoy the sense of common purpose, the joint accomplishment of a difficult task. But remember to look through the sign to the signified reality. God invites us to participate in the greatest accomplishment of all time; He welcomes us into the only eternally, perfectly loving family; He grants us the greatest joy and fulfillment imaginable. Don’t focus on pursuing the sign and then miss out on the reality.

 

The Joyful, Obedient Family of God

In Mark 3, Jesus has become the center of public attention. Thousands are coming to Him, following Him wherever He goes, even to the point that He could find no opportunity to eat (Mark 3:31). Mary and Jesus’ brothers hear of this, and are concerned: Is Jesus out of His mind? How can He not even be taking care of Himself? (Mark 3:32). They go to Him in order to intervene.

When they arrive, they send a message to Jesus while He is teaching the crowd. When word reaches Him, the crowd expects Him to go see His family. But He responds:

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”  And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:33-35)

That is: “Those who are closest to Me are not My blood relatives. Those who are closest to Me are those who follow God, those who obey Him with joy, trusting the heavenly Father to guide them in His good and perfect ways. Such people are my intimate family.”

Yet in our natural state we rebel against the good and loving commands of our God. As Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” So we rightly sing, “Prone to wander – Lord I feel it! – prone to leave the God I love.” Thus God put reminders of His commands into the everyday life of the people of Israel. For example: After the people rebel at the edge of the Promised Land, refusing to enter in for fear of giants (Numbers 14), God tells them to wear tassels on each corner of their garments so that they will remember His commandments “to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after” (Numbers 15:39). And why is obedience important? Because He is their God; He brought them out of Egypt to be their God; they are to be holy, set apart for their God (Numbers 15:40-41).

Just so with us today. God brings us out of rebellion, out of slavery to sin, out of our own Egypts. He rescues us – not so that we, freed from slavery to sin, can be free to follow after our own heart and our own eyes. No. To follow after our own heart is to be enslaved once again to sin. Our desperately sick and deceitful heart makes us believe we are freely pursuing our own good, but that way that seems right to us leads only to death and destruction (Proverbs 14:12).

God plans something much better for those whom He rescues from slavery. He brings us to Himself. He adopts us into His family. He calls us to be set apart for Him. And He tells us what that means in this world by giving us commandments for our good (Deuteronomy 10:13).

So obedience is characteristic of those in God’s family. Loved by Him, chosen by Him, empowered by Him to obey, we respond with loving, joyful obedience to His commands that are for our good.

Yet what happens when we fail? What happens when we disobey? What happens when that desperately sick, deceitful heart leads us again in a wrong direction? If we don’t obey God’s commands, are we kicked out of the family?

Jesus Himself provides the solution. As in good human families, God the Father never leaves or forsakes the children who are His. As the Apostle John writes, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin” (1 John 2:1). That is, we’re part of the family. We are to be obedient to our loving Father. To sin is to deny Who He is and what He has done for us. “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  He is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2). In His family, the penalty for sin is paid. Jesus took the just punishment on Himself for the sins of those in the family. Yet this is not an excuse to sin: “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3).

So Jesus invites us – He invites you! – to be part of the joyful, obedient family of God. To do this, we must recognize our sinful, deceitful hearts, and acknowledge that apart from God’s loving guidance we will go astray, we will rebel, we will wander, to our own harm.  But in the family of God, we are loved; we are cherished; we are forgiven by the blood of Christ. So, set apart for Him, we live lives worthy of our calling, knowing that through us(!) “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD” (Numbers 14:21).