Matthw 7.9-11 and "My mother's eyes"
Jesus said (John 12:48): "There is a judge for the one
who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I
spoke will condemn him in the last day."
[This announcement relates to those who heard Jesus'
message and rejected it and has nothing to do with those in distant
parts of the earth who didn't hear what he taught. Those non-hearers
will come to judgment and if condemned it will not be for rejecting
Jesus and his teaching since they never heard.]
The bad news
But those who heard the teaching and would have nothing
to do with it or him need not guess what they'll meet in the judgment
day. The person and the truth they defied while they were alive is what
they will meet on that day and what is true of them would be true of us.
It won't be a purer or more attractive or more truthful Jesus that
we'll meet on that day—say a definitive no to him now and there's no
reason to think that he will be more attractive at Judgment, even if we
were given another chance to judge Jesus. The one we judge now is the
one we will meet then and for those who impenitently and finally reject
Jesus in this life that's bad news.
The good news
But for those who give their lives to him as he has
already been revealed to us it is the best news. Part of the good news
about the good news is that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and
forever. The lover of the oppressed and sinful, the defender of the
helpless, the spokesman for the voiceless that we find throughout the
Gospels—the One to whom the penitent turn in faith—that's the one
they'll meet in that day. All the kindness, understanding,
righteousness, truthfulness and faithfulness we saw in him while he was
here—that's what we'll meet then! Since he said, "I will be with you
always!" we can be sure that he'll be there when the final critical day
arrives.
First and foremost our assurance of all this comes from
the Spirit of God in the Holy Scriptures but a host of us have been
privileged to come across people who illustrate the truth of what lies
ahead for us in and through Jesus Christ. We're going to find that all
that is lovely and splendid and honourable and true is eternal and that
the beauty we saw in people was a pointer and a promise of the completed
thing.
Goodness now is goodness then, honour now is honour
then, and bravery and gallantry are forever the same. If we ask, "What
will we find in the future?" the answer is that we'll find all the
loveliness and righteousness that we've known in life made permanent and
deeper and richer.
Henry Ward Beecher said he only came to grasp the love
of God through the love of his mother. He knew, he said, that whatever
trouble he might ever get into she would do anything, give anything, to
redeem him. Knowing that helped him to rise to sense the depth of God's
love. If God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ not even
Beecher's mother could out-love him.
Hudson Taylor, the famed missionary to China had a
similar conviction. He said, "Before I had children of my own I used to
think, God will not forget me; but when I became a father I learned
something more—God cannot forget me."
Jesus looked around at a group of caring fathers and
wanted to know, "If your child asked for a loaf would you give him a
stone? If he asked for a fish would you give him a snake?" You know the
response he got—that'd never happen. "Well, then," he said, "if you
being evil know what it is to give good gifts to your children how much
more is your heavenly Father like that?" He has no hesitation to take
the best and truest that is in us and use it as an illustration of what
we can expect from God.
We get a glimpse of the meaning of life as it's meant to
be in the people who reflect the character of God and this is how God
meant it to be. Sometimes we find it hard to climb to the heights where
we can love and admire God and treasure what he has in mind (compare 1
John 4:20 and its implication) and that's where lovely people come to
our aid. They're no substitute for God but there's no doubt that they
make it easier for us to believe in God and love him (compare Isaiah
32:1-2). They make goodness warm as well as true; they make it look
like what it is, something worth pursuing, and they make us believe
that goodness is possible in a human life. Heaven won't be anything
lovelier than that. Don't be afraid of any of this for God isn't jealous when our love for a loved one always brings him to mind.
A songwriter of earlier years got it right when he wrote
this (I've adapted it some for our purposes while leaving his point
intact):
One bright and shining light
That taught me wrong from right
I found in my mother's eyes
Those wondrous tales she told
Of streets all paved with gold
I found in my mother's eyes.
Once I was lost in sorrow
A lonely soul
Now I walk the straight and narrow
To reach my goalGod's gift from up above
His pledge of lasting love
I found in my mother's eyes.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.