Day 29: If Is Not Where It's At

This evening, my daughter and I learned that one of her friends died in a car accident last night. He was 22, finishing college, a nice guy, good person with a future full of hope. It’s what you don’t want to hear. One of those things that you wish were a bad dream and not true when you wake up in the morning.

Something happened that caused the car crash. No one knows exactly. We can only speculate: Was it the weather, the roads, the car, the driver? Was there a distraction, a slip, blinding light from oncoming traffic?

And even if we knew the exact reason, the detailed cause, we can only second guess how it could have been prevented: If he had this, if he had that. If he hadn’t this, if he hadn’t that. If only…

If only what? If only he had known? If only someone else had changed the circumstances? If only God had stepped in and un-caused it?

Here, “if” is not a useful word because it dares to entertain that we are capable of always making the better choice, exercising better control, seeing and sidestepping danger with the flick of a steering wheel.

“If” is a conditional word offering a fork in the road that is just one intersection in a complex decision tree.

We cannot build our lives on IF.
It’s too shaky, too fragile to have every branch break off into more and more branches. We cannot hold steady in the uncertainty that maybe we made the wrong decision. With IF we always second guess.

We can only build our lives on IS.
The only way to have peace in our lives is to build on something Absolute – where there are none of the proverbial if's, and's, or but's—only IS. We need a permanent stability that moves us forward through change while remaining immovable, invariable, inalterable, unshakeable, unchanging, uncompromising, unconditional.

Jesus told us where to find that Absolute. He describes the differences between the surety of IS and the uncertainty of IF using house building. He says in Matthew 7:24-27—

Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

Building our lives on IF is like building our house on sand— a million little particles shifting with rain, flood, wind. Sand does not hold its ground, cannot hold its form but flees. IF is the same way: you can’t pin it down.

But when we build our lives on IS, we build it on rock. Rock has integrity, shape, certainty, mass; rock is the foundation of the earth. Jesus says we can depend upon his words and shape our lives around them. Jesus IS the Word of God, the Great I Am. You can’t get anymore IS than that.

And for those of us who need it simple, can’t remember big expositions about anything, let along theology, Jesus’ words boil down to just one thing: I love you. The Absolute is nothing less than God’s unconditional love. Love that is pure, without reason or motive, without season or expectation. Love that never goes away.

Tonight, I thought about my daughter’s friend who knew Jesus' words and practiced them. He is on the other side of time where there are no longer any "if's" to second guess his life, and where he knows without condition the sure love of God. I then went into my 13 year old son’s bedroom as he lay sleeping, and laying my hand on his head said a prayer that went like this:

May you always know the absolute love of God.
May you know His absolute love through me, your dad, your sister, your brother.
May His Love protect you, because I cannot.
May it guide you, because I cannot.
May it redeem your present and your past, because I cannot.
May it be your future, because I cannot
May it be your peace, because I cannot.
May you know that it IS.