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It’s Vertical then Horizontal

“But seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, all these things shall be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)

The Cross is a beautiful picture of our relationship with God and others. The vertical beam is representative of our relationship with God. It indicates what God has done for us. It pictures God’s supreme love and saving grace, or the unmerited favor of God, that reconciles sinners to Him through Jesus Christ. Relationally, it is to be a continuous flow of communication from God to us and from us back to Him.

The horizontal beam of the cross represents our relationship with each other. Love flowing from us to others, practical living, reminding us to look around and give our lives over to helping and supporting one another.

In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus gave us the formula for how we are to navigate this thing called life. When asked what the greatest commandment was, He said,

“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

These two things, loving God, and loving others are inseparably linked, just as the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross. However, if you look at the cross one beam is longer than the other, the vertical. I don’t think this is by accident. It is a visual reminder that we first and foremost need that relationship in place to hold up the other. When it is too short, we fall, even while serving with a heart of compassion and love for others.

Kneeling at the cross, giving our lives over in complete submission to Jesus Christ, is at the centerpiece of our existence as His followers. We must be fervent in prayer (communication with Him) and ever in the Word (God’s Word). But even more than that, we can be in the Word and prayed up, but unless the Word is in us, we are wasting our time. For that to happen, we need the constant filling and transformational power of the Holy Spirit teaching us, convicting us, guiding us…reconstructing who we are. (Romans 12:1-2).

Relationally, possibly some of our issues now at Eastern Hills stem from too much horizontal looking and not enough vertical. That is not to minimize, rationalize, or trivialize what has happened. However, our focus now needs to center on our mutuality at the cross. We have no hope with horizontal relationships if we neglect the vertical! It is vertical first, then horizontal.

In His love,

Pastor Keith

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FOCUSED

One of the casualties of aging to which I find myself a victim is the dimming of the eyes.  Ecclesiastes 12 counsels the young person to remember God, their Creator, in their youth before the aging process takes over and various faculties, as listed in verses 1-7, are diminished.

Clear eyesight when we are young may be something we take for granted. However, as we age the realization that our vision is not as sharp as it once was takes hold. “Readers” become standard fare for all intricate tasks. Our once keen laser sharp focus is now blurry and in need of help to restore its youthfulness. That restoration is found through glasses or some sort of rejuvenating surgery. Especially in the early stages of this degenerative eye problem we may be able to fake it and get by, but eventually we must relent and do something to correct the problem.

There is a parallel between physical and spiritual vision. “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was written in the early 20th century. The hymn writer, Helen Lemmel, was strongly influenced by the artist and later little-known missionary, Lilias Trotter. Miss Trotter started off as an aspiring artist but early on felt a call from God to reach the lost. She began her ministry by rescuing prostitutes from the streets of London. Later she went to Africa, without missionary funding, and served for over forty years. While there she penned a poem that would greatly influence the writing of the hymn “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  The poem was entitled “Focused: A Story and Song.” 

The poem centers around focusing one’s attentions fully and completely upon God. She writes that Satan knows that if a person uses all their powers of concentration on being led by God’s Spirit, they will have a great intensity and impact upon those to whom they are called to minister. Lilias Trotter, writing in a more formal use of the English language than we are accustomed, shares some timeless insights which could very easily have been written today but with a different accent. She writes: “Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once—art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the ‘good’ hiding the ‘best’ even more effectually than it could be hidden downright frivolity with its smothered heartache at its own emptiness.”

The “good” hiding the “best” leads us to emptiness.  Could this be true of us today especially as American Christians? Have we sought the “good” while missing the “best”? The chorus of the hymn, which we will be singing in worship this Sunday, says it best.

                Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face,                                                                                                                                        And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Keith Pate

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