I would find it puzzling just as the disciples did when Jesus was talking to them in a ‘abstract story’ or parables about other people and other examples of life’s hidden meanings. Why didn’t Jesus talk to us one on one with what he was trying to say to us in easy to understand aramic or greek, why did he use these stories to get his point across?
He was a jew just as they were, why use stories or illustrations as a parable? It would of probably helped the disciples in their learning the ways of God and heaven. After all, they were used to were doing things a certain way, talk a certain way, learn a certain way, but Jesus, God’s son was telling them riddles, stories of people and places that they know nothing about for reference. But why?
My first thought, in this instance is that Jesus was showing the ‘Heaven’ side of himself.
This was Jesus thinking and telling his disciples to think and to show the side of themselves as ‘God’s son’ would. The heavenly side. The side of life that lived the ‘God like way’, this is the ultimate desire of God. It was what was missing from their lives of being Holy,Godly or a ‘image’.
The things that were told to the disciples were just a taste of things to come to all of us when we realize that when we have the continuous touching of ‘heaven and earth'(God and man) that things are different,unique, Holy, and glorious.
This touching of Heaven and Earth, was a precursor of what will become an eventual reality in God’s timing in the things to come. The example that was laid out in the scriptures is the forming of the world with the epicenter of God’s world, the Garden of Eden, with Him and his creation of Man. It was finished!
But their was a hiccup in man that changed this scenario, by not accepting this image bearing of being the creation of God and the oneness of it, man stepped out of this picture to be separate, to be different than man’s creator, to be just man.
It is this scenario that we should always look back to see where it should be at. The place where God and Man communed together in every way that was meant to be as the creator designed it to be. It was the image and image maker living in the world that they were designed for. Man has ventured into the realm of being the focus of a image of something else rather that the image maker’s design. Mankind has designed, imagined,focused on every aspect of ourselves to recreate what we would be as the creator of ourself but have failed.
It is at this point that that we should desire to get back to our original surroundings that we were created for, and the picture that we were meant to be. A image of God.
But let me take this further, and emphasize that this ‘touching’ of Heaven and Earth is as artificial as we have made it in our christian ways as the Jews in the old testament made as an example in their lives as the ‘Temple’,or ‘Synagogues’ as ‘the place where God and man could be together. This was just a sample of what God’s desire for his people to always be together in ‘Holy union’ as in a marriage. As for the Israelites and for us, this should show that this is just a example of God not leaving us totally after our discretions that we showed. He still cares, He had a point of connection to be with ‘His people’. But He wants more, all of us, all the time, just as the garden.
Our continuous striving to make just a decimal point of unity with God at one location seems minimalist in our attempts to ‘be’ with God our creator. God created the world, the universe, the image of himself to live in his creation, why would he still make the point to come to spot in the road to ‘see’ him? Matthew 18.20 points out to God’s kingdom has no walls or boundaries when he says-“For where two or three have gathered together in my name,I am there in their midst.”
We have for to long limited God and imprint among God’s creation to just four walls, our continuous presence in all the world is what God’s desire is to be.Maybe then, we can be that ‘Light upon the hill that shines for all the world to be.’ Amen and Amen.
The Eternal Purpose 