Thriving Hope and Crushed Jeeps

I just opened a new CD (my first new CD in recent memory...). It's "The Jesus Record" by Rich Mullins. It was published posthumously because just nine days after his jeep flipped over and he was thrown from the car and then struck by a passing truck, he recorded a micro cassette of the lyrics of many of the songs on this album. And just that fast, he went "out like Elijah, in a chariot of fire", just as the desire he expressed in an earlier song, eerily forecast. And just that quickly, Rich Mullins found himself face to face with the Jesus he so passionately worshiped.

Last week, a young lady whom I've befriended as a result of her visiting my blog and leaving me many comments over the past several years, told me of how greatly a song from this CD had ministered to her. It's called, "My Deliverer", and she sent me a link to a YouTube video of this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac4GnpqXQAQ&p=66E44DE698355A37(which is as moving as is the song itself. As I listened over and over to this song, (about which my Jewish musician husband just commented on as he listened to it playing moments ago, "That's the best Christian song I've ever heard.") an image came to my mind. I pictured Jesus coming again, as he promised he would...coming to gather his people and initiate the ending to the rule of sin, death, injustice and disease on this cursed planet. And as he appears in the sky, from every speaker, every car radio, every announcement system in every store, from every stereo and on every iPod, this song suddenly beginning to peal out it's proclamation of victory and freedom for the captives of the wrongs of this life, the hopeless and the weary, announcing his return.

It's images like this one that get me through long days of pain and I'm sure this picture also encourages Christians in other countries who are beaten, imprisoned and tortured for their faith. I believe we can endure anything if only we have this hope...this KNOWLEDGE that Our Deliverer is Coming! If I didn't know this to be true, I would certainly, once more, quite immediately, plummet back into the depths of sickness and hopeless despair that once held me bound and tied as I struggled with the onset of mental illness in my early twenties. Without this knowledge and without the knowledge that I am among those he is coming to gather, I don't see how anyone can survive for even a moment. All optimism is a foolish pretense; a self delusion. All desperate hopes that one day society will right itself or find some kind of "enlightenment" are just that, desperate and based on nothing solid... Nothing that a person can grab hold of and really TRUST in.

The promises of God are Yes and Amen, (or Affirmative and true) and they are fulfilled in the person of Christ Jesus and because of what he has accomplished on our behalf. These are something you can hold onto. They are as certain and as trustworthy as is his very name. Did you know that "Jesus" is the Greek word for his real Hebrew name which is Y'shua (in English, that would be "Joshua") and it means "SAlvation" or "he who delivers"? It is the name that is above all names. The name by which we are saved. He is our deliverer. And he is coming!!!