Day 17, 2011 Daniel Fast_Swing Wide You Heavenly Gates_Jason Arnold

 This is a long one, please bear with me. I want to thank my wife Ryan, who has endured my insecurity and orphan heart for too long.

I have been blessed with images of Christ. I sometimes put them aside as only my imagination, but I have learned to stop doing this. The most precious thing I have is this picture of Christ living within me. I see him being kicked and beaten. I see people cheering him as he enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey. I have to strain to see over the crowd. I see him walking down a sandy beach, leaving footprints in the sand. I see the footprint and think, “This is the word of God made man.”

I used to read the verse in Revelations, “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him”(Rev. 3:20), and then I would picture a door in my heart. It was a small wooden door with a rusted doorknob. The room behind it was small, dingy, and cramped. I have stopped seeing that. I now see a broad oak door opening up into a fortified city. This door does not open very often, and not for anybody who wants to come in. It swings slowly under its incredible weight. The streets in my city are made of stone and swept clean. A few blocks into the city is the temple, where my inner being is being sanctified. There are some moments when I can sense Christ is standing on the other side of the door. When I am praying, a moment of fellowship with friends, in a song, in compassion I feel for a neighbor or a friend who is struggling, in the laughter from a child. The enemy is working to see that the door to my city stays closed. When I see Jesus coming, I swing open the door to the city.

There is plenty of room for debate. Did Christ know how the story ended? Did he see everything from his divine perspective up in heaven, kind of like seeing the future? Could he see the road to Emmaus, when it was all over? Did this knowledge make it easier for him to endure? Or did he have to walk in the humility and blindness of humanity, where we “see in a mirror dimly”? Could he know the future glory, or did he have to take it on faith? I will put my interpretation in the latter, for since “children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things” (Heb. 2:14).

Our faith is sometimes weaker because we know the end of the story. The whole story only takes one sentence. Jesus was born, was crucified, and was raised again on the third day. But the mystery of faith is locked up in those moments that Jesus spent battling in the spirit. Imagine that you don’t know how the story ends. It is easy to do because none of us know how our story ends. We cannot imagine where we will be in one year, let alone at the end of the ages. As we walk to our car, or come home and put dinner on, we are walking in faith; that is, the certainty of things unseen. We have to believe, as the scriptures teach, that Jesus walked the earth as a man. He knows what a bellyache feels like. I am not a trained theologian, but I also believe that he lived by faith, just like we do. He trusted his Father to accomplish his good and perfect will. As he prayed in the Lord’s prayer, “your will be done”, He knew what we struggle to know, that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Armed with this faith, the substance of things hoped for, Christ could face the utter darkness of sin and death. There is no greater act of sacrifice and selflessness. We can see the weight of this calling in many places. Beginning with his temptation in the wilderness, where he fasted for forty days. Ending with his anguish in the garden at Gethsemane, where he cried out, “may this cup be taken from me, but not my will but yours be done.” Ending with his crucifixion. He did not know the end of the story, but he knew that it was his Father’s will, so he kept walking. The strength of his faith is a mighty fortress.

He walked through the gates of death. Is there anything on this earth that we cannot face with confidence?

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