Searching For Spring By Christine HooverSample

Day Five

A Kingdom of Paradox

Scripture: Romans 5:3-5

The kingdom Jesus invites us into is a kingdom of paradox, where what seems self-contradictory or absurd expresses what is true. 

The last shall be first.

The lowliest are the greatest.

The weak are actually strong.

The poor in spirit are rich.

The humble are exalted.

Those who give, receive.

The ones who lose all, gain all.

Those who die are the ones who truly live. 

Christ, the ruler of this kingdom, embodied paradox. He had no beauty that people should desire him but he also expressed the glorious beauty of God in his perfect life and sacrifice. He proved that the one who dies, who gives his life away, is the one who actually comes to life and multiplies himself. 

Likewise for us, suffering and death hold no outward beauty that we should embrace them but are the way to character, joy, and eternal life. 

The question remains: Do we believe this? Do we believe this enough to want a place in the kingdom of God? 

To embrace Christ and to become a citizen of his kingdom is to live by paradox: we must embrace weakness to be made strong, we must serve in order to receive, we must live in the world while holding citizenship in another, we must suffer persecution as more than conquerors, we must die to ourselves daily in order to live, and we must look at everything difficult and painful as something that will eventually be made into good. 

To desire and know true beauty in life, to understand how God can make all things beautiful in time, is to cleave ourselves to these paradoxes. 

Trials, testing, unwanted circumstances, unexpected twists and turns—these, too, can be beautiful, because through these occurrences come strong character, endurance, godly wisdom, and comfort with which we can then comfort others. 

Through trials, our faith increases. Through broken hearts, we get the nearness of God. Through failure, we experience redemption.

We want the beauty of hope, life, and transformation; we just don’t want them in the way they come. But perhaps this is the very reason Jesus left us with inconsolable things—he wants to give us blessing upon blessing. 

Could it be that we’ve spent our whole lives avoiding beauty? 

How have you seen God’s strength show through your weakness?