Have you ever flipped a coin to decide an answer or determine who goes first in a game?  I've done that many times, but have not always stopped to consider the coin itself.   For example, what do you think the distance is between heads and tails?  You could say the distance is virtually infinite - like the distance between winning and losing.  And you'd be right!   However, you would be just as correct to say there is no distance at all since heads and tails are two sides of the same coin.   What matters is your perspective and what those two sides mean to you.

As a pastor, I find myself thinking about that existential question, "why are we here?" a lot and I keep working to clarify and refine my answer.  Recently I read someone else's answer and it strikes me as perhaps the best one I've heard.   We are here to remember.  It's like that story theologian Marcus Borg told about the little girl who wanted to be alone with her newborn brother.  She asked him to tell her about God because she had almost forgotten.

Theologian Paul Tillich described a similar process when he wrote that people are created for eternity, but live a temporal existence largely cut off from eternity.  In this world of time and space, we catch glimpses, perhaps remembrances, of eternity through all the knowledge we acquire.  We remember even more through the expression and appreciation of art.  Finally, we perceive the eternal quality of life most clearly in those relationships that are the deepest and most intimately loving.  In these ways, we remember the eternity from which we came and to which we will return.

One of the most important things for us to remember is that we are in God and God is in us.  We are one.  Christians describe the dual natures of humanity and divinity that are present in Jesus.  Let us remember that we all are divine and human.  We all are one in God.  There is no distance between God and each of us, though at times the distance can seem infinitely large.  We are two sides of the same coin.  What matters most is our perspective.   When we awaken to the true and divine nature of each human being, we begin to see each other as reflections of God's very nature.  As we recognize and treasure that divine nature in each human being, including ourselves, we are working to transform the world into the shalom of God.  We are giving birth to God's new creation.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price

FYI - Jack has published several articles at: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jack_F_Price

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