Day 12 – A Time To Stand

“Many followers of Jesus today have not begun to wrestle with the full dimensions of the truth of calling because they have not been stretched by the real challenges of today’s world and by the momentousness of the present hour. ‘A time to stand’ is a time to behave as our Lord would wish us to behave. A time to behave is a time to believe as he has taught us to believe. A time to believe is a time to move from small, cozy formulations of faith to knowing what it is to be called by him as the deepest, most stirring, and most consuming passion of our lives.” -- Oz Guinness, The Call

I’m reading The Call and The Return of the Prodigal Son simultaneously. The parallels in their themes strikes me like a hammer on iron. Today Oz Guinness recounts the story of the Spartan’s stand against the vast army of Persia in the narrow gap at Thermopylae. They were outnumbered 10,000 to 1 but the “heroic handful of Greeks,” held off the super-army for over two days until they were betrayed by a traitor, surrounded and slaughtered. They took a stand for freedom against the oppressive invasion. Two thousand years later the French philosopher Montaigne said of the battle at Thermopylae, “there are triumphant defeats that rival victories.”

Ours is not a battle of flesh and blood. At first it may seem to be so. Many cultures of the world, the U.S. included, promote war as the solution to the fear of oppression. The prodigal son painting tells a different story. The father’s stand for reconciliation was not without cost. He had every right to reject his young son because asking for and receiving his family inheritance before his father had died was as if he had slit his father’s throat, culturally killing him before his time was up. Yet his father acted with mercy and compassion and turned the table when he said in response to the older son, “your brother was dead but has come back to life, he was lost but is found.” Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life . . . No doubt any man who has been attacked himself or has had a family member attacked, as in 9/11, has the right to seek revenge. But revenge is not the way we are to stand if we are Christ followers. Christ stood for reconciliation, love and mercy just like the father in the painting. Even in the darkest hour of his death, Christ embodied love. We are called to do likewise.