Jesus speaks truth, but often those truths come from outside my normal frame of reference. In other words, I think I understand, but I don’t understand. Through lots of meditation on this passage and passages like this in the Bible, I am only beginning to see.
What do you do with language that stretches your understanding when you are totally oriented around the visible as a frame of reference?
I love science. I’m an empiricist — someone who believes what he sees, not what he doesn’t see. I can grasp Jesus’ physical presence. I find it incredibly difficult to grasp His presence in His absence.
So, a long-term conversation with Him, and His many statements about His presence with me, enters my awareness. This in turn becomes an experiment (repeated thousands of times) about how to see His presence with me. I like, “I will not leave you as orphans” and “I will come to you” but the “in” stuff — What’s that?
I started talking to Jesus and trying to respond to what I think I was perceiving. I notice this conversation occurs inside my body. Inside me. I start seeing things that keep me from Jesus in my heart and my thinking. Then I start noticing Jesus’ initiative in my life. Conversations arising when I am not expecting them. The other day, maybe I was a tad over sensitive, but I responded rather strongly to my wife, out of proportion to the circumstance. Then in comes Jesus: “Doug, I know you want to love well, like I do, and it may appear a little thing to you, but because of our intimacy, you know my love for you, go apologize to your wife.” So, I did.
Lisa responded well, but the circumstance hadn’t really registered with her. Yet in my heart I knew my response didn’t come out of the space of loving her as God does. As I learn to see the invisible One with me, Jesus, these conversations become more frequent. I’m glad because I’m learning to see (Hebrews 11:27). Jesus really doesn’t leave me as an orphan; He comes and dwells. He speaks. He leads. In the middle of it all He changes me to be like Him. Life in Jesus now means seeing reality, full reality, as God with Me. Life in Jesus means life with Jesus and seeing Him who is unseen.
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