Fundamentals & Mantles

Speed, distance, convenience … These are fundamentals I was thinking about prior writing. Legs can’t be compared to a bicycle. A bicycle can’t be compared to a motorcycle.

Wait! I think they can be! That’s exactly what I am doing! The pedestrian won’t go as far as the cyclist. If the distance is the same, one will arrive faster than the other.

The higher the cadre of speed and convenience, the higher the cost. The motorcyclist will need to buy fuel, but his won’t be as costly as that of a car! Even if the car introduces a whole new fundamental of convenience — AC and stuff. It’s way more comfortable than the rains or heat the cyclists will face, or the pedestrian.

Though a car transcends the speeds of the first two objects, there is another monster that surpasses it, taking minutes where a car would take hours. It takes 45 minutes to fly from Kampala to Nairobi. It takes a bus more than 12 hours I hear, to get there.

Though it’ll offer all fundamentals — speed, distance, convenience and still save time, it is so costly to use an aeroplane…

However, how much you’re willing to pay, or sacrifice will determine what mode of transport you can afford, and your mode of transport will determine how far and how fast you can go!

This can be translated to a Christian’s life. How much we are willing to pay, will determine how fast, and how far we can go! The fundamental of convenience is lost here however; as waking up early to pray is not easy, as blocking out everything else to read God’s word is not easy, as living holy is not easy, as basing life on invisible things is not easy… but it is worth it!

What cost are you willing to pay? For we get to see that there’s another mode of transportation. Philip blipped from one place and travelled 60km in one second. That’s a whole other realm. Elijah didn’t just use some sort of air transport. His chariot could jump between realms, that his own body was carried away from the realm of visible things, to one where bodies from dust are not meant to exist!

Daniel remembered a dream that Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten. His body didn’t particularly travel, but his spirit did. He was able to interpret the future of the super powers to come: from Babylon to America which (the latter) hadn’t even come for yet another 2500 years!

Travelling from one place to another is one thing. Travelling through time is a whole other ball game. I once preached that knowing the future (somehow) impacts how you live now. If you were Bill Gates’ mother/father, and Bill failed in some exam, but you knew he would be the richest man in a few, regardless of his performance, you’d not scold him (a common reaction among parents).

You’d cheer him regardless. If finances were tight with you, you’d dance at the fact that this was all temporal, and it was all to change in a bit. Somehow, knowing the future impacts how we live now.

But … But, what price did Daniel pay! Praying three times a day… Consecrating himself and keeping away from meats save for veggies…

This all is out of order with the rest of the world: it’s like flowing upstream when every fish is going downstream. Are you able to brave the current?

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The good news is; I think you can! I think you can brave the current, and pay the cost. We have the opportunity of God living on the inside of us. That eases these ‘sacrifices’. But, the prophets of old didn’t have God living on the inside of them, and yet they did some great stuff.

This terrifies me, to think, that your cost might be higher than theirs such that God needed to move in, to enable you pay it. Either you have been born in a harder time, or the distances and places and times you’ll need to travel, and the speeds you will — at, have never been charted by anyone. And so it’s precedented to cower out and not pay anything at all! It’s not shocking to sit back and let it pass, but it seems some costs were predestined to be paid. And God has to do all the convincing He can, for you to do what you have to do!

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But to comfort us — though what no eye has seen we’ve been prepared to do — He says, no cost is too much for you to pay! He won’t give you something that you can’t handle! For Paul it was prisons and lashes! For Jesus it was death!

The other comfort could be, that Jesus suffered the worst, so ours must surely be lighter. But if you’ve never died you can never say that death is worse or better than your suffering! Many have wished to die than to suffer for death comes with a rest. A rest not to ever suffer again or pay another damn cost again — a cost we bleed to pay!

And though death comes with a rest, it might not come with a chance to choose or try again. So we should not opt for it.

I think . . . I think that’s why Galatians 2:20 says we were crucified with Christ and that it’s Him who lives in us yet not us. That’s comforting. Since He’s tasted death, and the highest cost, perhaps He indeed is the high priest who can sympathize with the costs we have to pay in order to have God’s kingdom advance; a territory more… or a nation more… or a heart more…

We should not let our hearts be troubled verily. Let’s trust in God. Let’s trust in Jesus also. But just like Moses was Moses, and Daniel was Daniel, I believe you need to pay a certain cost to be you. Not just the you man sees, but the you God sees! There’s a mantle that’s defined by you, and we must always pray to grow into it, to carry it — not as a heavy laden but an easy burden.

We must therefore be so rich — so rich that aeroplanes are not as costly as they are to us now. For if we have trillions, then air tickets cease to be costly. Heck, our problems even change. We stop lining up for these and purchase our own jets. There, there, we won’t say ‘it’s costly’, for that will be our present reality — our normal lifestyle.

In the same way, with our mantles, it’s not that they’ll lose the weight of glory or the heaviness they bear. Daniel’s praying thrice will cease to be hard, but a lifestyle. The greens will become so good that the reality of meats will be as an idea. What seemed hard earlier will be easy, for we’ll have entered rest, the heavy laden-ness will be laid down, and we’ll have received the yoke that’s easy, and burden light.

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Sometimes, our will comes in, that’s why we need to purge ourselves or kill ourselves. John said that HE might increase, and that John might decrease. Paul said “I die daily…” If this is not us, we’ll still be stating; ‘how much you’re willing to pay, or sacrifice will determine what mode of transport you can afford, and your mode of transport will determine how far and how fast you can go’ yet, it’s evident, that it’s possible to know how much one ought to sacrifice! And had best started paying it already … in order to have all the fundamentals subject to him or her…

For clearly, all of us are racing against time…

One way or another.

But also, time is the cost we need to pay. The Bible, requires time! Prayer, requires time! So perhaps it’s even not as hard as it sounds. We just need to realign our priorities, and seek Him FIRST… — which seeking also needs time!

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Pictorial representing you casting your Mantle