Tag Archives: 1 corinthians 15:26

Worry = Wasted Time

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I don’t know how this past week went for you, but mine was ultra busy. Not only was it somewhat emotionally charged with the last of our four children graduating from the church’s day school—which means after about twenty years of back-and-forths with kids, it’ll be just me from now on—but it took precision to fit everything into each day. With the end-of-school activities, church and school meetings, graduation parties, staff and graduate celebrations today, preparing several sermons for various services, evening activities tonight (including a funeral visitation and a Bible study in my home), the forthcoming week should be a breeze, right?  Well, no. In between a number of these things, I will defend my doctoral thesis before a committee, and I have yet to actually sit and prepare. Each time I’ve tried, life happened, which is to say that other things with much stronger gravitational pull kept my mind and body busy.

The topic of preparedness came up in a phone meeting with my mentor on Thursday. While he implied the event would be incredibly challenging, he said he had every confidence in my abilities. I thanked him, but in secret, I was worried. I knew my own schedule. I also know myself to be a “show up early and have more than one backup plan” kind of guy. In other words, I’m the kind of guy who’ll get the family to the airport three hours too early pulling an overpacked suitcase in tow. But in this instance, things would be different. You might even ask why I’m taking time this morning to write this message. I should be studying.

But there’s something else to think about here.

I experienced a slightly different version of the same conversation several weeks ago at the Livingston County Lincoln Day Dinner. Jennifer was sitting beside Pete Hoekstra (the former Ambassador to the Netherlands, now the Chair of the Michigan Republican Party). During dinner, she told him that I’m the kind of guy who fills every waking moment of his schedule with something, and when I’m done with my current schooling, I’ll almost certainly fill the void with something else. At first, it felt a little like she was confiding in a marriage counselor who, unlike most others, could make a call on his government phone and have me eighty-sixed. But then I had a moment of clarity. When it comes to one’s level of busyness, we all have our fair share of self-inflicted distractions. The fact that I was sitting at that dinner when I should have been home studying is an example. And so the point: in the final cost/benefit analysis of our lives, we all spend time doing things that, in the end, may or may not be of value.

Don’t get me wrong. My time at the dinner was valuable in ways I won’t go into here. Still, discernment is necessary. A person can’t and shouldn’t say yes to everything. That said, do you want to know what one of the most considerable time-wasting activities is? Worrying. The thing is, I seem to have been doing more than my fair share of it the last few days.

I suppose I could jump straight to Matthew 6:25-34. It’s there the Lord discourages worrying. Actually, the word is μεριμνᾶτε, which the English Standard Version translates as “to be anxious.” That’s probably a better understanding than “worry.” In one sense, I’ve always sort of felt as though worry could be interchangeable with heightened concern, depending on the situation. Concerned awareness or readiness is often mistaken for worry. As a Christian, such readiness has the potential for action. It leads to something. When faced with a concerning situation, either the person will trust in Christ while being moved to take every reasonable action, or the person will crumple over and into anxiety, somehow believing everything depends on him and all hope is lost. In other words, anxiety is worry that’s been slow-roasted by hopelessness. Christ says four times throughout ten verses not to go there. Instead, He urges His listeners to seek first the kingdom of God.

The Lord’s point is quite simple. Despair—anxious worry—is the inevitable result of a starved hope. Therefore, feed the hope, not the worry. To do this, seek first the kingdom. Seek Jesus. I say this because where the kingdom is, there, too, is its King. Hope is abundant with Him (1 Peter 1:3-6). Concerned Christians know to look to Him first, not the self. As they do, real peace is both assured and given (John 14:27). They are not surrendered to the terrors of anxiety, no matter the monsters that threaten.

Anyone familiar with the stuff I scribble will remember a perspective I hold to rather strictly. I learned the perspective from Saint Paul. The more I hold to it, the less worrisome or hectic things become. Take a look at 1 Corinthians 15:26, 54-57 and you’ll see what I mean. Essentially, I’ve learned that the day a person realizes the only thing he has to lose is Christ is the same day he becomes impenetrable to pretty much every terrorizing monster this world can conjure. This includes death. If not even death can frighten me, then everything else is cake, including a thesis defense. Besides, life is far too short to be despairing about this thing or that thing that may or may not go one way or another.

I’m sure I’ll be just fine on Wednesday. In fact, if I really think about it, the last few years have been nothing but preparatory. I know what I’m doing. I’ve lived all 296 pages (and then some) of my final paper. If I stumble a little here and there during the defense examination, so what? I’m not perfect. But Jesus is, and He has me well in hand. Resting there, I can scrap every ill-weighted concern and then stand back and watch the horizon of mental and physical free time open.

Of course, I’ll bet you can guess what I’m likely to do in those spaces. That’s right! I’m going to fill them. Trust me when I tell you I already have a few ideas.

Headless Chickens

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I’m getting older. You know what that means? It means I’m losing more and more of my generation and its characters to death.

I received word this week that Carl Weathers died. Weathers was known for his breakout role as Apollo Creed in the Rocky films. He was great in those movies, but as a lover of sci-fi horror, I appreciated him as Dillon in one of my all-time favorites: Predator. When I learned he would be at the Motor City Comic Con last spring, I ensured my kids got to meet and get a photo with him. What a nice guy—genuinely friendly.

Strangely, I heard the news about Weathers after reading an article about how scientists believe they’ve unlocked one particular secret to aging. Every generation and culture has been chasing these secrets since the dawn of Man. And why? Because no one wants to die. Everyone knows it’s permanent. I suppose that’s the humor in cemetery fences. Why have one when those outside don’t want in, and those inside can’t get out?

Essentially, the article reported that cells age when their mitochondria start leaking. As they do, they release proteins that cause inflammation, leading to aging’s effects. Researchers theorize that by stopping the mitochondria from doing this, they’ll be one step closer to reversing the aging process altogether.

Will scientists ever figure out how to do this? To some extent, maybe. But will they ever defeat death? The Bible would say no.

First, death is far more than a natural phenomenon involving leaky mitochondria. Stopping this process won’t fix death. Physical death is merely the last decomposing fruit produced by a much deeper condition. Second, Jesus assured us that the earth has an expiration date. When it arrives, so will Jesus. He’ll return in glory to do precisely what the creeds declare: to judge the living and the dead. Hypothetically, even if scientists figure out how to keep people from aging, when that day arrives, those without faith in Christ and His salvific work will still be found locked in bondage to sin and eternal death, ultimately meeting the Lord as spiritual corpses. Such a person might look alive in this life but, in truth, is already dead. That’s what Saint Paul meant by describing living human beings as dead in their trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). In a sense, the image of a chicken that’s had its head lopped off comes to mind. Running around this life’s yard, the chicken might look alive. But it isn’t. It’s dead. And it’s only a matter of time before its actual condition is settled.

I suppose it’s foolish to ponder death without including Saint Paul’s reference to it as the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26). We’ll have our share of enemies in life. I know I have plenty. Sometimes, I feel like a line has formed somewhere, and it’s comprised of folks who want to see me come undone entirely. If that line does exist, I know death is the last one standing in it. And when it’s his turn, there will be no outsmarting or outmaneuvering him. Plenty have tried. Plenty still do. And yet, there is that poetic but strangely inspired line that speaks an unflinching truth: “Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me” (Emily Dickinson).

It would be nice if science could help ease the aging process. I’d certainly buy a pill promising to reverse the disc degeneration in my back. A day without back pain would be nice. Nevertheless, such relief is not humanity’s greatest need. Look around. The world is a farmyard of headless chickens, so many chasing what cannot meet that terribly final necessity.

That’s not necessarily the case for Christians. We’re different than all the other chickens. We have the Word of the Gospel. The Gospel is restorative. It makes complete that which was incomplete. We have our heads. Saint Paul writes that Christ “is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Colossians 1:18). This is to say, we’re not running around the yard aimlessly toward an unfortunate end. Instead, by faith, we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), and we’re living out the rest of our days in devotion to Him. That devotion has multiple aims, one of which is concern for what’s happening around us (Galatians 5:6; 1 Timothy 1:5).

Neil Armstrong once said that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. He also said he didn’t intend to waste any of them, which means he intended to devote himself to things that really mattered. Indeed, devoted people do incredible things.

On the way to school last Wednesday, Evelyn and I were listening to the news and learned about a man who died. His name was Larry Taylor. Taylor was an Army attack helicopter pilot in Vietnam and the last to receive the Medal of Honor in 2023 for doing something in June of 1968 that too many others wouldn’t. In short, four American soldiers were surrounded by aggressively approaching enemy forces. Taking inescapable fire, they were out of ammunition, having only a dozen hand grenades and their knives. If no one came to save them, they would die. Knowing this, Taylor flew straight into the chaos, lighting up the enemy ranks with as much firepower as possible before setting down in the middle of the mess. Thousands of bullets whizzing and rocket-propelled grenades flying, the trapped men grabbed hold of the helicopter’s skids, and Taylor flew them to safety.

At the medal presentation, a seemingly aloof crowd member asked Taylor, “What on earth would possess you to do what you did?”

“Well,” the 81-year-old hero and faithful member of his Christian church in Tennessee replied, “it needed doin’.”

Taylor was devoted to those men. Even as he faced certain death, his devotion was not self-concerned. Instead, he insisted on using what was likely to be the last of his heartbeats for something that mattered.

You have a limited number of heartbeats. Battles are happening around you that matter. Enemy forces in abortion clinics surround unborn children. More than 61 million of them have been killed. Countless students leave their homes and are besieged by teachers and administrators relentlessly firing radical sexual ideologies that overwhelm them. More and more are overcome each day. Christians are being bombarded in the trenches of America’s public square, having a mile-long line of battalion after battalion intent on eradicating them.

But you know something of death. You know it’s the last enemy. You also know that because of Jesus, it’s a toothless one. Therefore, if not even death can be our worst concern, what would keep us from a devotion to Christ capable of flying in to rescue as many as we can, even if it means risking ourselves?

Of course, that’s a rhetorical question.

My ever-vigilant prayer is that you’ll know the Lord’s remarkable rescue from sin and death. With such knowledge, I pray you’ll sense a Spirit-driven devotion to faithfulness far more robust than anything this world could ever use to terrorize you.

Absence

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It’s happening. The days are getting shorter.

Those of you who read these meanderings regularly will know that I struggle at summer’s end every year. It’s not so much that the longed-for season of effortless schedules is leaving (although this summer has been anything other than easy), but instead, it’s that the sun begins making less time for us. Moving into autumn, the sun makes drastic changes to its schedule. For one, it gets up late and goes to bed far earlier. Some of us will go days without experiencing its presence, traveling to and from the office in the pitched blackness of its absence. On an occasionally cloudless day, you’ll see it pass by the window—but only if you have a window. If not, it’ll be as if the sun used to exist but does so no longer.

My stomach turns just thinking about it.

Jen posted something on social media last week. It was a snippet from our family’s after-dinner cleanup. Essentially, Evelyn asked, “Momma, did you know there is something called S.A.D.? It’s when people get very sad when summer ends.” She was referring to Seasonal Affective Disorder. And before she even finished her testimony, I was already answering, “Yes. And would you like me to explain it to you?” I wasn’t being snarky. The moment was a jesting one. However, looking back on the moment, I wonder if she planted the question. She knows how disjointed I become in the perpetual darkness of the sun’s absence. I get the feeling she asked Jennifer the question to spare me a momentary cloud while also showing me she is paying attention and understands. She’s like that. She’s mindfully caring.

It usually takes me a few weeks to get into autumn’s rhythm. In fact, by the time I discover myself finally beginning to appreciate fall’s colorful detonation, the snow arrives and covers it. Gripping summer’s absence tightly, I put myself at a disadvantage, resulting in being a step behind other opportunities for joy. Admittedly, I am forever learning a lesson from these things.

Honestly, absence is a tricky thing. John Dryden said that when you love someone or something so much, an hour of absence is like a month, and a day is like a year. Jennifer and I were talking about this one night last week before bed. She mentioned that family dinners will soon be very different. She’s right. Like a curious organism, absence will grow. Right now, dinners together as a family are quintessential to our lives. We do everything we can to ensure all six of us attend. But life’s seasons are changing. Soon six will be five, five will be four, and then four will be three. And then it’ll just be Chris and Jen. For the Thoma family, that’s a big deal. We’re knitted very closely together. When one is absent, it’s as if the world has suddenly become strangely uninhabited.

I get it. At least, I’d better get it. The day is surely drawing near when Chris and Jen will be Chris or Jen. Some of you already know what I’m talking about. Absence—the experience of being apart and missing that person so incredibly much—can be devastatingly palpable. I miss the sunshine during winter. Still, that’ll be nothing compared to an empty nest—or Jen’s empty chair. Personally, and in a selfish way, I hope my chair is found vacant first.

Having said these things, there’s something else to the topic of absence. Christians know what it is.

For some, absence means loss. Not just any kind of loss, but permanent loss, as if the person they miss is forever out of reach. One of my favorite texts from God’s Word is “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26). I like it because it serves as a capstone statement to Paul’s previous preaching in the chapter that Christ has conquered all things, and by His resurrection, the seemingly impossible obstacle that brings ultimate separation—Death—has itself been massacred and tossed aside in the cosmic contest for our eternal future. As a result, no other enemy stands between us and our God. Christ saw to it. His resurrection proved it handily. From this vantage, one of Death’s offspring—permanent human separation from God and each other—is included in the list of enemies defeated by Christ’s work. In other words, because of Christ’s victory against Death, Christians can’t really even speak of a loved one who died in the faith as absent in the sense of being lost or gone for good. Those who are no longer with us, while absent from us, are not absent from the Church’s eternal fellowship. This means we’ll be with them again in person. Right now, they’re with Christ, and according to His plan, their time of physical separation from us is already on a trajectory of reversal. Their mortal absence might indeed stir sadness. Still, we really can’t justify the kind of sadness relative to permanent absence or being lost. The absence is not permanent. Believers are with Christ in His nearest presence. And if you know right where a person is, how can he or she be lost?

Indeed, in natural time, the sun goes away during autumn and winter. Likewise, the day is coming when either I’ll be without Jen or she’ll be without me. But only for a time. The spring and summer sun will return. Believers won’t be apart from our loved ones who’ve died in the faith for long. Soon enough, there will be an eternal sunrise in an unending time of togetherness outside of time. That’s Christ’s promise to His faithful. Until then, the faithful have another powerful guarantee. The same risen Christ vowed He would never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He promised He is with us always, even to the end of all things (Matthew 28:20). That promise meets with right now. While ten thousand sermons could be preached on either of these two texts, all with unique renditions of Christ’s beautiful assurances, each would bear a common thread of consequence: You’ve been won by the person and work of Christ, and now, by faith, no matter what, you are never alone. Interestingly, you can be confident of this because of something Christ cannot do. He cannot break His promises, and therefore, He cannot be absent from those who are His own.

To close, remember these two things during autumn’s darker days, whether that autumn is seasonal or human: Human absence is not our forever, and in Christ, you are never alone.

Death Could Not Hold Him

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Alleluia, Christ is risen!

We offer plenty of cheerful statements at various times and for multiple reasons. “Happy birthday” is one. We say that year after year as we recognize the passage of another twelve months in a person’s life. “Congratulations” is another. We’ll use that word for many reasons, never just one thing. We’ll offer it if a person lands a new job, gets engaged, wins at bingo, or any other significant or insignificant occasion.

But then there’s, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” No other declarative assertion in history compares, and only one event can claim it.

Jesus of Nazareth, the One mocked and physically abused into gross malfiguration, and then spiked to a cross until His body could take no more, He met with the last enemy, Death (1 Corinthians 15:26). And yet, He is beautifully, brilliantly, wonderfully alive! “He has risen,” the angel told the women visiting His tomb, “he is not here. See the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6).

It’s likely they looked. But they didn’t need to. They already knew the scene well—the terribly dreary place palled by Death’s sights, sounds, and smells. They were sitting across from the tomb’s entrance watching Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea take the Lord’s limp body—battered, hemorrhaging, and likely beginning to stiffen—and wrap it in a linen shroud and place it inside (Luke 23:55). The women saw the Lord’s end—His brutally gruesome end. How could anyone survive such a thing?

They don’t survive it. No one does. Even in Jesus’ case, Death came, bit down hard, and then carried Him away.

At least, Death thought it had a hold on Him.

To call out, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” is to know that at one particular moment on the timeline, somewhere out of sight, and sometime between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, a cosmic encounter ensued. Death’s trophy opened His eyes and took back His own life (John 10:18). Having never lost His divine authority over all things but only hidden it, He enacted His ambush. He pushed apart Death’s jaws, and in between its now fully realized predicament noted by terrified whimpers, took to His feet. And in the next few moments, as His body was restored, keeping only the scars from the nails and spear (for our sake), He leaned into Death and made it His trophy.

Jesus accomplished and forever sealed the death of eternal Death.

Calling out “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” is so much more than “Happy birthday” or “Congratulations” ever will be. It’s a phrase that genuinely meets with every single moment of life—from one’s birth to one’s final breath. Easter, a singular event, celebrates the defanging and ridding of humanity’s last enemy, the one residing at the center of all human fear: Death. Death has forever lost its power. There is no longer any reason for hopeless concern in this life, no matter how challenging life may be or what the devil or the world might bring our way. Jesus defeated such concern’s master. All who believe this—those who cling by faith to Jesus and His sacrifice on the cross—receive the merits of the same conquering Christ.

And what are these merits?

The forgiveness of sins. And, of course, where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is also life—eternal life—and salvation (John 3:16-17 and 6:40, Hebrews 10:10, 1 Peter 2:24, Matthew 26:28, 1 John 1:7, and so many others).

Indeed, alleluia, Christ is risen! May God continue to bless you by the power of the Holy Spirit for faith in Jesus. May He keep you enveloped by Easter Day throughout every moment of every day.