Life's Trajectory

Life’s Trajectory:

Having a child truly does profoundly impact the way you see the world. Little kids don’t really have any understanding of time. When you tell a two year old their birthday is coming in six days - most will have no concept of what that means.

Kids live in the here-and-now. They ask/demand food when they’re hungry. They play until they’re unconscious. They typically rebel against the idea of taking a nap or going to bed because they’re caught up in something else right now and don’t see the value/need.

Many of us never grow out of that spiritual infancy/childhood. We tend to live in the here-and-now and when God calls us, we, like the over-tired baby, rebel because we’re caught up in something else and don’t see the value/need.

In Ephesians 4:11-13 we read:

11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the teaching-pastors, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants...

The intended trajectory of our lives was determined by our Creator, God, from the very beginning. In Genesis 1:26 we read, “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may have dominion… (over creation).”

Since God has always been eternal commUNITY as Holy Trinity, Their creating humanity in their image meant intimate commUNITY -or- oneness; and creating us in Their likeness meant the capacity for the essential character of God, i.e. selfless, altruistic, benevolent, extravagant love.

The calamitous events of Eden proved ruinous, irreparable, and deadly for humanity on our end - just as God had foretold in Genesis 2:17. The trajectory of our “lives” apart from God proved that death is not determined by a pulse or brain activity, but rather by our relationship with our Creator.

Life’s trajectory was intended to be “unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God,” but as Isaiah wrote, “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's path to follow our own...”

Like infants, toddlers, and immature children, we chase after the things of the world: food, sex, adrenaline-highs, security, toys… accumulating experiences and selfies that look better on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram than reality. Yet we keep on chasing, keep on pursuing, we repeat the same pattern of destruction expecting “LIFE” to get better - apart from our Creator.

The rest of the verse from Isaiah reads, “Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.”

Jesus stepped down from His majestic, holy, eternal, heavenly throne to be born in a filthy animal pen. Hebrews tells us, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross…” He endured Satan’s temptations, the dimpatience of His disciples, the beating, mocking, abuse, -our rejection of Him- and the Cross for the absolute joy, elation, bliss, rapture, and jubilance of REDEEMING the relationship we willfully and defiantly fractured.

When Christ is the telos, goal, aim, destination, and ambition of our lives our intended trajectory is restored and redeemed. If the goal of our life is one consumed and driven by the here-and-now and the circumstances of life, i.e. hunger = food, lusting = sex, ignored = attention, etc., then we are but infants and immature children.

God’s presence is what made Eden paradise - it is what makes LIFE paradise. Our Trinity God knows that we have gone astray, but Christ our Redeemer took the comprehensive wages of sin at the Cross. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul wrote, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Our sin-debt is paid. In Christ we literally become the righteousness of God. If that doesn’t blow your mind then I don’t know what could. There is no religious ceremony for this. It is a graciously transcendent transaction between Christ and you.

Call out to Him. He knows your prayers before you pray them. He answers to bring you into His Bride, the Church, NOT so that you can “go it alone” with the misguided notion: “This is just between me and God.” We were created in commUNITY, we are redeemed into commUNITY, and God’s eternal nature and image is commUNITY.

Is today the day you allow Christ to eternally alter life’s trajectory and secure your hope in Him?

I pray it would be so.

Blessings,

-Kevin M. Kelley