We Owe the IRS. What’s Your Story?

Julie and I just got our tax information. We were hoping to get money back this year but due to some stupidity on our part and bad advice we owe $5136. The real challenge is not coming up with $5136. The real challenge is not letting the bad news sink us in a pit of despair. What did we do wrong to bring all this on ourselves? Why can’t we live on easy street like other people? Is God punishing us? 

These are foolish questions. The truth is that no one lives on easy street. Everyone, without exception, struggles. Many deal with problems far worse than ours: cancer, divorce, car accidents, addictions, loneliness, abusive parents, depression… Pick any person. Dig deep enough and you’ll find pain. From a distance, others may appear to live a charmed life but up close, the illusion vanishes. In fact, I don’t feel like I really know a person until I know their pain. 

If you’re reading this and think you have been left out, just hang on. Life may be rocking along pleasantly at the moment but you’ll get your turn to suffer soon enough. We all do.

The Cold Hard Facts

We are born with an expiration date. We might make a big splash or a little in this world one but either way the ripples of your life quickly disappear. We do our best to hide our eyes and plug our ears to this but there is no escaping it. Life is a limited time offer.  

Inexplicable Hope

The strange thing is that in the face of overwhelming evidence that our lives are meaningless, nearly everyone lives as if there is hope. In the grand scheme of the universe we are specks too small to measure. The fleeting years of our lives are a flash too small to see. Still, we go around as if it is all matters. Why? 

When people face tragedy we hold them in our arms and say “It’s gonna be alright.” This makes no sense. The one think we can say with certainty is that it will not be alright. Maybe things will get better for a little while, then they will die. How is that “alright?” And then, when they die we say, “They are in a better place” even as we throw dirt on their dead, rotting corpses. What is wrong with us?

Maybe nothing. We say and do these things because of something we do not see but definitely feel: hope. Along with the depressing facts that lead to the conclusion that our lives don’t matter, there is something inside of us that says they do. Intuitively, we feel that our struggle is important, that there is a point to our lives.

Jesus gave a name to hope. He called it the Kingdom of God and claimed it was more real, more solid, more permanent than anything. What we see is not all there is, not by a long shot, and the end of our lives is not the final chapter in our story. Our dying world opens up on a brighter and better one in which God is making all things new. 

The Theme of the Story: Redeeming Love

Jesus was a teacher who filled people’s hearts with hope. This was not the usual religious mumbo-jumbo. When Jesus described the Kingdom of God, the heavens were parted and people experienced the unseen. The crowds’ reaction at the end of the Sermon on the Mount is typical.

When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority—quite unlike their teachers of religious law. (Matthew 7:28-29)

The word “amazed” means “overwhelmed,” or “astounded.” Jesus wasn’t just a good teacher. When he spoke of the age to come, people were undone. They believed saw it. They believed him. He spoke with certainty, like a person with firsthand experience. 

But Jesus did more than teach about the Kingdom of God. He lived it. He loved everyone. He was as welcoming to a prostitute as a Pharisee. Those who encountered him were forced to face the truth about themselves. We got a sneak peak at the end of the human story in the way J...