— Andrea Portilla

The Only Way to Live in this Wayward World

The way we normally do things is not an option these days. Our normal is gone. Our normal celebration of Easter will not be normal at all. Churches across the country and parts of the world will be closed. Traditional Easter hunts are cancelled. Most of us will be forgoing Easter outfits and pictures for pajamas and couch selfies.

I’m recognizing that God needs very little to do the things he desires. He doesn’t need the church steeple or the people. His way to the Resurrection was FOR us. We had little to do with it, other than the fact that we were sinners in need of a savior. Jesus had compassion on us and then carried his cross for us so that we could have communion with him and be saved from our sins. The plan of salvation was always in I am.

I am the Way.

I am the Truth.

I am the Life.

“The plan of salvation was always in I am.”

Jesus always was the way. He is the way to salvation. He is the path to eternal life. He is the bridge that connects us to God. He came to show us the way to God. He came to show us how to walk and live in grace and by grace alone. Somehow, in the midst of our daily lives we tend to forget that Jesus already created a path for us to walk in his ways and we start our own way. We trip down a narrow, beaten path, shuffling our feet, falling on our faces, determined to make our own way and carve our own path. We wear down this path so much so, that we forget the way of the Father. We forget that we are to be followers. We forget that we are called to be faithful and fruitful. Instead, we become forsakes of the way. He is the Waymaker, yet we follow another wayward and worldly way.

During these days, he is slowly bringing us back to the correct way.

In a world that says hustle, the Waymaker says rest.

In a world that says keep busy, the Waymaker says be still.

In a world that says make your own way, the Waymaker whispers, I am the way.

His way brings us to a path of truth. In days that are filled with anxiety and fear, his truth is higher. The night he went to the cross, in the garden of Olives his mind was on you, beloved. His thoughts were on us who would one day find the way and follow him.

I imagine God made man, kneeling and crying out to his father in that garden; and in this forsaken and futile world, He could see beyond the centuries and past the cosmos of time and find us in the here and now. I believe in those moments, as drops of sweat and blood fell from his brow, with the pain and angst of the world literally upon his whole being, he saw us in THIS moment. He saw our fears, he saw our suffering, he saw our anxieties, he saw our loneliness, he saw the condition of the world in the very present hour.

“He set the way for our deliverance because He saw us in our past, in our present and in our future and he died for it all.”

He saw the emptiness of the shelves in the stores, the full hospital beds, the families gathering together at their tables and the churches with locked doors. He saw the people he loved so much, and who he would give his life for; he saw their emptiness, their way too filled lives, the separation of families, the churches with open doors and empty seats. He went the way of the cross for all these things. He set the way for our deliverance because He saw us in our past, in our present and in our future and he died for it all.

As images filled his glorious mind of all that was and is and is to come, he prayed for us, “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one — as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me” John 17: 21.

His way brings us to truth…that we are in Him.

Our purpose in this crisis and for the rest of our time on this earth is to show Jesus in us, because we are in Him, He is in us and that truth reigns in our hearts and shines forth to the world so that they will also come to believe in Him. He is the way for the world so that we can know the truth and be set free.

He is the way to freedom and life eternal.

He is the way to living a life full of grace and peace. Because he ‘rescued us from our sins,’ Galatians 1:4, because “he was pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed,” Isaiah 53:5, because he loved us so much, he was “sent to proclaim freedom for the prisoners…to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord,” Luke 4:18-19, so that all "‘who the son sets free is free indeed!’ John 8:36.

“During these days where there may seem to be no light to the end of this quarantined tunnel, where normal seems lost, where life is full of disappointment, despair and discouragement, where the ways of the world seem so wayward, remember that we don’t follow the ways of the world, we follow the one who created the only way. ”

“By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the most holy place” Hebrews 10:20.

“…It will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk in that way….only the redeemed will walk there” Isaiah 35:8 & 9.

Though the doors to our churches may be closed, though sickness has struck our land, though we are living in wayward times, our trust must stand firm in Jesus. We have built our lives on his love and his way and no matter what happens in this world, we are to walk in the grace and peace and in the way of Jesus. We are to carry our cross and follow the way set before us, for He makes a way in the wilderness (Is. 43:19) because He IS the way.

Let us take communion as the body of Christ Easter morning and remember His way. Let us live lives of gratitude. Let us be broken as he was broken for us. Let our lives be poured out for others.

Jesus showed us the way to live. He showed us the way of peace and love. The world may be overcome with darkness, “But take heart; I have overcome the world,” John 16:33.