Redemption

“He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.” Hebrews 9:12

The after-effects of redemption – cleansing. Pure. White. Fresh. New. Like this:

I find myself in a bit of a revelation this evening. I must have always pictured redemption as an instantaneous process. I’m starting to wonder about that now. As I experience redemption, a new beginning, that process of cleansing, I think it’s more like this:

He entered the Most Holy Place by his own blood.

It must have been like that for Him, then. Redemption doesn’t look like redemption on the ground. In the midst. It may not look like the chlorinated church baptismal.

It looks like suffering, it looks like something that would draw blood. It looks like the tip of a spear. It looks like darkness, and fatigue, and everything you wouldn’t want redemption to be.

Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again”. Being born must be one of the most traumatic affairs which one endures in life. The pain, the screaming, the forced emergence into something completely foreign.

The blood.

If being born of the flesh is analogous to being born of the Spirit, should we not expect a similar experience when being born of the Spirit?

Redemption is continual, I find. It is daily, even as it is eternal. And creation groans expectantly. Which means something eternal, deep, and aware inside me, groans expectantly.

Redemption sounds like a battle cry. It sounds like crying. It tastes like blood, it tastes like victory. It screams when nothing is left, that everything is ahead. It demands everything, but it takes us where nothing more is needed.

So I say, Let me be born again.

Nostalgia

First, watch this:



"Nostalgia" actually is made up of 2 roots. From the Greek, "nostos", meaning "a return home", and the Indo-European "-algia" meaning "sickness".

Janelle Wilson, who wrote "Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning", has this to say:

"Nostalgia goes well beyond recollection and reminiscence. It demands an emotional valence..I think it is more a longing to recapture a mood or spirit of a previous time. Or, perhaps, to rediscover a former self (a self that seemed more like the 'true self', for instance). Perhaps we "nostalagize" for those things which symbolize what we wish for. What we are nostalgic for, reveals what we value, what we deem worthwhile and important."

Today, I'm cleaning my apartment - like, for real cleaning. And I come across boxes, cartons, of old cassette tapes. So I start sorting, tossing, dusting off and playing these relics.

Mix tapes (remember those?) from middle school...high school...even college. Some crappy blues song we recorded when I was 14. Old Zeppelin and GnR. My sister's voice when she was 3 or 4, my mom in the background.

My own voice, addressing me in all its pre-pubescent glory.

Draper's dead on with this "time machine" concept. A carousel. And sometimes, I don't want to get off back here. Where I got on. Sometimes I'd like to go back and try again.

To get off somewhere back there, and try again.

Those times weren't especially good, or particularly bad either. They were moments, just like this one. Okay, so my angst was greater, my confusion more pronounced maybe. Every one of those moments has helped me become who I am in this one.

But that kid...he didn't know any better, and he didn't need to. No rent, no job (well, not a real one, that actually mattered...), no burden for spiritual maturity. Make a crappy video, make a jackass out of yourself with tin foil, torches made of notebook paper, and a Saturday night.

As I listen and reflect I feel nauseous. Sick. Nostalgic. So, then - who am I trying to rediscover? What do I want tonight? What am I saying is important to me?

Possibility. Promise. Hope.

These are the things I find myself swimming in nostalgia for. Because that kid, desperate and clueless and full of angst as he was, KNEW, and I mean KNEW, that there was something better down the road. Just make it through this, and it gets better from here.

Nowhere was this more pronounced than at Uni. The whole world laid out before me. Do anything, be anything. I knew I could pull off...anything.

I guess the question in front of me tonight, is am I fulfilling that kid's dreams? Am I the man he thought he would become? If he met me right here, tonight, would he be proud? Disappointed? Would he want to punch my face in?

And would he be right?