You Jump, I Jump.

Last week, I was sitting at home flipping through the channels when I happened upon Titanic. I’d seen it before, but forever the hopeless romantic, I thought I would subject myself to the horror of a sinking boat to get my love fix for the month. About an hour in I was inebriated with the thought of love against all odds. I reveled in the notion that a woman of noble means would leave everything behind for a life with the man she loved. She was a woman after my own heart. But I was blown away when she had the opportunity to get off of the sinking boat, by way of a life boat, but instead choose to literally claw her way off of the boat (I still can’t get the image out of my mind)back to the arms of the man she loved. “You jump, I jump,” she said. Which essentially boiled down to live or die, we’re in this thing together.

The depth of that kind of love stuck with me.  After the movie was over, I called a couple of my married friends and asked them, if faced with the same decision, would they make the same choice. Both emphatically replied, “Of course!” Their responses got me to swooning.  “I want a love like that,” I said. I want that “I can’t live without you love.” I want someone to claw their way to their peril, if getting away safely meant being without me.  It’s a romantic and fanciful notion.  I mean really, how many people wait for that kind of love in their lives… Popular or not, that’s what I’m looking for. No wonder I am still single. J

What makes that kind of love so extraordinary is the element of sacrifice. Ordinarily discomfort and suffering doesn’t appeal to me, as I am sure is the case with most human beings. We run from it. In fact, we don’t even like to be around when people are talking about the suffering of others. We treat it like a highly contagious disease that should we be exposed to the suffering of others, we might catch it. Perhaps that’s why far too few people visit the sick in the hospitals, or tend to the needs of the elderly and the poor.  But real love, the kind that really moves mountains is steeped in sacrifice.  

Often when thinking about the Christian life we love to fixate on the sacrifice of Christ. The thought of him dying in our place elicits tears on cue every time, but sacrifice and suffering was not for Jesus to endure alone. Part of the Christian life is sharing not only in the glory of Christ, but his suffering as well.  Matt 9:23 says, “If any many would be my disciple he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." Following Jesus definitely means following the leading of His spirit in all things in daily life. Its turning left when he says turn left. It’s feeding the hungry, its clothing the naked, but it’s also following him into those things that may cause you to suffer. It’s living a life before those who have yet to experience Christ that speaks the Gospel without words, even when you might be ridiculed, laughed at or rejected. 

When we look at the Bible, those people who really denied themselves and took up their cross to follow Jesus did not have the bright shiny happy ending that many modern day churches espouse. Paul didn’t get an E Class Benz and a house on a hill. Peter didn’t get a lucrative business and sell millions of copies of Thrice Denied, Thrice Restored. From a temporal or worldly perspective, their lives ended pretty horrifically. But they were content, and even overjoyed to lay down their lives and suffer for Christ because God was their all in all. God was their reason for being. He was the love of their lives. While comfort and promises of an easy life were in the “life boat,” God was still on the sinking ship, and while their lives would be saved if they chose the easy way out, like Kate Winslett’s character, they clawed, in other words aggressively fought, their way off of the life boat, because the love of God and His presence were too great to live without. 

If placed in the same situation, a sinking boat with God on it, or a life boat that sailed further and further away from his presence, what would you chose? Sure, on a good day we are willing to give up our stuff for God, our money, our things, but when it becomes a question of our very lives, what would your decision be. Would you claw your way out of the immediate solution to remain connected to the eternal solution? I pray that we all experience a love for God so big that our response will always be, “ Lord, You jump, I jump.”

Ever Higher

CB