Bring Me To Life

I will not judge those who hear me but don’t obey me, for I have come to save the world and not to judge it.  John 12:47 (NLT)

The Gospel of John is killin’ me!  It seems like every single phrase in this book either invokes deep theological thoughts, personal spiritual insights, or just some very interesting thoughts.  So, how can you read a verse like this and not cavitate into a tailspin of all of the above?  Salvation alone is a topic that has filled thousands of volumes, caused divisions in denominations, even spurred new religions.  The very idea of what salvation is and means causes anxiety, yet soothes the soul.  It causes debate and unifies unlikely allies.

As it stands, right now I am stuck in a hotel room, have just read this passage, ruminated and feel compelled to write something.  I get to thinking about what salvation meant to me as a child…Christ saving me from hell.  I get to thinking about the idea of being saved to something.  What?  Heaven?  I suppose.  But I just don’t feel like salvation just for the sake of eternity really gets the job done for me, it seems there has to be more…something about salvation in this life.

I think of my own hours of sheer desperation in my lifetime, and how many times I screamed inside for salvation.  I think of people I see everyday who yearn for salvation.  Salvation from wrecked lives, broken bodies, spoiled marriages, famine and hunger, earthquakes, homelessness, and the list goes on until there are no more pixels.  Sometimes I almost (not literally – fret not) hear those primal screams and feel the yearnings for salvation in all the suffering I see.  In Ashley’s broken body, in the deseration of the homeless guy sleeping on a bench at the Corning Preserve and every night on the seven o’clock news.

One of those creepy moments happened this evening after reading verse 47.  Sitting thinking about what Christ did to effect salvation, the radio playing in the background, Bring Me to Life by Evanescence came on.  So there I am…thinking about what salvation means and I hear these words being sung: 

Man!  I dunno!  Maybe salvation is so many different things.  Perhaps, because of who I am, that inner personal scream in my very core for more to life, that yearning for life to have more meaning requires salvation.  For Ashley, for a moment – a very real, very serious physical salvation.  For thousands of people in Haiti, right this very moment, salvation may be a bottle of water and a plastic-sealed meal. 

Maybe it is also salvation from hell to heaven.  But along the way…