Wrestling

It was a big crowd. They stood there for so long, not talking, barely wanting to even make eye contact with one another, for fear of instigating a conversation they just weren’t ready for. It was one thing to watch a man, a human being, drift up into the sky like a leaf caught in a dust devil, but then to have those two strangers, in clean white robes, show up and then disappear so abruptly; it was way more than the mind could process quickly.

Finally, one person broke the trance and said aloud, “What just happened here?”
Silence.
“Seriously, what does this mean?” the person prodded.
“I don’t know, but we need to find out.” Someone quietly replied.

I’m part of this group of people. I may be two thousand years removed from the actual incidents, but I identify with this group of questioners. Two thousand years ago a Jewish Rabbi roamed around Palestine, and He changed everything, with His teaching, His miracles, His death and His resurrection. I am part of those people who are left in His wake, asking “What does this mean?”

I realize that for way too long, I saw following Jesus as an established concept; something already understood and catalogued by those who went before us. I saw the Christian faith as a belief system that had already been thought out, and saw my role as a leader in the church as a guardian of the established concept, and as a teacher who promoted the tenants of what was accepted and understood.

I’ve known inherently that the structure that surrounded the Christian faith in America had gone terribly stupid, and I’ve been groping around for the last 15 years for a new understanding of church, and seeking an honest expression of it in my own experience.

But lately, something else has been shifting and changing in me. I know a new excitement and wonder in my relationship with Jesus. I have a better (or at least different) view of who I am as a follower of Christ.
I finally joined the journey in earnest. I’m not an expositor of known truth; I’m an explorer of an ever-evolving landscape. I’m on a journey to understand, as best I can, what it means that Jesus lived and taught and died and lived again. What it means to me…to us, right here, right now.

I’m a kid again. Everything is new. It’s like the excitement of new love. It stirs my stomach and scares me at the same time.

I’m putting on my wrestling shoes and meeting God by the Jordan. I hope I come out like Jacob, with a defining limp as my reward.