Dave Brisbin | 8.5.18

Had a dream the other night. Kind of like a flying dream, same feeling, but I was back in college, on campus in a cavernous common room with no furniture and students sitting in groups or alone on white, polished floor. Looking down, socks no shoes, when I realized how smoothly I could glide on the floor, I began ice skating around the room faster and faster between and around the groups of student, wind in my face, so free. Later, outside, immersed in the beauty of the campus, talking to a student about classes, I realized I had no idea what he was talking about—I hadn’t been attending any classes at all. The sense of freedom and absence of responsibility was a stark contrast to my waking life. Thought I was functioning and managing well through an extended time of loss, but my dream showed another level of life that I was no longer experiencing. How is life supposed to be lived? Western Christianity has looked at Jesus most often as the “man of sorrows” focusing on his passion and death for our sins. But is there another view of Jesus that looks more like ice skating in our socks? Looking at possibly the most famous single verse in the New Testament, John 3:16, there is a clue. And when we realize that the Aramaic word Jesus used for the world God so loved and the eternal nature of the life we find in him is the same word, “alma,” we realize that the life Jesus is pointing toward is not about quantity, life that lasts eternally, but quality, life that is eternally alive—starting right here an now. And rather than being of man of sorrows, Jesus was a man of eternal aliveness.