Arriving, Pt. 15: "The Narrow Road"

[NOTE: Due to technical issues, the podcast starts about 10-minutes in, with Pastor Glenn Packiam interviewing an artist about Makoto Fujimura's "Golden Sea".] We live in a day where "freedom" is interpreted as "life without restraints." Yet, in light of God's arriving Kingdom, Jesus calls us to follow Him along a narrow road. Far from being a description of a popular hell and a sparse heaven, the wide and narrow roads contrast a life of ease with a life of difficulty. Drawing on illustrations from art, music, and marriage, Pastor Glenn helps us see that accepting the necessary constraints for the sake of a desired outcome is something we find many areas of life. What Jesus invites us into is much more than a life of constraints, however; he bids us, "Come and die." But this "death" is itself the beginning of abundant life; it is the "wonderful exchange", where we trade our nothing-ness for His everything.