The Words of Eternal Life

John 6:60-68

Have you ever agreed to an idea because it sounded wonderful, but you get into day 3 of traveling from Alabama to California to see Yosemite Park, packed into an RV like a clown car with 15 family members and realize you might have been taking too much cough syrup the day you agreed to this “adventure”?  But then after you fold yourself out of the fun mobile and see the absolute beauty of God’s creation and you stand hand in hand with the people you love the most in the world and realize you made it through this together.  The memories of laughter in the RV come flooding back, of cards games, dirty diapers, spilled sippy cups, long stories and camp fire songs hit your throat and make the tears stream down your face because the moment is so beautiful…….that is what this adoption is like.  Clown-car and all (because when you go through this, so does your family and friends….can I get an AMEN?)

After waiting 4 weeks for what should have been a quick (ha ha I laugh at this word now) Embassy Appointment, we finally have the Birth Parent Interview completed.  This was a challenge to get Moses’ birth father and the Embassy Consulate in the same room, but the Lord is good with the word challenge!  It’s His thing. 

In regards to my last post, I should clarify.  I was not saying that I don’t believe in God or that I don’t aspire to have faith like Abraham.  In fact I was actually saying the exact opposite.  This process of pruning and refining that the Lord has allowed me to walk in has showed me how deeply flawed I am and I how amazingly merciful the Lord is.  On Sunday we visited Jeremy’s parents church in Silver Hill, Alabama.  Their pastor preached from John 6.  This is where Jesus feeds the 5000.  Then after their bellies are full with bread and they are happy and content He starts to give them truth to feed their souls.  He tells them that they have just eaten bread but that He (Jesus) has come to feed them His flesh.  Yes, I would have loved to been in that crowd to watch the faces.  “And the bread that I will give for the life of this world is my flesh” John 6:51. 

“Truly I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” John 6:53. 

I am sure the disciples where standing beside Jesus proud of the who loaves and fishes feat and then Jesus starts in on the crazy and they are probably started looking for the nearest exits.  They are standing in support of Jesus, working for him, spreading the truth about him to their neighbors, and wearing his campaign buttons…..and then…..Jesus becomes a cannibal (ok, so I have a flare for the dramatic). 

So this is the part we all know very well if you really think about it.  This is the part in the story that we have heard from our mouths and the mouths of our friends and loved ones so many times.  The part where we realize that God is not just our “Spiritual Sugar Daddy”, giving us what we want all of the time, granting the wishes we make on stars and making sure our bellies are full, but that He actually is going to require something from us as well.   The part where the disciples turn to eachother and say, “This is too hard…who can bear this?  Who can listen to this??” (John 6:60), and they start to grumble. 

Jesus calls them out on the carpet, “Do you take offense to this?  The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” 6:61.    Are you offended that I have not come simply to make your desires come true, to feed you until your tummy burst, to give you everything you wanted in your American Dream, to make and adoption timeline?  Are you offended that it is so much bigger than you, so much broader and so much more deeper than your own personal quest to happiness? 

Then they walk away.  Not the people that didn’t ever believe in him, read verse 66 well.  His disciples walk away.  “They turned back and no longer walked with him”.  The weight of these words are crushing.  These words are death.  To turn back because the call was too much, it cost too much, asked too much, sacrificed too much.  To walk with Him no longer because it didn’t go the way we…. (I) thought it should go.   There have been moments in the depths of this adoption where I wanted to ball up my fist at the Lord and tell Him of the injustice, the failed promises, and the hurt he was causing me.  But those words, “to turn back and no longer walk with him” are death.  And they are never an option.  So I had a choice to go deeper, to allow Him to prune me with the hard or to just stay stagnate and stunted in my relationship with Him. 

Jesus asks the twelve left standing in front of him, “Do you want to go away as well?”.  The hurt, the disappointment, the cutting truth of this question penetrates my heart again and again.  And I find myself on the floor in front of the King, wanted to wash his feet with my hair. 

My answer is right there in the printed words of my bible, “Lord to whom shall I go?  You have the words of eternal life”.  These are the words that beat in my blood, that make the foundation of this world, that call me into his presence and break me again.  Where would I go precious Father?  Where could I run, How could I breathe without you?  You are my life.  You have the words of eternal life.  I am your bondservant forever and ever Amen. 

“Simon Peter answered him, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”.  John 6:68