Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on Mother Nature
Everybody wants to rule the world
Sorry, that just popped up on my mind while I was waiting for Evernote to load. Now that I type it all out I’m not entirely sure what Tears For Fears wanted to communicate here. I mean, the first lines were iconic. Sort of what you would caption on a proper motivational photo, during the beginning of the year, or any sort of beginning for that matter.
Then it suddenly goes darker when they say that the people we’re led to believe that they’re motivating aren’t actually the average folks… but I’m guessing these are authorities they want to keep accountable – and this is wild, they’re doing this ‘even while (they) sleep’. They aren’t being let off the hook, because they believe that eventually, through all the smoke and mirrors, they would crack and ‘turn (their) back on Mother Nature.’
But then they conclude that Everybody Wants To Rule The World – like as they’re calling these people out, they suddenly point out that they’re not exempt from the same sort of behavior.
I’m led to thinking that this song just came to mind as a reminder. There simply is no possibility for us, in our states as human beings and finite creations situated in a world doomed to entropy, to escape what sin has made our own ‘best behavior’ – to not only turn our backs on the beauty of creation, but more to the point, to think only of ourselves and our own success and survival, even if it means the death and destruction of everything else. Indeed, left to our own devices, we all want to rule the world – by any means possible.
Has this changed, for us in the body of Christ? I say that we’ve been made new creations a lot. I say that the old has passed away, and the new has come. Here, we can easily say that we no longer follow or possess that mindset of wanting to rule the world. Our best behavior is no longer about us stepping on other people or other things if only to get ahead in ‘the game’.
What has changed? What’s the life we’re welcomed into? What’s the life we aren’t turning back from, forever? What’s our best behavior, now?
I suppose we could easily say that if we used to turn our back on Mother Nature, we’re turning to it now. But I don’t think that we stop at the preservation of our environment. If we used to pull others down in order for us to keep our lives, I think we’re now more attuned, or rather, we’ve been rebuilt from the ground up to move to the point of losing our lives, to lift people up.
It’s Christ who exhibited, demonstrated, applied, and instilled this best behavior to us.
When we celebrate His birth we are also recognizing that He forsook eternal and infinite glory to be born within a limited and finite reality – which bring us to appreciate that He wasn’t content to have full and complete understanding of everything we’re experiencing from an all-knowing point of view; He wanted to be born as one of us, to feel our feelings, experience our circumstances and situations, and, really, to be with us. Shades of how He wanted to be closer to us.
And apparently it wasn’t enough for Him to merely live as one of us, but He also took it such a great step further – by laying His life down in our stead, forsaking even this existence He had here in this world, serving as the sacrifice we couldn’t offer, so we would be reconciled to God for all time.
He died, for us to live. And our life is a now a celebration of this truth.
If we were to be precise about it, He died the death we deserved, so we would have the Life He enjoyed. It is as Paul described, and He takes it one step further; One seemingly dark at first glance, but one that would have us realize that we’ve come to the point of enjoying a Life that is infinitely superior to death: For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)
Huh. If we were to be even more precise about it, He became our sin, and we became His life. From the said verse to the Philippians I’m being directed to what’s easily one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture: I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)
There are times when we would be intentionally celebrating this life and salvation we have in Christ, according to our own understanding; However, there will be times that we would be distracted, or overwhelmed, by situations the world brings us to, or circumstances of, as the Tears for Fears song continues, our “own design”, and our “own remorse”; Funny how the singers then lament by way of crying for help:
Help me to decide!
Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
This implies that we have a hand in maximizing what we may recognize as what little time we have left, in our life, in this world, because I suppose we’re being practical – after all, nothing ever lasts forever.
But there’s the thing: Because we have Who we have today, and not only has He given us life, but He IS so close to us that He IS our Life, the fact is, no matter whether we have a grasp on anything or everything we think is going on, or if we’re just so swamped by everything and everyone else around us trying to make sense of this life, the Savior we have HAS saved us by way of being our Life, and a Life present whether we are aware of it or not.
I may write on this more, but for now…
Welcome to your Life.
There’s no turning back.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
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