| The Life OK, so you�ve survived until the third part of this three part series � the Way, the Truth, and the Life. here�s that verse again: �Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father�s house are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, �Lord, we don�t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?� Jesus answered, �I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.� Pretty profound, eh? Yeah. Reminds me of a TV show I watched this summer. Survivor. OK, now I know we�re Whitties, and so we don�t watch TV except for Cspan or CNN But how many of you caught at least one episode of Survivor this summer? Or even just five or ten minutes of it? Yeah, I thought so. Hypocrites. For those of you who stayed pure, or maybe were stranded on your own desert island, here�s the deal on Survivor: 16 people were stranded on a desert island, in two groups. It was up to them to survive � to find food, shelter, all that stuff we take for granted. Mixed into daily survival were challenges, where the teams would compete against each other is some ridiculous game or other. The winning team gained some modern luxury � like fire, and the loser team had to vote one member of their team off the island. He didn�t survive. So basically, you have to do a combination of things to survive: you have to be able to pass the weekly tests, at least most of them, AND you have to get the people around you to like you, so that they don�t kick you off the island for just being a jerk. It�s not enough to just be a nice guy, and it�s not enough to pass the tests � you�ve got to be able to do both to survive. Sound familiar? �Survivor� totally made me think of college life. You�ve got the tests, the homework and papers, and they�re enough to sink you in and of themselves, but alongside of that, you�ve got to have a social life. I mean, you HAVE to. You�ve got to have friends to stay sane, and what kind of a college experience would you have if all you did was study all the time? And so, like the people on this island, you�re constantly playing this balancing game between social life and academic pursuits, doing your best to survive. Now, like on the TV show, not surviving doesn�t mean that you die � nobody dies � but it does mean you don�t come out with the million dollars at the end. Maybe our goals aren�t that dissimilar from theirs. When I was in school, I had a �survival mode� that I would go into whenever things got really heavy. It meant little sleep, meals on the run � I actually would time myself, and not allow more than twenty minutes in Food Service � and social interaction only as study breaks. I would do this until the papers or tests or series of either would be done � then I�d start a different kind of �survival mode�: I basically wouldn�t even look at a book for several days, hanging out with friends and whoever was around while I recovered from the brain crunch. I�ve never been very good at balance. But even if you�re a lot better at balance than I am, I think you can identify with this feeling. Seems like most everything we do in college is best on �surviving� � whatever that means. How many times have you heard people say, or said yourself, �I HAVE to study. If I don�t pass this test, I don�t know what will happen.� Or, �I�ve got to get out and do something but study, or I�m going to lose my mind.� I�ll bet that a Whitman student � any Whitman student � would do really well on the next �Survivor� TV show, maybe even win the million dollars. We�ve got surviving down to an art form � we�re so good at it, I think we even forget that we�re doing it. I think the problem with surviving is that it�s not really living. It�s not dying, but it�s not really living. You do a lot of stuff, but don�t really get to enjoy it. When was the last time you wrote a paper you really enjoyed? See, we get so busy surviving, that we forget to live. We do and don�t even realize what we�re doing. Ok, so where does Jesus come into all this. He says, �I am the Life.� In another spot, he says, �I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. And when John�s explaining why he wrote his gospel, he says, �These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.� I don�t think surviving is having the life Jesus is talking about. I think there�s more to it for us, and when he says �I am the Life� he�s offering us a way out of survival mode. Another time, Jesus says,--this time I�m paraphrasing -- �Don�t worry about surviving. Look at the birds, and the flowers. They don�t worry about a thing, and God takes care of them. People God loves you so much�.so much more than the birds and the flowers. He�s gonna take care of you. So don�t worry about it.� I think Jesus gave me a picture of my struggles to survive. It�s like I�m in a swimming pool and I don�t know how to swim. But there�s a current in the pool, or something, and I�m slowly being pushed out of the shallow end toward the deep end. And I start to panick, because I�m afraid of drowning. The water comes up to my chest, up to my chin, and I�m really starting to worry here. I think that I�d better learn to swim soon, or that�s gonna be it for me, so I start thrashing around. I�m doing everything I can to keep my head above water. I can see Jesus, he�s out there at the end of the pool, and he�s yelling something at me. I can�t really make it out, because I�m splashing and thrashing so much. I figure it�s instructions, wave my arms and kick my feet, something like that. I thrash hard, kicking my feet now. It�s all I can do just to keep my head above water. My arms are getting tired, and I�m getting desperate. I look up and Jesus still there, still shouting. There�s water in my mouth, I can feel myself almost drowning, almost drowning. I call out, �Jesus, help me! Don�t let me die here like this!� Finally, he throws me a life preserver, and I climb out, exhausted and scared. I look up to Jesus, and I can finally make out what he�s been yelling at me all this time: �You can breathe underwater!� You can breathe underwater. Jesus doesn�t just stand at the edge of this pool and coach you on how to keep your head above water. He�s not hanging out to see if you can survive yourself, ready to throw the life preserver if you need it. He�s way more powerful and more involved than that. And he has a life for us � he is life for us. Jesus is offering us abundant life � a life that is richer, fuller, and more satisfying than the way we�re living now. But in order to accept that life, we have to stop surviving on our own. So this is my challenge to you: Don�t survive this next week. You all know for yourselves what slipping into survival mode is like for you, or what you do to survive. This week, don�t do it. Let your head slip beneath the water, and see if you can still breathe. |
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