Preached at Torbreck Evangelical Church, Inverness, Scotland. Evening 13 Feb 1994
Wikipedia
Reading: Jonah 2:1-10 -1 From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the LORD his God.
2 He said:
"In my distress I called to the LORD,
and he answered me.
From the depths of the grave I called for help,
and you listened to my cry.
3 You hurled me into the deep,
into the very heart of the seas,
and the currents swirled about me;
all your waves and breakers
swept over me.
4 I said, 'I have been banished
from your sight;
yet I will look again
toward your holy temple.'
5 The engulfing waters threatened me,
the deep surrounded me;
seaweed was wrapped around my head.
6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;
the earth beneath barred me in forever.
But you brought my life up from the pit,
O LORD my God.
7 "When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
8 "Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
Salvation comes from the LORD."
10 And the LORD commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
This morning we were looking at Ephesians Chapter 4, and we concentrated on verse 21 which talks of "the Truth that is in Jesus". We tried to press this to the radical conclusion that no truth in any sphere of life floats freely in space - it is all rooted in Christ. Ultimately, no good thing has any meaning without Christ.
Now maybe that was the easy bit. Maybe someone could plausibly claim that this morning was just one more triumphalist "head-in-the-sand" Christian sermon. If Christ is the meaning of everything how does that tie in with the atrocities in Bosnia! What about those abandoned children with aids in Romania and Africa? What about famines and earthquakes?
Then maybe another voice cries out "And what about me? I am a Christian! God is supposed to love me and care for me, isn't he? Why is my life such a trial! such a shambles! so desperate! Where is the meaning in my life? Maybe the Truth isn't in Jesus! Maybe God isn't so Almighty or so Good! It seems you could name any disaster known to Man and find Christians who have suffered it! Weren't we promised peace and joy and victory and happy days? Who's kidding who here? lsn't it about time somebody blew the whistle on this charade? This make-believe? A lucky rabbit's foot Christianity is NOT!"
-"A lucky rabbit's foot Christianity is not." Too often of course evangelicalism is guilty of this "bunny-rabbit" theology: Christianity is cute and fluffy, lives in a burrow and seems to concern itself with nothing except propagating itself.
Biblical Teaching on Suffering
If "the Truth is in Jesus", we would not expect the Bible to deceive us. What then is the Biblical teaching about suffering? How do we square what we have been saying about meaning with the horrors of life? The fact is that we are not given pat answers. If a whistle needs to be blown, then the writer to the Hebrews has already blown it -"Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him." (Hebrews 5:8)
And then listen to Paul in Ephesians 1: 9,10. He talks of the mystery of God's purpose -"This plan, which God will complete when the time is right, is to bring all Creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head."
Paul is clearly and honestly acknowledging that everything in heaven and earth has not yet been brought together with Christ as head.
And in this morning's prescribed passage (Ephesians 4:30), the Good News Version reads -"The Spirit is God's mark of ownership on you, a guarantee that the Day will come when God will set you free."
But to say that is to concede that that Day has not yet come. The time is not yet right. You are not yet free. Your pardon may have been signed, but the prison door has not yet been opened. Why not? What is going on?
In 2 Thessalonians 2:7 Paul refers to the "Mystery of lawlessness which is at work". And I guess if it was a mystery to Paul then it will be a mystery to us too. Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome. How comfortable could he have been? I imagine there must have been a fair amount of misery involved. In that not well-enough known passage in 2 Corinthians 11 Paul has obviously had enough of the "bunny" theologians - the lucky rabbit's foot brigade - and he lets them have it:(v4)
"You (Corinthians) gladly tolerate anyone who comes to you and preaches a different Jesus, not the one we preached; and you accept a spirit and a gospel completely different from the Spirit and the Gospel you received from us!
I do not think I am the least bit inferior to those very special so-called 'apostles' of yours !...
(v23) Are they Christ's servants? I sound like a madman - but I am a better servant than they are! I have worked much harder, I have been in prison more times, I have heen whipped much more, and I have been near death more often. Five times I was given the 39 lashes by the Jews; 3 times I was whipped by the Romans; and once I was stoned. I have been in 3 shipwrecks, and once I spent 24 hours in the water. In my travels I have been in danger from floods and from robbers, in danger from fellow Jews and from Gentiles; there have been dangers in the cities, dangers in the wilds, dangers on the high-seas, and dangers from false-friends. There has been work and toil; often I have gone without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty; I have often been without enough food, shelter or clothing. And not to mention other things, every day I am under the pressure of my concern for all the churches." (2 Cor 11: 4, 23)
"Every day I am under pressure..." This is God's man. God's strategic man. Do you think God has an odd way of showing it? Do you think Paul has chosen to present a strange list of credentials to validate his apostleship? He seems to be saying in effect "the fact that I am suffering so much proves God is with me". But lets not fall off the other side of the fence...
Different Jesus
"You tolerate the preaching of a different Jesus" Paul says. There are many, many "Jesuses" around. The Truth is in the Biblical Jesus, not in the myriad conflicting "Jesuses" which may be preached from church pulpits.The Jesus in your head and mine - where did He come from? Was it from the Bible? When did you last check that out?
So what does the Biblical Jesus have to say about suffering? If "the Truth is in Jesus", we would not expect Him to deceive us. So didn't he go on about peace a lot? Yes, the Biblical Jesus talks of peace. And also suffering. He lays it on the line. He does not mislead us. The Truth is in Him:"All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God... I have told you this so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you" (John 16:1-4)
And at the end of the same chapter (v33) -"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
That's odd isn't it? You would think He might rather have said - "I have overcome the world, so take heart, you shouldn't have any trouble in it. If you do, just let me know, and I'll fix it for you..."
What we are actually told is:"In the world you will have trouble...I have told you this so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you."
Different Spirit
A different Jesus. And a different Spirit, says Paul. In our day some quick-fix theologians have hi-jacked the Holy Spirit. According to their line of thought, if you are struggling as a Christian it is because you have not been "filled with the Spirit". If you had been filled with the Spirit you wouldn't be struggling. Is this scriptural? In answer we need only read the account of Jesus' baptism in Mark (1:10-13) -
"As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased'. At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert for forty days, being tempted by Satan."
The Holy Spirit immediately and quite deliberately took Jesus out into the wilderness to undergo stress and pressure. So if you are in a wilderness it does not follow that the Spirit must have left you. Precisely the reverse could well be the case. It may be with you above all that the Spirit is.
So we almost certainly could find Christians who are presently enduring every kind of human catastrophe. This fact ought not to take us by surprise. The Scriptures amply prepare us. The truth is that you would be hard put to find one believer in the Bible, Old Testament or New, who did not have it tough. Thanks be to God for the no-holds-barred realism of the psalms in particular. The glaring truth is, and how can we miss it, that faith and adversity buffet each other ceaselessly in the Scriptures. And the unpalatable fact is that faith seems to be rather like a rose bush: it doesn't seem to achieve its potential unless it gets pruned hard and has "dung" flung at it!
However, there is suffering and there is suffering. There is toothache and there is Nazi Holocaust. There are commonplace sufferings for which an evangelical band-aid will suffice. But there are also depths of suffering which are unimaginable and unspeakable. And there, along with the rest of humanity, you will find Christians. People no different from you and me. And if we expect otherwise, then it is not the Bible which has mislead us.
A different Jesus. And a different Spirit, says Paul. In our day some quick-fix theologians have hi-jacked the Holy Spirit. According to their line of thought, if you are struggling as a Christian it is because you have not been "filled with the Spirit". If you had been filled with the Spirit you wouldn't be struggling. Is this scriptural? In answer we need only read the account of Jesus' baptism in Mark (1:10-13) -
"As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased'. At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert for forty days, being tempted by Satan."
The Holy Spirit immediately and quite deliberately took Jesus out into the wilderness to undergo stress and pressure. So if you are in a wilderness it does not follow that the Spirit must have left you. Precisely the reverse could well be the case. It may be with you above all that the Spirit is.
So we almost certainly could find Christians who are presently enduring every kind of human catastrophe. This fact ought not to take us by surprise. The Scriptures amply prepare us. The truth is that you would be hard put to find one believer in the Bible, Old Testament or New, who did not have it tough. Thanks be to God for the no-holds-barred realism of the psalms in particular. The glaring truth is, and how can we miss it, that faith and adversity buffet each other ceaselessly in the Scriptures. And the unpalatable fact is that faith seems to be rather like a rose bush: it doesn't seem to achieve its potential unless it gets pruned hard and has "dung" flung at it!
However, there is suffering and there is suffering. There is toothache and there is Nazi Holocaust. There are commonplace sufferings for which an evangelical band-aid will suffice. But there are also depths of suffering which are unimaginable and unspeakable. And there, along with the rest of humanity, you will find Christians. People no different from you and me. And if we expect otherwise, then it is not the Bible which has mislead us.
Psalm 1 - Job
To be fair, there are strands of Scripture, like Psalm 1, which taken in isolation suggest automatic immunity from trouble for the "faithful". But anyone who has bothered to read all of the psalms, never mind all of the Bible, will appreciate that they have just been peering at a detail of what is a much larger and more complex picture. Consider the Book of Job, for example. And if I might quote Francis I. Andersen from his excellent Tyndale Commentary on Job -
"The case of Job precipitates the test of faith in its severest form - the supremely righteous man who sustains the most extreme calamities. How can he, or anyone, continue to believe that God is right and fair in what He sometimes does to people?"
...The intense faith of Job immediately sees the hand of God in every 'natural' event. There are no 'accidents' in a universe ruled by the one sovereign Lord. Hence Job's problem. Such mishaps are not a problem for the polytheist, the dualist, the atheist, the naturalist, the fatalist, the materialist, the agnostic. An annoyance, a tragedy even, but not a problem. Suffering caused by human wickedness or by the forces of nature is ultimately a problem only for a believer in the one Creator who is both good and almighty; so this problem can arise only within the Bible with its distinctive moral monotheism...
...Job sees only the hand of God in these events. It never occurs to him to curse the desert brigands, to curse the frontier guards, to curse his own stupid servants, now lying dead for their watchlessness. All secondary causes vanish. It was the Lord who gave; it was the Lord who removed; and in the Lord alone must the explanation for these strange happenings be sought...
And then this inspired sentence from Andersen on page 89 -
"Job's faith does not relieve his agony; it causes it."
(Francis I Andersen, Job: Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, IVP, pp 65, 86, 88, 89)
But look at what we've got here. One part of the Bible (The Book of Job) arguing about the theological adequacy of another part. It is all up-front and on the table. There is no conspiracy, no stitch-up, no editorial harmonizations. The debate, the dialectic almost, is carried on energetically and publicly. If Biblical writers find the theology they have been given at variance with what they are enduring as flesh and blood people they shout the odds loudly, almost blasphemously.
BUT by including in Holy Scripture what these men and women shouted at God, the Holy Spirit (and can we feel the relief of this?) thereby sanctions and legitimizes your shouts and mine. It is OK to shout at God when your life is hell. Who else would you shout at? lt is OK to batter His door in dereliction and despair. Who else's door would you batter? The precedents are in the Book: "Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us for ever. Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?" (Psalm 44:23,24)
What Holy Book could allow such fierce questioning of the deity? And then Psalm 22:"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent."(Psalm 22:1,2)
What Holy Man could find himself so derelict?("So far from the words of my groaning?" - we will pick up on that word "groaning" at the end of our talk).
Selective Bible Reading
Part of our problem is probably caused by selective Bible reading - privately, but also publicly in church services. Like children at a party we prefer to skip the ham sandwiches and go straight for the cakes. Or to use a more adult analogy, we pluck out attractive jewels from the Bible and hold them aloft to "oohs" and "aahs", but by not seeing them in context we fail to appreciate the enormous subterranean pressures which have squeezed these diamonds into existence. And we actually fail to see them to their best advantage, which is to be viewed against the velvet black of surrounding Scripture.
Take for example those well known verses (we have one or two good hymns based on them): "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness". Taken in isolation this could come across as almost a pat cliché of cosy faith. But have we any idea where these verses come from? They are verses 22 & 23 of the third chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Let me unsettle you by reading the preceding verses to you. As we read these verses let us appreciate two things. The Holy Spirit is forewarning us that believers may face times of unbearable anguish. And the Holy Spirit is telling us that it is perfectly in order, it is perfectly spiritual, to direct that anguish at God. It may be that you have never read this chapter privately. I am fairly sure you have never heard these verses read publicly before. And I am equally sure you will never hear them read in a public service again. But I guarantee that if you listen to these words - these desperate words - you will never see those two verses in the same light again. These are the words of a holy man. He is speaking about God -
"I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
He drove me deeper and deeper into darkness
And beat me again and again with merciless blows.
He has left my flesh open and raw, and has broken my bones.
He has shut me in a prison of misery and anguish.
He has forced me to live in the stagnant darkness of death.
He has bound me in chains; I am a prisoner with no hope of escape.
I cry aloud for help, but God refuses to listen;
I stagger as I walk; stone walls block me wherever I turn.
He waited for me like a bear; he pounced on me like a lion.
He chased me off the road, tore me to pieces, and left me.
He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows.
He shot his arrows deep into my body.
People laugh at me all day long; I am a joke to them all.
Bitter suffering is all he has given me for food and drink.
He rubbed my face in the ground and broke my teeth on the gravel.
I have forgotten what health and peace and happiness are.
I have not much longer to live; my hope in the Lord is gone.
The thought of my pain, my homelessness, is bitter poison;
I think of it constantly and my spirit is depressed.
Yet my hope returns when I remember this one thing:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning.
Great is Thy faithfulness..."
Any Truth Worth Suffering For?
The painter Van Gogh said (and this is for Donald Black):"It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble, and you risk your life for it."
Few of us think art - colours on a canvas - aesthetic truth - worth suffering for. So what Truth do we consider worth the discomfort demanded by seeking it? Is there any Truth we would endure trouble for, even risk our life for?
The painter Van Gogh said (and this is for Donald Black):"It is no more easy to make a good picture than it is to find a diamond or a pearl. It means trouble, and you risk your life for it."
Few of us think art - colours on a canvas - aesthetic truth - worth suffering for. So what Truth do we consider worth the discomfort demanded by seeking it? Is there any Truth we would endure trouble for, even risk our life for?
Not Unspiritual
So Jeremiah and Job and Jonah and the Psalmist and Jesus Himself show us that it is not unspiritual to pound God's door and to robustly enquire what's going on. Because it is only the beautiful faith that God is there and that He is merciful which motivates the pounding. The beautiful faith that despite all appearances to the contrary, God is in charge and God is kind. This faith is the opposite of fatalism, for it looks to a God Who is not predestined, a God Who can change the future if we ask Him. Despite (or indeed rather, properly understood,in the light of) the great and courageous and majestic Christian doctrine of predestination, we have a God Who says to us simply"Knock - And the door shall be opened".
It is not unspiritual to batter and belabour God's Door. Unspirituality starts rather when we turn from that Door in disillusionment, concluding that there's nobody at home, or that if He is, He is a heartless capricious tyrant with whom we want nothing to do. Do you remember the incident at the end of John ch. 6? Jesus has just been telling his followers at length how He was the true Manna - the true Bread - that came down from heaven. He expressed it however in shockingly literal terms:"I tell you the truth: if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you will not have life in yourselves", and so on.
This produced consternation among his listeners. Verse 60 goes on -"Many of his followers heard this and said,'This teaching is too hard. Who can listen to it?' "
This in turn provokes the crisis of verse 66 -"Because of this many of Jesus' followers turned back and would not go with him any more. So he asked the twelve disciples, 'And you - would you also like to leave?'"
Then there follows the famous answer from Peter. What does he say? Does he say: "Lord, we've nowhere else to go now. The only folk we know are here - so we may as well stick around."? No. He says:"Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life."
We can be pretty sure that Peter didn't understand the "manna" talk particularly better than anyone else. He just hung on despite it all, because of his basic trust of Jesus. Of course the day, or rather night, would come when the unbearable pressures on Peter would cause him to utter the unthinkable: "I never knew the man!" When a sudden colossal wave of opposition hit him the big fisherman sank like the stone he was named after. But not without trace. For he was washed up on a beach. And a Man came looking for him. A Man he knew well...
Overboard
Maybe you feel you have been washed overboard. The winds have stunned you and the waves have swamped you. You have sunk like a stone. Like Jonah, the seaweed has wrapped itself around your head. You have not the strength to swim. Nor do you know any longer which direction to turn. Do not let God go. Though He slay you, you must trust Him. The Bible is your life-belt. Cling to it and it will in time bring you in sight of shore. You will see a Man standing there. You will know Him well... I do believe that.
"Of all human beings," says Francis Andersen in his commentary on Job, "the innocent sufferer stands nearest to God. One might ask if there is any pathway into the light except through dereliction. Job's final contentment is inexplicable unless he found in the valley of the shadow of death a place of spiritual growth...Moses in Midian, David in his hide-out, Jeremiah and Joseph in the pit, Daniel in the lion's den, Paul in more than one prison. Like Job on the city dump, their life would seem to have reached its end. The long wait, sometimes for years. The silence of God. But deliverance came, and with it a gratitude never felt by those who never knew despair".
(Francis I Andersen, Job: Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, IVP)
And then again the quality and honesty of Andersen comes through as his mind turns to Hebrews:"The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 were all sufferers", he observes,"and many died without deliverance" (p 72)
In fact if we check out the closing verses of Hebrews 11 we find that the Biblical writer is even more sobering:"These were all commended for their faith. Yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect" (v39)
One of the enigmas of real suffering is that the sufferer experiences both an overwhelming sense of isolation and a profound sense of having entered a fellowship of suffering humanity which seems almost sacred.
Bottom Line
Whatever befalls the Christian, our call is to do our best to affirm God within the experience, and to sustain as best we can the effort of faithfully seeking God for deliverance. But the bottom line is this - some Christians will suffer anguish from which there will be no deliverance before death. The agony of that prospect will for many seem unbearable. Those of us who know people who carry such a burden must pray that their faith shall not fail and that God will invade the darkness which engulfs them with some transcendent compensatory Glory. "He who is able to receive this, let him receive it" (Matt 19:12)
* * *
"All power in heaven and earth has been given to Me", says the risen Christ.
"Yet at present we do not see everything subject to Him", confesses the writer to the Hebrews.
It is the tension between these two truths which produces the stress for the Christian. Though we cannot see the presence of God in the physical circumstances of our lives, we are called to adhere to the belief (even if it's to just cling heroically, pitifully, to the belief) that He is in control and that somehow, somehow, somehow... He is kind.
Like Moses in Hebrews 11, we are to "endure as seeing Him who is invisible", or as the Good News version puts it: "As though he saw the invisible God, he refused to turn back". We are talking about the doctrine known as the "Perseverance of the Saints":
"Do not lose your courage, then, because it brings with it a great reward. You need to be patient, in order to do the will of God and receive what He promises. For, as the Scripture says [and here the Writer quotes Habakuk 2:3,4] 'just a little while longer, and he who is coming will come; he will not delay. My righteous people, however, will believe and live; but if any of them turns back, I will not be pleased with him'. [unquote] We are not people who turn back and are lost. [says the Writer to the Hebrews] Instead, we have faith and are saved" (Heb 10:35-39)
"Yet at present we do not see everything subject to Him", confesses the writer to the Hebrews.
It is the tension between these two truths which produces the stress for the Christian. Though we cannot see the presence of God in the physical circumstances of our lives, we are called to adhere to the belief (even if it's to just cling heroically, pitifully, to the belief) that He is in control and that somehow, somehow, somehow... He is kind.
Like Moses in Hebrews 11, we are to "endure as seeing Him who is invisible", or as the Good News version puts it: "As though he saw the invisible God, he refused to turn back". We are talking about the doctrine known as the "Perseverance of the Saints":
"Do not lose your courage, then, because it brings with it a great reward. You need to be patient, in order to do the will of God and receive what He promises. For, as the Scripture says [and here the Writer quotes Habakuk 2:3,4] 'just a little while longer, and he who is coming will come; he will not delay. My righteous people, however, will believe and live; but if any of them turns back, I will not be pleased with him'. [unquote] We are not people who turn back and are lost. [says the Writer to the Hebrews] Instead, we have faith and are saved" (Heb 10:35-39)
Not just Persecution
Romans 8:17 says: "For if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory".
I am convinced that we are not only talking about persecution here. Whatever you as a human being are enduring, if you can scrape together enough faith and strength to grasp Christ's feet and hang on, then your suffering is certainly Christ's suffering.
Romans 8:17 says: "For if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory".
I am convinced that we are not only talking about persecution here. Whatever you as a human being are enduring, if you can scrape together enough faith and strength to grasp Christ's feet and hang on, then your suffering is certainly Christ's suffering.
Futility-Groaning
"We are no longer to live", says Ephesians 4:17, "as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking".
In Romans 8:20 Paul tells us that the whole Creation is subject to futility, to frustration, to purposelessness, to meaninglessness. And we are part of this creation. We are living in a war zone. But we endure as seeing Him Who is invisible. The atheist looks at creation and says "I see no God". There is a sense in which the Christian at times must agree. Nevertheless, we refuse to turn back:
"For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. But it is not just creation which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves, as we wait for God to make us his sons/daughters and set our whole being free. For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who hopes for something he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Rom 8:22-25)
"We are no longer to live", says Ephesians 4:17, "as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking".
In Romans 8:20 Paul tells us that the whole Creation is subject to futility, to frustration, to purposelessness, to meaninglessness. And we are part of this creation. We are living in a war zone. But we endure as seeing Him Who is invisible. The atheist looks at creation and says "I see no God". There is a sense in which the Christian at times must agree. Nevertheless, we refuse to turn back:
"For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. But it is not just creation which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves, as we wait for God to make us his sons/daughters and set our whole being free. For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who hopes for something he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience." (Rom 8:22-25)
And so we groan with, as the Psalmist groans with, as Job, as Jeremiah groan with, as Christians of all ages have groaned with, together called to affirm the meaningful in the teeth of the meaningless, until the curse is removed from the ground, and night is no more.
We are those who believe that the Truth is in Jesus.
And because the Truth is in Jesus -
Nothing shall be meaningless;
Nothing shall be meaningless;
Nothing shall be meaningless.
__________________________
And because the Truth is in Jesus -
Nothing shall be meaningless;
Nothing shall be meaningless;
Nothing shall be meaningless.
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