If Only …

Cindy Hess Kasper’s recent article in Our Daily Bread certainly rang bells for me. She was thinking about the incident where Jesus raised Lazarus from the tomb. At first, Jesus had delayed coming when called. Mary rushed out to meet Him.

“Lord,” she moaned, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32 ESV).

“If only ...”

It is the most natural reaction in the world. From a very young age we think of what might have been. I remember slipping in the bath as a child. My parents came in to rescue me. I kept crying, “I could have drowned.” The simple fact was, I didn’t, and I am still here to tell the tale.

Cindy had a memory of her own. “As we exited the parking lot, my husband slowed the car to wait for a young woman riding her bike. When Tom nodded to indicate she could go first, she smiled, waved, and rode on. Moments later, the driver from a parked SUV threw his door open, knocking the young bicyclist to the pavement. Her legs bleeding, she cried as she examined her bent-up bike.
Later, we reflected on the accident:

“’If only we had made her wait … If only the driver had looked before opening his door. If only …’ Difficulties catch us up in a cycle of second-guessing ourselves.

“’If only I had known my child was with teens who were drinking … If only we had found the cancer earlier …’

“When unexpected trouble comes,” she comments, “we sometimes question the goodness of God. We may even feel the despair that Martha and Mary experienced when their brother died. Oh, if Jesus had only come when He first found out that Lazarus was sick!

“Like Martha and Mary, we don’t always understand why hard things happen to us. But we can rest in the knowledge that God is working out His purposes for a greater good. In every circumstance, we can trust the wisdom of our faithful and loving God.”

I feel grateful to Cindy for drawing our attention to this topic. The “if only” questions display both a lack of reasoning (it is illogical to distress yourself about something that never happened) and a lack of faith. In a sense, Mary’s sister Martha belatedly showed more faith than her sibling. She too lamented,

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,”

but she then added,

“But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” (John 11:21-22).

There is one “if only” that we seldom if ever give voice to, and it is the only one that should really be important to us. If we fail to put our trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, we face an eternity cut off from God. That surely is the greatest disaster of all, and one which Jesus gladly prays His heavenly Father to deliver His trusting followers from.

Be Salty

Recently my table salt ran out so I had to buy a new salt mill. It was strange how the salt seemed to have a fresh, tangy taste. They say salt shouldn’t go off, but it does seem to lose something of its edge over time.

This reminds me of two passages in the Bible in particular.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5:13-16 ESV

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Colossians 4:5-6

Jesus tells His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.” This is often used of people who have lived long in their communities and are looked up to as productive, reliable and worthy. I often think that about older folk I look back on in our churches. Often they came to know Jesus as their Saviour when young, and had a lot of experience of Christian living. Yet too often you just got the feeling that something had come adrift somewhere. It wasn’t that they had turned their backs on Jesus or were becoming gross sinners. It might show in one of two opposite ways. Either the older person would speak his or her mind, regardless of who was going to be hurt, or else everything seemed to wash over them. They weren’t prepared to be critical about things that were wrong in their community or in the church.

You feel that older, experienced Christians should be the first to notice when a church or a leader was slipping into apostasy - being a bully, perhaps, or neglecting truth. Sadly, when you hoped they would be the first to voice concern, they would frequently wave the issue away with “Oh, well, that’s the way things are nowadays; you’ve got to make allowances”. No, we shouldn’t, if something is against God’s word in the Bible.

“To grow old is to change often, because we live in a changing world,” one very elderly preacher commented as he gave his “swan song” at the local preachers’ meeting. His younger colleagues drank in his every word. It sounded like wisdom based on maturity, and perhaps it was, up to a point. But we are not to change with every fashion. That way we become insipid and lose our tang.

I am a Christian now because a perceptive minister did not go with the flow. Most people around me were thinking to themselves, “We must humour Timothy; he is a promising young leader.” The older man challenged me straight out. “Your thinking is just like that of a run-of-the-mill Western philosopher. You do not think the way the Bible does.” That night I knew I was in the wrong and gave my life over to Christ.

If Jesus is more important to you than the world is, be salty. Be prepared, humbly and prayerfully, to speak out when appropriate. Above all, make sure to keep your keen edge. Jesus did. It may just help somebody.