More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
In our ordinary experience of time, beginnings only come at the beginning and ends only come at the end. But Christ is promising something else. The beginning, he promises, can come again. The beginning can come in the middle. Even in the middle of life, we can be born again and begin a new life.
When I start a new life in Christ, Christ reorders my experience of time. The beginning comes in the middle, the end comes before the beginning, and the ordinary stuff of life is saved as we live it.
The Book of Mormon unlocks the Bible by making Christ plain.
Clearly, the Book of Mormon is meant to be a second witness of Christ. The big difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon is not what is said but when it is said. Nephi and company are rejoicing—and living—in Christ long before Christ comes.
This is what’s different about Nephite Christianity: they lived in Christ before Christ came. They lived Christ’s future in their present.
This is what the Book of Mormon makes plain: to live a Christian life is to live in Christ as if he were already present.
But a past or future Christ is not enough. It is not enough for me to believe in the past or future idea of Christ. To be Christian, I have to learn how to share my life with Christ in the present.
My job is to live, right now, as if I had already passed through death’s veil and into the presence of God. My job is to live my promised redemption in the present tense.
I’ve had to learn how to believe not just in continuing revelation but in continuing redemption. I’ve had to learn to believe in an early resurrection.
Life in Christ is like this. In Christ, the way I live—my manner of living—is changed from the inside out. Like being in love, living in Christ changes what it means to be alive. Living in Christ, I carry myself differently. I desire differently. I love differently. I greet pain and loss differently. I fail differently. I succeed differently. I part with the past differently. I respond to the present differently. I look to the future differently. In Christ, I hold time itself in a very different way.
Our rituals are powerful because they display, in outline, the profile of this godly life. And, living in this godly way, I’m empowered to enter God’s presence. I’m empowered to live.
Say, it’s an ordinary Sunday. I’m sitting in a pew with my family. I see the bread broken. I hear the prayers said. I see the emblems passed from hand to hand, Christ’s body and blood shared among us. And in that moment, if I’m paying attention, time can unfold differently. The normal pull of time, of the inevitable chain of cause and effect, can be broken. I can be forgiven. The grip of my past can loosen. My fears for the future can lessen. I can be present. And, in the present, I can be empowered to “look forward” in a new way. Rather than simply looking through the present and into the
...more
Life in Christ offers a way of handling time that allows us to enter into the rest of the Lord right now. Living in Christ, we live and move and have our being in this state of rest. The effect of this rest is immediate and bodily. In Christ, the pounding in my head goes quiet. The knots in my neck loosen. My teeth stop grinding and my fists unclench. And, even while I’m busy at work, I can feel, deep in my gut, a poised, powerful, radiating silence.
If I spend my life looking forward to the wrong things—or, even more to the point, if I spend my life looking forward in the wrong way—then I’ll miss this rest.
Dreaming about a future life, I’ll forget what it feels like to be alive. Avoiding life in the present, I’ll avoid Christ. I’ll be lost. I’ll feel numb. I’ll be angry. I’ll feel dead.
Types allow our future resurrection in Christ to show up early, in this world, in this life, in this mortal body.
I have to do two things at once: (1) rather than just succumbing to the pull of time, I have to hang on to eternity, and (2) rather than just escaping into what’s timeless, I have to let eternity show up inside of time. This takes work, but it’s also ordinary. You probably already know what it feels like to let eternity show up inside of time.
this way, baptism is a time machine. It’s a vehicle for atonement. As a type, baptism is a ritual engine for reordering my experience of time. It shuffles Christ’s resurrected future into my mortal present and, in doing so, frees me from my sinful past.
Love is not a future reward promised in return for my present obedience. Love is a shared way of handling, in the present, all the blessings and troubles that inevitably accompany the passage of time. Love is the thing I’m looking for. But love isn’t the outcome of my work, however noble that outcome. Love is Christ’s manner of doing that work.
The law was made for the sake of a life in Christ, not life in Christ for the sake of fulfilling the law.
Christ is the Lord, not the law. Christ is the Master. He is the King of kings.
Shame and fear—unlike weakness, failure, and responsibility—are not part of a life in Christ.
find myself empowered rather than punished by the law. The law, as love’s servant, empowers me to roll up my sleeves and do love’s work. Rather than working to secure God’s perfect love in the distant future, I go to work right now in a manner that displays God’s love as a gift already superimposed on the present.
Christ is not only the life and light of the whole world. He is the life and light of the law.
The basics of religion—like the basics of life—are the same whether I’m waiting for Christ’s first coming or his second.
The law can’t save me. Only Christ can save me.
Without love, the law comes unplugged from Christ. It stops functioning as a type and leaves me hopeless. When, instead of love, the law generates fear, anger, guilt, envy, and frustration, then the law is broken. A loveless law is a broken law. A loveless law is a law incapable of mercy or justice. A loveless law is an occasion for selfishness, pride, and hypocrisy.
And, then, to continually live in love, I have to be willing to die every day, every hour, in ways that are big and small, again and again.
Grounded in love, the law doesn’t condemn my weakness, it empowers me to be responsible for that weakness. Rooted in Christ, the law doesn’t isolate me from others, it binds me to them. It urges me to care for them. It helps me to be responsible to them. In Christ, the law holds me responsible by empowering me to respond to the hurt I’ve caused and the needs others have.
Love is a useful measure for distinguishing guilt from responsibility. Guilt is about me. It centers me on myself and weakens my power to care for myself and for other people. But responsibility faces the opposite direction. Responsibility is an act of love. It recognizes wrongdoing and repents of it. But rather than acting penitent out of fear or shame, it lets those self-centered feelings be crucified with Christ. Then, alive in Christ rather than in myself, I become capable of responding—even to my own weakness—with love.
If the future has already arrived, then I can put down that burden.
I put down my burden and take up Christ’s yoke. This burden is the future. This yoke is love. But this yoke is light because yokes are, by definition, shared. No longer holding life at arm’s length, no longer aiming through this world at another, I’m also no longer alone. Not only am I yoked with Christ, I’m yoked by Christ’s love with the whole of this present world. Yoked in Christ with the world, we pull together.
In Christ, the future is given as though it had already come. There’s no reason to rush. There’s no reason to fear. There’s no reason to feel ashamed. There’s no cause for brushing other people aside as I hurry someplace else. There’s room in the present for each thing to have its season. There’s room for agency and creativity. There’s room for Spirit. There’s space to breathe. There’s time for love.
When I repent, I turn around. I stop facing the wrong direction. I stop looking forward in the wrong way. I stop looking through things and, instead, I start to see them. And this power to be
sensitive and respond—this power to be responsible—is the key to repentance. It’s the key to being alive. Repenting, I let my old self die. I take up repentance as a way of practicing death, moment by moment, for the sake of life.
Baptism is the mold into which my repentance is poured. It shapes my impulse to repent into a new way of handling time. My relationships to both my past and future change. Repentant, my past no longer owns me. And, repentant, the future no longer mortgages my present. Rather than being a slave to my past mistakes or future expectations, the past and future become servants of my present life.
I remember, with vivid clarity, just one part of my baptism. I remember my confirmation. My father gave the blessing. He placed his hands on my head and prayed. I remember the feeling of his hands on my
head as he commanded me to receive the Holy Ghost. My head was small. His hands were big. His hands were warm and surprisingly heavy. And if I had felt worried or alone before my baptism, I didn’t feel that way now. I felt connected. I felt alive. His hands on my head felt like God’s promise, already kept.
“This elder you despise already bears the stamp of God’s image. If you can’t see it, then you don’t know the first thing about God.”
The body of Christ isn’t strong because it has no weaknesses. The body of Christ is strong because it’s the place where weakness is shared.
Redemption is a family affair. To be alive is to be intertwined with other lives. To be given a gift is to depend on other people’s gifts.
Time, like life, can’t be kept. It can only be given. I give it by paying attention. I waste it by being distracted.
repent is to turn the heart. To repent is to turn my heart back toward my children. Elijah’s job is, simply, to “repent the hearts of the parents to their children.” Then, repenting, turning my heart back to God in the present, I find both myself and my family—in all our shared weakness—already here.
The essence of care is to pay attention. Rather than being distracted by the past or the future, I pay attention in the present. I take care. I attend. I’m careful. My eyes are focused.
In Christ, I don’t just occasionally act with care—I learn how to live with care.
The only way to care for time is to give it away.
Once I’ve given him my future, he can give me his present. But as long as I try to claim my life as my own, I’ll never be able to live it properly. As long as I try to claim my future as my own, I’ll never be properly present. I’ll never be able to care for time’s weakness. This is the world’s oldest story: I have to die in order to live. I have to give my life away in order to find it.
the kingdom of God is within you”
