Hidden in Christ

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1-3). 

For he will hide me in his shelter    in the day of trouble;he will conceal me under the cover of his tent;    he will lift me high upon a rock.(Ps 27:5)

There are two basic ways to be lost. The more familiar way is not knowing where you are. You may be on a trip, traveling through a strange area. You don't know the exact route. You take a wrong turn. Suddenly you lose your bearings. You don't know how to get back onto the right road. 

You can easily lose your way driving through a strange city. A huge city where everything looks alike, and there are no familiar landmarks to guide you. A sense of panic may set in as you find yourself involuntarily drawn ever deeper into the labyrinth. You stop to ask for directions, but directions are hard to follow without a familiar frame of reference. Yet sooner or later the driver does find his way out of the maze. Sooner or later the driver is back on the right road, with a tremendous sigh of relief, and heading to his desired destination.

But there is another more hopeless way to be lost. This is the opposite of the first way. In the second way, you are lost, not because you don't know where you are, but because you do know where you are, but you have nowhere to go. The surroundings are painfully familiar. 

This can happen if someone tries to go back after a long absence. Where going back shows you there's nothing left to go back to. 

I once saw a Burt Lancaster film: The Swimmer. It has one of those plots in which the director initially misleads the audience. The audience thinks it understands where the story is going. But as the story unfolds, first impressions are deceptive. There's more to the story than meets the eye. 

Lancaster plays a character who at first seems to be a successful businessman, visiting his country club neighbors. But as the story progresses, we realize that he's coming back after a long absence. At least, he's attempting to come back. It's a journey into his past. He's attempting to relive what he lost.

The story drops little hints along the way. He lost his job. Lost his house. Lost his wife. Lost his kids. Apparently his wife divorced him. He probably had one affair too many. Or maybe he could no longer finance the standard of living to which she was accustomed. Or both. 

His daughters are estranged. They loved him for his money. Now that he's down on his luck, they disdain him. Having given them the best of everything, second best is such a come down. He taught them to be ambitious, like their dad. Kept women, like his wife. Now he's a social embarrassment. 

Having made enemies on the way up the ladder of success, he has no friends on the way down. 

In the final scene, he returns to a swanky, but vacant house. He bangs on the front door. The door is locked. The house is dark inside. Empty. Deserted. The life he had is gone beyond recall. 

Based on a John Cheever short story, it's an oblique allegory of Cheever's own rise and fall. 

By contrast, a Christian leads a double life. Not in the hypocritical sense. He lives in the same world as his unbelieving neighbors. Outwardly, his existence is scarcely distinguishable from theirs. 

But he has one foot in heaven. He has reservations in heaven. Christ is his safekeep.