Still, there are some mysteries with which I struggle. For instance, how is it that a two foot child can seemingly manage to have an arm’s reach of at least five feet? Or why is it that within a week of preparing a garden bed and transplanting seemingly healthy bedding stock, that the weeds have sprouted and overtaken everything? Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten while hot dog buns come only in packages of eight, and why is there an expiration date on sour cream? Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii? I’m sure you have often heard other examples of the curious head-scratcher question, such as why is it that when you transport something by car or other motor vehicle, it’s called a shipment, but when you transport something by ship it’s called cargo? Or why do we park in driveways but drive on parkways? And so on.

There are, of course, some logical answers to some of the poser-type questions in life. Why, it has been asked, are the buttons on men’s shirts on the right, while they are on the left on a woman’s blouse? The answer had to do with the likelihood of wealthy women being dressed by their maidservants, while generally men, even the wealthy ones, still self-dressed, and since it is easier to button right-handed, thus the difference. Men’s buttons were on the right to make it easier for them as they did up their own buttons; but were put on the left on women’s clothing for the benefit of the maids.

Other questions are less easily answered, even with the benefit of the internet. No one seems to have any answer to give, for instance, as to the discrepancy in packaging of buns compared to hot dogs – in other words, some mysteries are apparently just that.

But it did send me thinking about some of the mysteries in my life that are far more important to accept than the problem of mismatched dogs and buns. St. Paul, who was no slouch in the intellectual department, was particularly confounded by the mysteries of that grace which had seized hold of his life, and in his writings, he marveled over many of them. Job, that suffering saint of old, also understood there were some things simply beyond the keenest mind – thus he questioned his questioning friends whether any of them could fathom the mystery of God.

Certainly for Paul, the mysteries of God included the hardening of the hearts of Israel until the day when “the full number of all the Gentiles should come” into faith (Romans 11:25). The mystery of God’s way was that at the last days, “we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, [when] the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed … and Death will be swallowed up in victory” (I Corinthians 15: 51ff). To the Ephesians, he named the amazing relationship of intimacy between Christ and his church as a deep mystery (5:32), even as was the wonder that in Christ, God had made known the manifold wisdom which had been for ages kept hidden but was now revealed in Christ (3: 9-12). Greater mystery still, Paul told the Ephesian church, was God’s holy purpose to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ (1:9); to abolish the law through Christ’s flesh and reconcile Jew and Gentile into one new humanity (2: 15-16); and to bring peace to all who were far away and all who were near, and give both access to the Father (2: 17-18).

The most profound mystery and wonder of the universe, to my mind, was well articulated by Paul in his letter to the Romans when he penned that incredible truth: “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:6). The mystery is not just that some of us might dare to sacrifice our lives for a loved one or for a particularly noble and holy and good person. The mystery is that while we were lost, broken, sinful and absolutely incompetent and incapable of willing, let alone doing, anything by which to save ourselves or make ourselves righteous or otherwise purify our souls before God, God did the unimaginable. He gave his own precious Son to bear our sins to death on the cross and pay the penalty for everything in the whole of our human nature and in the whole of our individual living which had separated us from God and made us worthy only of hell and eternal damnation. More to the point, Christ died for us when we did not deserve and because we never could and never will deserve such an outpouring of love, mercy and grace.

Sadly, here arises another tragic mystery, though on one level it is not terribly difficult to comprehend. The mystery is how desperately most of us still try, as it were, to make up retroactively by good deeds this debt of love which we can never repay. The mystery is how we will confuse the gospel of grace by turning it into the gospel of the mere second chance – that is, God has forgiven our mistakes of yesterday, so now we better shape up and fly right and don’t dare step out of line this time! And then we will enslave ourselves to some pitiful facsimile of the law all over again, as if Christ set us free, not for freedom (Galatians 5:1), but for fresh servitude and simply a new variety of frustration of trying to be good enough for God through our own human effort. As a pastor, one of my most heartbreaking experiences is watching people still slaving away in their heart of hearts trying to earn, win and merit God’s favour, which according to Paul, has already been simply lavished upon us, through the mystery and miracle of God’s grace given in Jesus. It is as if we simply dare not believe that God could be that good and loving, or that those holy gifts of mercy and salvation, peace and joy, could be truly offered us, no strings attached – all we need to do is simply receive them, rest in them and rejoice over them and the Lord who gives so freely.

Which reminds me there are some mysteries that just are. God’s incredible love that gives itself unconditionally to us, is the most holy, wondrous and happiest of all.

All was well until winter, and our monsoon season of rain. Everything was saturated, including bags of soil, pots of peat moss, as well as all the other gardening paraphernalia that had accumulated on the bench. 

So this year, my intent was to put up a simple corrugated fibreglass roof over top of the work area. Again, a quick trip to the lumber yard to gather supplies, and with my design finalized, I  re-arranged my schedule to take a day off mid-week when our balmy spring weather would be at its finest and began my simple little roofing enterprise. 

Within ten minutes of prep work and I felt like I had arrived in one of the Home and Garden Television (HGTV) renovation disaster programs. If you have watched any of the following shows, Holmes on Homes, Love it or List it, DIY Disasters, you will know what I mean. Inevitably, once the contractors begin their work, a host of unforeseen problems arise – the plumbing is not to code, the electrical system is a fire hazard, the foundation is crumbling, the walls are full of carpenter ants, the ceiling is full of dry rot, and the budget for the planned-for renovations suddenly disappears in a mound of unanticipated repair work. As the bard, Robbie Burns would say: the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. 

Thankfully, I did not have the mega disaster on the scale that would require a Mike Holmes to make it right. I did, however, have a whole fascia support system that had rotted out and was ready to fall off. Thankfully, little expense was required other than a day’s long effort, such that my original roofing project never got started. Such is the challenge of home renovation projects, especially on older properties – one never knows the surprises and problems which will be found or the extent of additional work that will be required. 

Which is not unlike the adventure of spiritual growth, at least, as I have found out in both my own life and in my experience as a pastor. Like my house, my increasingly somewhat-aged but well-weathered soul has, I’ve found, its share of metaphorical sagging foundations, creaky floorboards, ill-placed and slouching walls. Much of it has come from sloppy life construction work years ago, or from the life-quakes of crisis and trouble. Just as a slow plumbing leak up in an unseen cavity of a wall can eventually cause a huge and costly problem of mildew and dry rot and structural weakening, so in the same way all those unaddressed sins, sorrows and wounds that we have simply plastered over and tried to ignore eventually demand our attention. And the longer we have tried to pretend they did not exist or rationalize their unimportance, the greater the collateral damage to the rest of our living. 

For instance, I may have thought I could put off dealing with that nagging little issue that demanded my prayerful forgiveness of a person, and did so for years, only to find that in the process, my soul has become increasingly weary, embittered, prickly and hard. Or it may be that I tried quite successfully for months and years and a lifetime to push all the hurt and pain from some moment of great wounding to my heart into the closet of denial. But like cash socked away in a savings account, pain has an ability to accrue great amounts of compound interest the longer it is left alone, except the only dividend that increases with all the shameful, ugly, soul-crippling baggage we hide from ourselves and from God is negative. The only accrual is of more pain, deeper shame. 

Indeed, that may be the reason why many people are reluctant to peel back the curtain and look within our innermost selves, and invite God to come within. We seem instinctively aware that there is a mess that needs to be dealt with, so we decide that we might be better off not to start even the simplest renovation projects on our lives, fearing it will only lead to a bigger enterprise than ever we bargained for. 

Sadly, ignoring the problems doesn’t make them go away. We may put them off but in doing so they generally only worsen, deepen, and become more an even more extensive, demanding and costly reno project. Putting off the issues usually serves only to  drive us to continue our well-practiced patterns of dysfunctional behaviour both in our own life situation and in our relationships. Worse, we do not get to taste freedom. 

Paul told the church in Galatia that for freedom we had been set free. I love that image of slaves being unshackled, given tokens of their freedom, and led into the bright, glorious sunlight of a wondrous liberty that had been purchased for them at great price. Christ died that we might be so set free from sin and guilt, and from everything that would hinder and weigh down and seek to entrap and enslave us once again. 

In John’s gospel we read that Jesus told his disciples that his life gifts to them were his peace which was unlike the world could ever give and his joy that would make their joy complete.  Or to put the apostle’s words and our Saviour’s promise in the language of this analogy, Christ paid the price so that our souls could be renovated and made absolutely new, inside out, from top to bottom and overflowing with heaven’s peace, blessing and joy. The challenge is that we must invite Christ, the Master Carpenter of our hearts, to come in and have his way with us, and in every part of lives, no matter how much demolition and excavation has to be done. Like the HGTV renovation shows, the Lord may have to haul out of our lives an incredible amount of old junk and evil, along with all the dry rot  in our hearts from the lies of the Enemy which we have believed or the deceits we have told ourselves. No doubt, there will be dumpsters full of pride and pain, of unforgiveness of others and unforgiveness of ourselves which needs to be pulled down and hauled out. The renovation that Christ wants to do in us and with us will be messy and dusty and hard, but not only will the grand reveal be worth it, as we are remade to be more like Christ, but it will be worth it because of the joy that will increasingly grow in us, the grace that will seize hold of us and the holy freedom that will fill us. 

Robert Boyd Munger penned a little pamphlet which InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has used in its outreach programs. Entitled My Heart – Christ’s Home, the booklet paints a picture of our inviting Jesus, who has been knocking at the door of our hearts, into not just the front hall of our lives, but into every single room, in all their cluttered, dilapidated, and embarrassing mess. And room by room is transformed simply by his gracious presence. 

Munger does not use the imagery of Jesus with a carpenter’s belt slung around his waist but the message is similar – only Jesus can renovate the muck and mess of our lives through his incredible grace, wisdom, tenderness and love. He alone can take us as he finds us, in whatever condition of need or degree of falling apart and make us right and holy, beautiful and strong, spotless and new. It is his good pleasure so to do.

His words struck home. I began to wonder how many things we do within the life of the church often prove profoundly counter-productive to our intention to draw people into a loving, life-giving relationship with Jesus Christ.

One of my first thoughts was how our language often ends up dividing and demeaning. For example, within evangelical circles, we often use the terms believers and non-believers, or else we might speak of some people being Christians while saying others are not. Most often, what we really mean is that Fred does some overtly Christian things and perhaps employs some distinctly Christian verbiage, while Sam does not go to church and doesn’t use or isn’t comfortable with our “Christianese” and therefore we conclude Fred is a Christian or a believer and Sam is not.

Scripture clearly tells us that only God knows the heart, yet we blithely (and dare I say, arrogantly) make judgments about the quality of each person’s inner heart commitment, trust and love. Worse, such language tends to segregate people into our neat, nice, comforting little categories of who’s in and who’s out, and often our attitudes and behavior towards Fred and Sam in terms of acceptance, respect, patience, and so on, follows.

What I find more tragic is that our too-easy use of such discriminatory terms gives no respect to the truth that every last one of us is but a pilgrim on a journey. None of us have arrived, or ever will this side of heaven, at the point of perfect trust, love and obedience. And in truth, if we have any degree of honesty, most of us would need to confess that ours has not been an ever-deepening, ever-growing and straight forward journey into becoming spiritual giants. One friend defined his spiritual pilgrimage as a lifetime of “moving two steps forward and falling three steps backward, with lots of getting drawn away down dead-end diversions and ending up stuck in the potholes of inertia.” Further, most of the truly great spiritual teachers in the history of the church readily acknowledge the times of doubt and struggle, of being  confused and feeling lost in the spiritual deserts and wastelands, during which it was only the grace of God and the prayerful care of others that led them through.

In the same way, I’ve come to be deeply troubled by the self-description of being a mature Christian. The truth is we are all just kindergarteners in the school of becoming disciples of Christ. Chapter 13 in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians astutely warns how easily we can be nothing but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals and how worthless can be our best works and sacrifices if we have not love, to which we might add humility. I know how much my faith in, love for, and reliance upon Christ has grown and deepened over the years of my following him. But I certainly have not “graduated.” In the school of faith, I’m still a learner, a discoverer, an adventurer, who continually needs to learn to fall even more fully in love with Jesus, and learn to trust him so much more completely and learn to rest and rejoice in him with my whole heart. And even if I were to do so perfectly today, tomorrow is a whole new story!

Which is to suggest that we need to be much more sensitive, humble and encouraging in our language as we talk about our spiritual journeying. Personally, I’ve been trying to think of people using different terms, such as Christians and yet-to-become Christians, or believers and yet-to-be-believers. On one hand, such phrases, I hope, have a more inclusive aspect, recognizing two dynamics. One is that while some of us have been on the journey of faith for many years, others may have only begun to take the first step, or even to turn in the right direction to seek after God. But I don’t believe God is half as interested in how close we are to the finish line, as if discipleship were all about our success and achievement, as he is that we have at least begun to seek him. The angels of heaven break out the party hats, remember, not over the ninety-nine righteous but over the one who was lost and begins to understand he has been found. But secondly, such language may also recognize the deeper reality that God may be nurturing and growing faith in hearts long before they are able to give voice to that faith. Just because Sam hasn’t measured up to our markers of what makes a believer doesn’t mean that God is not very much at work. We ought not to be so eager to decide who’s a lost cause and who isn’t!

But on the other hand, I’m coming more and more to believe that any such distinctions are ever to be used, rare indeed would be the times when they are appropriate. C. S. Lewis once suggested that the most basic sin is pride, which is always competitive and self-promoting and grasping after a sense of one’s worth, not by resting in God’s amazing grace, but by vaunting ourselves over others. Pride basks in being smarter, richer, faster, stronger, better looking or otherwise farther ahead than someone else. The essence of witness, so our church’s confession of faith suggests, is recognizing that we are but beggars who, having found food, point others to life in Christ.

Rather than worrying about who’s in and who’s out, who’s a believer and who’s not, I suspect that a much better use of our time, effort, prayer and energy would be in helping ensure none are starving for want of knowing where food for the soul is to be found.

In the Second World War, convoys of boats travelled together across the Atlantic bearing much needed supplies and soldiers one way, immigrants and wounded men the other. The point of the convoy was not a race, in which the fast ships steamed ahead as quickly as possible. Rather the convoy stayed together for mutual encouragement, assistance and protection, and the goal was to get everyone to safe haven.

I don’t remember reading anywhere in scripture that God is impressed with our busy, back-patting judgments about who’s in or not. I do remember more than a few verses, however, that tell us to go the laneways and beyond with the holy happy invitation to a banquet and to be rather incessant and insistent in the process, because the Master just wants his banquet hall to be full.

And that causes me to wonder why it is that so many Christians seem uninterested or unwilling to make Good Friday a priority in terms of their worship. The early church leaders wisely noted that we cannot truly receive the crown save we bear the cross, and to my mind, we are in danger of missing the breadth and depth of the glory and power of the resurrection, when we want to avoid Calvary. As we gather in a darkened sanctuary, as we walk through the passion narratives, as we sing such wonderful laments and confessions as “When I survey the wondrous cross,” or “Once again” (with its refrain that once again I look upon the cross where you died, I’m humbled by your mercy and I’m broken inside) or “How deep the Father’s love for us” (with its acknowledgement that it was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished – his dying breath has brought me life, I know that it is finished), and as we wait in prayer before a purple draped cross, we gain a wise perspective of both our ever present need for grace, and the awesome gift which Christ Jesus secured for us through his blood.

And that leads me to holy Saturday. Because of Good Friday, I often find Saturday a deep and pensive day. The shadow of the cross and the vision of my Lord’s death for my sake hangs over, even on such a glorious spring day as was today. Not in a maudlin or gloomy sense, but I have often found over the years that on holy Saturdays, midst whatever else I may be doing, there is part of my consciousness still sitting in the darkened sanctuary marveling at how great a price God paid to win my heart to himself. The terrible truth sinks in that like Judas, I have too much betrayed Jesus in favor of the trinkets and treasures our world holds dear, and yet he prayed for God to forgive me. The awful admission is pulled from my heart that like Peter, I have denied my loyalty to Jesus – perhaps not in the blatant lie of the fishermen before accusing maid servants – but certainly in too easily, too often and worse, too unconsciously, happily blending into mainstream society, unwilling to stand out as a follower of Jesus. And from the cross, Jesus prayed for God to forgive me. On holy Saturday, I find the echoes of Good Friday drawing me to confess my hard-heartedness, my cowardice, my confusion, my fickleness, my unwillingness to give my all. Yet with arms stretched out in agony, Jesus prayed “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

On holy Saturday, I often find myself, figuratively, wanting to wait by the tomb, in cleansing repentance and happy awe not only that Jesus bore the cross for me, but that from the cross, spoke words of such eternal comfort, immediate mercy and ever present grace.

Which, for me, makes the glory of Easter even more wondrous. Lament gets turned to laughter. Tears of sorrow turn into tears of joy. Hearts broken with sadness and sorrow are mended with the most incredible, amazing and wonderful good news words imaginable: He is risen! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

I love Good Friday. It is well named because of the good Christ secured for me. And I love holy Saturday, well named also, because it is a day to be still and to ponder the holy love of him who suffered and died and descended to hell that we might be saved and brought alive and filled with the confident hope of heaven. It is good and holy to wait and wonder, that Easter joy might overflow.

“Why me, God” is, on one hand, an understandably natural response when trouble comes our way. For instance, we may cry out to God wanting to comprehend the reason why some disaster or difficulty has befallen us, as if being able to detect some logical connect between some earlier decision or behavior and our current suffering would give a key to how we might either fix the problem or prevent reoccurrence of the situation. Or we might cry out our lament to God in trust that with him is comfort and strength in the midst of our difficulty, and if there is to be deliverance of any kind from our predicament or problem, God alone will be the author and provider. Just being able to bring our sorrow to the receptive heart of God, and being able to lay our tears, fears, frustrations and weariness in his loving care gives such incredible solace.

Yet often our “Why me’s” are voiced without any real desire to find the wisdom and insight that might lead us to repentance or to more intelligent lifestyle or decision making. Nor do our “Why me’s” always come from that deep soul trust in the goodness of God to be with me in the persevering through the tragedies or trials I may be facing. Most often, I suspect, our whimpering little whines stem from a pouty determination that God isn’t being fair to us, in failing to protect us either from the natural consequences of our choices and actions, or from all the unpredictable traumas and troubles that can arise in a fallen creation. Why should we be miraculously kept immune from sickness or sorrow, harm or horror, when such perils are simply part of the dangerous mystery of life? What makes us so special that we believe God ought to spare us any and every heartache or hurt?

But the “why not you” response is far more than a shattering come-uppance to our self-absorption. If we take seriously the admonition concerning the place of discipline which is found in the twelfth chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews, we might not be so quick to judge God unfair or unkind. The author of that letter clearly acknowledged that “no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.” Yet he went on to affirm that that same discipline, much of which is lovingly given by a God for the sake of training us in the way of holiness, can produce “a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

That is not to suggest that every trial or hard experience is a “punishment” or an act of discipline imposed by God. What I do try constantly to remind myself is that there is no trial, no time of temptation or hardship, no place of suffering, no situation of grief and anguish, which God cannot use to hone and refine and purify and train our hearts into more prayerful reliance on him, wiser gratitude for his faithfulness, and deeper Christ-like compassion towards others. Someone once suggested that just as diamonds are formed under intense pressure within the centre of the earth, so it is in the crucible of challenge, hardship and struggle that God refines and forges in us both the greatest resiliency of faith and the most daring and blessed capacities to love.

A friend of mine said that when trouble or woe comes to call, his initial reaction is always to want to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. His second reaction is to stamp his foot and demand God make things right. But when he allows God’s Spirit to be present and God’s Truth to be heard in his life, he has slowly come to realize that this hard moment may be the very situation through which the Lord plans to do some of his greatest work in his life. Harvests of righteousness and peace can only come through training – usually hard training.

I do not mean to say we should never ask God to deliver us from hard times or painful experiences. But the wiser prayer might be to ask that if deliverance is not God’s will in the immediate moment,  may we prove ourselves to be teachable, trainable, refine-able and perfect-able by the Holy Spirit at work in us in the place of pain and tears. Not only might we discover an abundance of grace to uphold us through the hard time, we might find the hard time reveals and releases in us something absolutely beautiful for God that becomes a blessing for the world.

single number

For those who haven’t scratched their heads over finding the correct sequences by which to fill the 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 sub-grids that compose the grid contains all of the digits from 1 to 9. Puzzles are rated in terms of difficulty, from novice or easy level through medium and hard to extreme.

I’ve been doing Sudoku for several years, and would rate myself as being quite competent – I would not call myself an expert, but with persevering logic or, if desperate, old fashioned trial and error, there are very few that I cannot eventually solve. I would be less than honest though if I did not admit, on occasion, to giving myself a single digit hint from the answer page at the back of the book!

I suspect many of us secretly wished that that life were so easy as a Sudoku puzzle, even one of the hardest variety. We long for life to fit a pattern that is logical, predictable and solvable, even if at first it appears frustratingly inscrutable. That is, if we just bring enough patience, determination and intellectual effort to the enterprise, we can deduce the solution, thereby gaining that delicious sense of achievement, success, control, superiority and power. While life often will provide us the hard lessons of logical consequence (do something stupid and we suffer), life is also as seemingly chaotic as it is spectacularly beautiful. It is as full of unforeseeable tragedy as serendipitous glory. Even those events and experiences that can seem the most unfair, undeserved and defeating can become the unexpected nurseries of faith, resilience and laughter.

Indeed, one of the greatest lures towards idolatry is the desire to make life controllable, predictable and what we might deem as being safe. We chase after our many technologies as if that will give us a better handle on our world. Or we appeal to the wisdom of economic security, hoping that if we get spending under control, minimize risk, maximize savings, and build up our retirement reserves, all will be well. The list could go on, but the point is that life is as risky as it is remarkable; as mysterious as it is marvelous, and the unforecastable days of sunshine and storm will come as come they will, despite our attempt to order and control them. Or to quote John Lennon’s well known acknowledgement: life is what happens when we’re busy making plans.

I wonder whether life’s seeming disorder or unpredictability is in truth one more of those unrecognized gifts of heavenly grace. Human beings love to try to figure life out – life reminds us that there are some mysteries that can only be embraced. We work so hard at trying to take control of life yet in trying to get an edge on all the numbers or details, miss the grand tapestry of God’s design. We spend so much energy and worry over much of what has never been ours to control, rather than relaxing in the peace and the promise that ultimately, it is God alone who has perfect control over his whole creation, and whether we recognize and yield or not, has a perfect plan and vision for our living and destiny as well.

The Jewish writer Elie Wiesel once suggested that God made human beings because he loves stories. Certainly, I believe that we were created for the grand adventure of being within God’s holy romance with his world, and that the stuff of our lives is not a puzzle to be mastered, but a voyage to be relished. Life for us, as appointed by God, is a journey of amazing discovery into the boundless surprise of his grace, in which we get to marvel in every step along the way because, as Christians, we already know the holy ending and glory-filled destination. We don’t have to sweat and strive to “do life right” or “conquer life” because it is a gift to us in the first place and the greatest battle and victory has been won for us by Christ.

You see, like my peeking at the back of the puzzle book for a clue to the hard puzzles, we already know how the story of life ends. Scripture affirms that the Lamb is on the throne and we get to join the vast throng of the saints in that place where God himself shall wipe away from our eyes all the tears of confusion and frustration, pain and heartache, of sorrow and sin. God has given us all the answers we might ever need in even the most puzzling of life’s circumstances and the hardest of life’s experiences – Christ is with us, as savior, lord and friend. That solution alone makes sense of everything.

One of the frustrating elements of such a discussion time is that it generally flies by all too quickly, when there is so much more that could be said. Yet the experience encouraged me on so many levels. First, it was such a delight to meet this group of young people who were committed to their faith in Christ and who desire to be, not just casual participants but active leaders, in the church as it continues to re-discover itself in this post-Christendom and increasingly secular age. Declining attendance at worship and the aging of much of the Church often sparks collective hand-wringing and bemoaning about the death of the church. While old forms of church may be passing, I witnessed Christ’s Church very much alive, vibrant and faithful in these young adults.

Secondly, it was a joy to be part of a panel of pastors from a variety of denominational backgrounds and traditions, all of whom had a profound love for Christ’s church, regardless of her “warts and wrinkles.” And while we might represent different theological elements within the broad sweep of the Christian church, we shared one heart and passion for the essentials: the Lordship of Jesus, the centrality of the Cross, the work of the Spirit, the call of Christ upon his people to incarnate Jesus on a daily basis in their ordinary lives, and the primary gift of being a people who “glorify and enjoy” our God. While liturgical styles may differ and our theological quirks and distinctive may stimulate respectful debate, there was an essential unity in wanting to honour our Saviour in all that we are and do, and to let the transforming grace and beauty of Jesus be seen in the quality of our relationships with the world around us but especially in community.

Indeed, this aspect of authentically and humbly living out the freedom, power and grace of the gospel within community became the topic around which most of our conversation flowed. Of concern to the pastors and students alike was that the biggest challenge for the church today was that we be seen to be a people who truly love one another with an intentionality, integrity and loveliness unlike anything else the world may witness. The pressing challenge is not a matter of what we declare to the world, nor the correctness of our doctrine. Rather, what the world longs to see in the Church is changed lives and changed relationships. The greatest witness the world is waiting to see about the power, relevancy and worth of the Christian faith is in how we live and interrelate as a people who have been healed and transformed by the grace of Christ, and live with a gentleness, vulnerability, honesty and servant heart that reflects who Jesus is and what he has done in and for us. Or to put it a different way, the watching world will be far less moved by what we say Jesus can do in a person’s life than by what it is obvious that Jesus has done both in our individual lives but much more so in our corporate life and relationships.

The expression of awe about those who professed faith in Christ in the first centuries of the church was “See those Christians – how they love one another!” Too often, the watching world today would only say: “See those Christians – who they squabble with one another!”

More and more, my longing and prayer for the Church, and for our congregation, is less the speaking out of the gospel (as important as that is) and more the living out of the gospel. There are no end of ways in which that can happen, but here are some of the most essential forms.

The first is to be a people who simply can never get over the wonder of what Christ has done for us, and that God has chosen to lavish his love upon, of all people, us! Living out the gospel is first and always a matter of rejoicing in the Lord who gave himself for us, and in rejoicing simply, humbly and lovingly in him.

The second is to be a people who are far more intent on letting God change them than they are in telling God how he should change other people. A people who are living out the gospel never forget that, as Paul put it, they are the chief of sinners, but praise be to God, the Lord is not finished with us yet. I’m not counseling a pathetic self-absorption, but as Christians we are always on a journey of discovering and receiving more and more of Christ’s healing, grace and Spirit. I cringe when I hear people talking about being “mature” Christians – we are all of us mere kindergarteners in the school of becoming like Jesus. Indeed, it is only as we continually discover what it is to be a deeply loved people that we will be able to love deeply; only as we learn what it is to be a forgiven people that we can become a forgiving people; and only as we surrender to the transforming and healing mercies of God that we will be able to embrace one another and this sad old world with the powerful saving presence of Jesus.

Thirdly, living out the gospel means striving to fulfill the “one-anothering” commands which we find in Paul’s letters (i.e., honor, forgive, respect, encourage, exhort, serve, forbear, love one another). Jesus took the form of the servant, the lowest of the low, and washed the feet of his disciples, yet too often that sacrificial, self-forgetting, grace-filled servant-heartedness is so terribly absent from the church. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was known for the ability of seeing Jesus in the weak, the forgotten, the addict, the prostitute and all the other invisible people to whom she ministered with tenderness, respect and grace, serving them “as unto the Lord.” What miracles might abound within our churches, within the Church, if we choose to see Jesus in one another, and acted accordingly?

Finally, I think of an old piece of wisdom given to pastors that says a congregation “does not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” In a similar way, if the world doesn’t seem to care much about what the Church says today, it just may be because the world, which God so loved and for which Christ died, has not seen much compelling evidence of how much it is cared for by us. As I give the benediction Sunday by Sunday, I often remind our folk that “the world is waiting.” Waiting to see heaven’s love, in us. Waiting to experience the Lord’s mercy, through us. Waiting to taste the mercy and goodness of God, from us. Waiting to know the healing and forgiving grace of Jesus, because of us.

The world is waiting to know that the gospel is true and that heaven’s love is present and powerful, and to see that reality in and through the church. Thus the prayer: Revive us again, O Lord, that the world may be won for you.”

Chapter 1: I got up this morning and went outside. I walked down a certain road and came to a great hole in the road. I looked in, and slipped and fell into the hole. It was a very deep hole. It took me a long time to get out.

Chapter 2: I got up this morning and went outside. I walked down a certain road and came to a great hole in the road. I looked in, and slipped and fell into the hole. It was a very deep hole. It took me a long time to get out.

Chapter 3: I got up this morning and went outside. I walked down a certain road and came to a great hole in the road. I looked in very carefully, trying to stay well back from the hole, but I slipped and fell into the hole. It was a very deep hole. It took me a long time to get out.

Chapter 4: I got up this morning and went outside. I walked down a certain road and came to a great hole in the road. I walked around the hole and went on my way.

Chapter 5: I got up this morning and went outside. I walked down a different road.

Referring to the encouragement in Hebrews 12:1 to “look unto Jesus,” the devotional gave the important reminder that when we keep our thoughts focussed on the Lord, we are far less likely to fall into the hole or pit of self-pity. Even more importantly, intentionally giving praise to God turns our attention away from ourselves and our situation, regrets, fears, anger or shame (all slippery edges that grease the way for our rapid cascade into the pity pit) and instead helps us remember the God who is good, faithful and at work for our blessing, even in hard times. Praise is an incredibly effective means of not showing up at the pity party.

I remembered the Psalmist’s words about “blessed the feet of him who brings good news.” I suppose equally we could say “blessed the feet of him” who chooses to stay well away from big holes in the road. Even more blessed is the person who wisely decides to go down a different road so as to avoid those dangerous, luring and entrapping holes altogether.

Truthfully, we all of us can choose to a profound degree not only where our feet will go, but more pertinently, where we will let our thoughts travel. If I habitually let my mind wander down the road of remorse or guilt, or down the laneway of remembered hurts and well nursed grudges, or pursue the footpath of anxiety and anguish, it very likely will not be well with my soul.

Which draws my thoughts back to what is undoubtedly one of my favorite scriptures. Writing to the Philippians, Paul said “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” In other words, be careful and be wise about what roads you choose to travel.

It was the third verse that got my mind meandering. It is the verse that defines a righteous man as having “no slander on his tongue…, who casts no slur on his fellowman.” I would hope that I have managed to avoid speaking out too many slanders and slurs upon people in life. Certainly, I try to be careful with my words, knowing only too personally how cruelly and deeply words can cut when people give free reign to their pent-up angers and frustrations, callously throwing about critical accusations and brutal assessments of others’ intentions, integrity and character. Lest I sound too self-congratulatory, however, let me be just as quick to confess that if I have succeeded more often than not in controlling what I have actually spoken aloud, that does not mean that I have been innocent in terms of the things I’ve thought or wanted to say. Jesus commented that a man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. In like manner, how guilty I am in terms of slandering and slurring “in the heart.” Thus can I only cry (as thus surely must we all): O God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

And that is where my rabbit trail suddenly took a turn. Having experienced the bitterness of being slurred and slandered against, and finding myself having still more work to do at forgiving fully and finally those who savaged, not just my reputation but my heart, I began questioning why we find it so hard to offer that full and free forgiveness that sets prisoners free. You see, I believe with all my heart that God has given us this amazing gift and privilege of being able to forgive those who have hurt us so that two prisoners can be liberated. The first prisoner is the person who may be seeking forgiveness, to be set free from shame and guilt. The second prisoner, and this is the prisoner who most needs setting free, is ourselves. In forgiving those who hurt us, we escape the prison of our resentment and wounded pride. Forgiving people releases us from the bondage of living in the remembered pain of our past and takes away the burden of bitterness, grudges, fear and sorrow. Forgiveness, Louis Smedes said in his marvelous book Forgive and Forget, is that grace that above all brings healing to our own souls.

Yet while my head knows the truth, how often my heart decides to walk to the proverbial different drummer, and I find myself back quietly nursing resentments and busily stoking the fires of self-righteous indignation which I had thought I had cleansed and doused a long time ago. Like the dust bunnies under the bed that keep appearing no matter how many times we have vacuumed, some old wounds seem determined to keep demanding selfish attention.

It was at this point in my pondering that I also remembered Jesus’ words about forgiving so that God would forgive us. It was in the context of his teaching the disciples how they should pray – what we call the Lord’s Prayer – that our Master added the challenging affirmation that if we forgive others when they sin against us, God will also forgive us. But if we fail to forgive, neither will God forgive us (Matthew 6: 14-15).

I’ve always taken that passage as Jesus’ incisive acknowledgment of the simple truth that if we will not (not cannot) offer forgiveness to those who’ve hurt us, it evidences a closed heart and shriveled soul exists in us. And a closed heart which refuses to yield grace will ultimately be one which will not have the capacity to receive grace. It is not as if God ruthlessly metes out his mercy on a quid pro quo basis. Scripture repeatedly affirms the vastness of God’s desire to pour out mercy. The problem is in us, because the barrier is in us. The heart that will not graciously forgive (and forgiveness is always an act of grace and nothing less), simply stands in prideful, stubborn resistance even to the beckoning mercies of heaven.

Here’s where my “which comes first – the chicken or the egg” reflections began to formulate. Which comes first: our act of compassionate forgiveness towards those who hurt us or God’s extension of grace to us? It might seem at first glance that our decision to forgive goes before the bestowal of grace, until we realize how much grace God has already poured out into our lives, not the least of which was the sacrifice of his Son upon the cross by which we have been forgiven! Do you remember the beautiful old hymn, “When I survey the wondrous cross?” The final verse announces our impossible-to-repay indebtedness to grace:

Where the whole realm of nature mine

            That were an offering far too small.

            Love so amazing, so divine,

            Demands my soul, my life, my all.

How dare I, how dare any of us posture and protest that those authors of our hurts and sorrows must first grovel in repentance or else be shamefully exposed in their guiltiness before we will yield a drop of forgiveness? Oh, I know that sounds dramatic, but like the slurring and slandering that we savor in our imaginations, don’t we in truth long for “our enemies” as the Psalmist puts it, to be given their public come-uppances and forced to “repent in sackcloth and ashes?” You see, most of us spend far too much time and effort silently rehearsing the wrongs we believe were done to us than we do earnestly speaking out our willful (in the best sense of the word) intentional declarations of mercy, pardon and forgiveness. Most of us give far too much attention to bemoaning the prisons of our pain than we do turning the ever present key of forgiveness in the lock and walking out into freedom and joy.

Grace, in holy and unbounded abundance, has been given. It’s ours in Jesus. All he asks is that we, as it were, pay it forward, and forgive greatly as we have been forgiven by the greatest power of love in this universe. When we do, it is not only freedom that awaits, but joy also.

O holy grace that has washed away my guilt and sin, shame and stain, may my gratitude and praise be sounded in the glad and unfettered echoes of grace I yield to others. That I might be free indeed, in Thee, my Saviour and my Friend. Amen

This week, Psalm 28 is among my trio of Psalms. It is one of David’s most poignant prayers of petition and pain, as well as his heart’s cry of exultant praise. Psalm 28 is a prayer for deliverance from a time of deadly peril in his life because of personal enemies that not only attacked him maliciously but did so with defiant disregard of God’s commands. In his appeal to the Lord, David not only wept out his own frustration and pain at the unfairness of the slanderous attacks that were leveled against him, but proclaimed his unwavering conviction and hope in God’s faithful and righteous defense of his servant. The psalm echoes with those beautiful descriptions of God as rock, strength, shield, strength, fortress of salvation and shepherd. The God of Israel is praised as the one who hears David’s cry for mercy and responds with help and blessing, and therefore David’s heart leaps for joy.

What particularly struck me this week was a line in the second verse in which David begged God to hear his cry for mercy and help as “I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.” We don’t know whether David was actually in the outer part of the Tent of Meeting (for the Temple had not yet been built) or whether this psalm was at a time when he was far away in hiding from King Saul. It matters not; what does matter is that his posture of prayer was oriented towards the inner sanctuary of the Tent of Meeting, to the Most Holy Place where the ark of the covenant was placed as symbol of God’s faithful presence with his people. In essence, David was saying that he was crying out to God and was lifting his hands up to the Lord for help in the same way that a little child might lift up their hands to a parent, pleading to be picked up and embraced in their strong, protective and loving arms.

It is an amazing image of David’s humble and trusting dependency on God as the only one who could aid and rescue him and bring judgment upon those who oppressed him. But even more beautifully does the image reveal the tender graciousness of the Father, the Holy One, who stoops to embrace us, his little ones, with steadfast love and unflinching kindness.

As I prayed through the Psalm, that image seized hold of my heart in such a commanding way. God, I believe, longs for and invites us to come to him, lifting heart and hands as the helpless, broken, fearful and hurting children that we are, in simple trust that our God is more than sufficient to calm our souls, comfort our hearts, heal our wounds and renew our joy. Our God is no stand-offish deity before whom we must present ourselves with trembling, distant formalities. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal, our God is one who is ready to sweep us into his arms, hold us in saving power, and wipe away the tears from our eyes. If God delights in our lifting up our arms to him, our delight is that the arms of God have always been reaching out to take hold of us with all the warm, glorious and holy passion of heaven. What a promise! What a gift!