METANOIA

Some words just work, don’t they?  They roll off the tongue as if they were designed simply for that function.  Metanoia is one of these words.  It just rolls off the tongue – meta … noia.  It’s the kind of word that should be placed into a poem and spoken while sipping tea and munching on a Ginger Snaps.  It comes from a Greek word meaning to change one’s mind.  We give it a Biblical sounding status by translating it, “Repent,” but it really does simply mean to change one’s mind.

Simple, right?  No! Not at all.  Have you ever tried to get somebody to change their mind on something?  Really change their mind?  Actually turn around from what they once thought and embrace a new way of thinking and being?  Turn around from self and self-ways to God and God-ways. 

Somewhere Swiss theologian, Hans Küng, says, “We are to preach metanoia. We must entice people from the world to God.”  Oh, that’s all?  Just entice people from the world to God?  I’m in.  I feel powerless to do it, mind you, but I’m in.  Metanoia, world.  Repent.  Turn around.  Embrace the God life. 

We Christians say that God has entered into human history in the person of Jesus and that Jesus brings into our world the very life of God.  He, we say, is the best news ever to make its way onto the human stage.  Yet, many people refuse this good news and summarily dismiss Jesus from their thinking.  Why?  You will have to ask them.  I’m sure the reasons are as varied as are the people holding to them.

I Corinthians 2:14 says, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”  This is a challenging word and leaves me wondering how in the world a person without the Spirit of God could ever possibly come to know Jesus.  How does a person come from dismissing Jesus as irrelevant to the place of faith in Him?  How does one turn around from the position of thinking that things of God are “foolishness,” to that radical place of embracing God and God-ways?

To turn around this way may just be the bravest and most courageous act known to mankind.  It’s huge.  It is God-size huge.  I don’t have the capacity to convince people to come to Christ.  Lord knows, I’ve tried through the years.  And, I’ll keep on trying because I have experienced Jesus in my own life and I am convinced He is who He says He is.  How to get someone else to be convinced is another story.  All I know to do is live the Jesus-life as the everyday and ordinary expression of who I am and pray that some how, some way, the Spirit of God will connect with people at a deep level in their lives so that they will see Jesus, be intrigued by what they see, and choose to check Him out. 

C. S. Lewis’ story of the moment he came to faith has always struck me as a light shinning in a dark place.  I think too often we feel that people need to get their act together and come to Christ in the “getting it together.”  I don’t think it works this way, though.  I think Jesus works in our “don’t have it all together” lives.  Maybe a part of turning around and embracing Jesus is the fact that we don’t have to have all things “worked out.”  In Lewis’ case he wrote in, Surprised By Joy,

"You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England"

Can you come to Christ dejected and reluctant?  It is almost as if Lewis came kicking and screaming into the life of faith.  He desperately did not want Jesus to be who Jesus said He was.  Lewis’ intellectual integrity, however, wouldn’t let him escape the possibility that maybe there were things about God he didn’t know.  Maybe God was at work, perish the thought.  Maybe God’s love was real.  Maybe Jesus is who He says He is.  Maybe God was so big that “having it all together” wasn’t necessary.  At any rate, Lewis wrote,

"I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?... The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation".

So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, faint not.  Don’t let it rest on your shoulders.  Trust the Love that will not let people go without a fight, without a genuine reaching out in compassion and forgiveness.  Trust the Christ who desires that we be saved more than we desire it.  Trust the God “who emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.”  Trust the God who loves His creation with a love that will not let it go.  He got to you, after all, and it has changed your life.  Maybe He can get to those you love, too.  Go ahead sing it loud and clear,

I stand amazed in the presence

of Jesus the Nazarene,

and wonder how he could love me,

a sinner, condemned, unclean.

How marvelous! How wonderful!

And my song shall ever be:

How marvelous! How wonderful

is my Savior's love for me!

Sing it and then live the turned-around life.  Metanoia!   What a great word!

THE GREAT I AM

I wonder what Christmas in America would look life if capitalism and materialism hadn’t hijacked it.  We’re told that if we removed the Christmas season from our economic system, our economic system would take a staggering hit.  Merchants throughout the land depend upon Christmas.  We may not want Jesus in our politics and schools but we sure do want Him on Main Street from Black Friday until all post-Christmas sales are behind us. 

What if people around the country didn’t focus on gifts but on the Gift?  Gifts come and go.  They don’t last, at least most of them don’t.  The material breaks down.  Products atrophy.  Next year’s model replaces last year’s “just had to have it” model.  And, each year the cycle gets repeated.

The Website http://www.statista.com tells us  “The United States' retail industry generated about three trillion U.S. dollars during the holidays in 2012. These holiday sales reflected about 19.3 percent of the retail industries total sales that year. As a result, just over 720 thousand employees were hired throughout the United States to compensate for the holiday rush.”*  To this I would suggest that if we take those numbers out of the economic mix, we come to a world of economic hurt, from the poorest to the richest of us.

Another interesting fact from Statista.com reads, “The Christmas tree is considered to be the main symbol of this pagan tradition, and is an integral part of the holiday shopping season. About 24.5 million real Christmas trees were purchased in the United States and cost, on average, about $40.30 U.S. dollars in 2012.”  Isn’t that interesting?  This mega dent on our economy, on this web site at least, says that it is all based on “this pagan tradition.” 

So the birth of Christ into human history has been so hijacked that the season has come to be called, “pagan.”  Furthermore, it seems the culture doesn’t want Jesus but it sure does want the colossal number of bucks that are generated because of His birth, materialized and capitalized and paganized though it be. 

So, we don’t want Jesus but we don’t mind pagan.  We don’t want incarnation but we sure want money.  We won’t let it be what it is so we’ll hijack it, indoctrinate it into the culture, tell people to max out their credit cards to make it happen, and then eat, drink, and be merry.  How can that possibly be a good thing?

I have another question.  How might we demythologize Christmas, reveal it for what it really is, and actually embrace the Prince of Peace whose birth has been hijacked?  Actually this process has already been done for those who might care to think about it. 

Did you know the Church really doesn’t celebrate a Christmas season much?  We celebrate the season of Advent.  We take an entire month to celebrate, to reflect, to embrace, and to look forward to the birthday of Jesus.  Like all birthdays, however, it is only a twenty-four hour event, and then we move on.  Advent isn’t about the day of His birth so much as it is about the incarnation of God into human history.  Jesus didn’t come out of a vacuum.  He came out of a story, a story of creation and holiness and sin and failure and love and forgiveness and promises and covenants.  The day of His birth, huge though it be, is not the day that most captivates His followers.  What captivates His followers is what His birth into history means.   Now that’s worth celebrating. 

The real celebration of Jesus’ birth begins on Christmas day, contrary to the sales pitches that begin before Halloween and continue as long as one more red cent can be gotten from us.  We don’t have an exact recording of His date of birth.  The Church has

chosen to make December 25, however, the day we stop and have a birthday party. It’s a party that leads to Jesus’ life and death and resurrection, and the establishing of a church, the job of which is to keep the story moving forward from one generation to the next.

So, in the scheme of things, in this church year, we have the four Sundays of Advent, Christmas day, two Sundays after Christmas day, seven Sundays of what is called Epiphany, with the Advent and Christmas celebrations ending on February 23, 2014.  The main thing for followers of Jesus happens in Advent and after His birth (where we celebrate the manifestation and revelation of God), and not Halloween and before His birth.  Try telling this to a culture.

As soon as Epiphany has concluded we celebrate what is called a Transfiguration Sunday that leads into the season of Lent and Palm Sunday and Holy Week and Easter Sunday, followed by the six Sundays after Easter.  Then we move to Pentecost, and the rest of the church year where we are reminded time and time again of the ramifications and implications of the life of Jesus among us.

I hope you have a merry Christmas.  I really, really do.  I just hope that you and I won’t become so enamored with an event that has been orchestrated by people who really do want to make money that we forget the birth of Jesus in history wasn’t for the establishing of a money-making, happy-holiday season, or for the sale of countless trees who meet their demise in the merriment of it all.  How sad that would be.

Enjoy the season.  Just remember what it is about.  The birth of this baby boy in Bethlehem was huge beyond my ability to state it properly.  Because of the human condition, however, we need to remember that he didn’t come to be celebrated like some rock star.  No.  He came to die on a cross.  He came to bring the very life of God into your story and mine.  He didn’t come to establish a system of gift giving.  He came to be the greatest gift you and I could ever receive.

A few years ago Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene wrote a song in which a series of questions were presented to Jesus’ mother, Mary. Would you think about these questions as you look and hope for and apprehend for yourself all that Jesus’ coming means?

Mary, did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
would one day walk on water? 


Mary, did you know 
that your 
Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters? 


Did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
has come to make you new? 


This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you. 



Mary, did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
will give sight to a blind man? 


Mary, did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
will calm the storm with His hand? 


Did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
has walked where angels trod? 


When you kiss your little Baby 
you kissed the face of God? 



Mary did you know the blind will see,

the deaf will hear, the dead will live again, 


The lame will leap, the dumb will speak 
the praises of The Lamb? 



Mary, did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
is Lord of all creation? 


Mary, did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
would one day rule the nations? 


Did you know 
that your Baby Boy 
is heaven's perfect Lamb? 


The sleeping Child you're holding 
is the Great, I Am.

           

REFLECTIONS ON "ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD"

This past weekend pastor Dave spoke to us of Romans 8:28 where the apostle Paul writes, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (NIV).  He helped us see that, unfortunately, many people have spend-doctored this verse to mean that all things work together for good.  That’s simply not true, is it?  It sure sounds good and is a great sounding sales pitch for the Gospel; but it isn’t what Paul said and it isn’t the truth. 

The truth is that there are a lot of things in this world that work against us.  There is evil in this world and there are powers at work seeking our demise.  Bad things happen to good people and evil things happen to righteous people.  In Romans 8:22-23 Paul makes it clear,  “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”  Have you ever groaned inwardly in a pain that would take you down if it were not for God?  Sure you have. 

Paul speaks to the church and lists some of the ways the enemy would take us down if he had the power to do so: “trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword…death, life, angels, demons, the present, the future, powers, height, depth” (Rom. 8:35-39).  In verse 25 he speaks of “our weakness.”  Verses 26 and 27 speak of how sometimes we are so overwhelmed in life that we don’t even know how to pray.  In this world life hits us all.  Righteous people around the world are dying every day because of starvation, filthy water, evil governments, and a world wide epidemic of man’s inhumanity to man.  What happened to “all things work together for good?”

God’s plan is bigger than any plan you or I might come up with.  God comes to us!  Did you hear it?  God comes to us in this world and establishes a stronghold in our lives that is so powerful that no force in all time or eternity can separate us from His love.  In this world “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Rom. 8:25).  How is that for good news?   Yes, sometimes we are hit so hard by the enemy we don’t even know how to pray.  In those times, though, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Rom. 8:27).  In Romans 8:31-32 Paul speaks of life in this world, right now, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

We are covered by a grace won for us on the cross of Calvary.  The empty tomb resounds through all time and eternity, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” 

In 2 Corinthians 4: 8-9 Paul speaks a painful yet wonderful truth.  He told the church, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”  Romans 8:28 does not keep us from being “Hard pressed… perplexed…persecuted… struck down.”  But God’s presence in our lives buoys us up in such away that no matter how hard life gets it doesn’t have to crush us or leave us in despair or cause God to abandon us or leave us destroyed.  Immanuel, God with us, is in us and His good, acceptable and perfect will (Romans 12:2) cannot be undone. 

How much is God with us?  Long before Jesus came, David said it well, “Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6).  Life may take our lives from us, but it can’t take heaven from us.  Life may knock us down but it can’t separate us from the love of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  Death has taken my mom and dad and two much-loved sisters-in-law but at their death Jesus ushered them home to the place He had gone away to prepare for them.  Romans 8:28 is so true that even at funerals we say, “O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting? (I Corinthians 15:55).  Today, because of the amazing grace of an amazing God we live embraced by “goodness and lovingkindness,” and when the awesome opportunities of this temporal life are over we “will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Last weekend our worship team led us in some beautiful words to which I say, “Amen.” Because we know we are safe in the arms of Jesus come what may, we say with eyes wide open and fixed on Jesus,

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,


When sorrows like sea billows roll;


Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,


It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,


It is well, it is well, with my soul.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE INCREDIBLE LAW OF CHRIST

Ever wonder what the law of Christ is?  Here it is simple and to the point.  It is found in Galatians 6:2.  Here are several translations of the verse:

v      New International Version--Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

v      New Living Translation--Share each other's burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.

v      English Standard Version--Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

v      New American Standard Bible --Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

v      King James Bible--Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

We are not lone ranger Christians, are we?  We are called to discover burdens that people have and to come alongside them and yoke ourselves to them so that we can “carry… share…bear” their burdens with them.

This past Sunday pastor Dave debunked the teaching that says God helps those who help themselves.  Why would he debunk it?  Because this thought is not in our sacred writings.  It is a spurious teaching that appeals to our egos and feeds the age old thinking that all we need to do is pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and carry on.  But what about all the folks in our world who can’t help themselves?  Are they excluded from grace?  And how about you and me who can’t do a thing to earn God’s mercy and grace.  Try to impress God all you want; He’s not buying it.  That’s a tough pill to swallow for some of us in North America who take pride in self-sufficiency.  And deep down inside your heart do you sometimes think the thought that “there ain’t no free lunch. If you can’t help yourself you’re in the way.”   

Our faith says NO to these things.  Those who can’t help themselves are invited to the table of Jesus.  All throughout the New Testament we see Jesus drawing near to the broken, the weak, the sick and infirmed, the outcast, the disenfranchised.  He draws near and treats them as if they are the most important people on the planet.  Now, we, the Church, carry on in this same spirit. 

Truth is, we are all broken.  You might be down and out or up and out, it doesn’t matter?  All the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and on that sacred soil we pray, “It’s me. It’s me, O Lord; standing in the need of prayer.”  We don’t have time to decide who’s in and who’s out.  We extend the right hand of fellowship to everyone who crosses our path.   We don’t categorize “us,” and “them.”  It’s all “us.” And, on a good day, don’t the best of us stand and testify, “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die?  Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”   

We are in this thing called “life” together.  We need each other.  We are one in the bond of Christ’s love.  We are family, so we “Carry…Share…Bear (pick the translation that best works for you) each other's burdens,” and when we do so we “ fulfill the law of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Want to make God look good?  Find a person in need and help her or him carry their burden.  Draw near to someone struggling and share the burden.  Embrace someone who is fighting to stay afloat and bear the burden with him or her. 

In the coming months we are launching forward with intentional commitment to our “Because You Matter” ministry.  We are committing with new intention and zeal our efforts with “Special Olympics.”  Hopefully we’ll all move forward with our eyes focused on folks around us who do desperately need the love God to show up for them in flesh and blood. 

Somebody once said, “Find a need and meet it.”  Maybe that’s what it means to “carry and share and bear” someone’s burden.  I’ll leave that to others for clarification.  I do know, however, that when I see brokenness and sickness and poverty and deep need and overwhelming disenfranchisement and the categorizing of people into the “haves” and “have nots,” I am drawn to the God who “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race,” realizing that when He could have written me off, He didn’t. Who would have thought it?  And, as I am a part of “Adam’s helpless race,” I really do find myself praying, “It’s me; It’s me, O Lord; standing in the need of prayer.”   

GOD WANTS ME TO PROSPER

Pastor Dave Roberts calls it “Bumper Sticker Theology,” pithy one-liners that condense “truth” about God down to bite size chunks.  The only problem is that usually these one-liners aren’t truthful; catchy but not truthful. One of those bumper stickers reads, “God wants me to proper.”

Some folks quickly jump to Jeremiah 29:11 for their defense, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Many people read these words and conclude that God is here to make our lives easier, to increase our status materially, and to be our personal “blessings ATM machine.” This is not what Jeremiah is saying, however.

In Jeremiah God tells His people that they were going into captivity.  It would be a most difficult time.  They would be away from their holy land.  They wouldn’t be able to come near Jerusalem. Their homeland would be devastated.  The coming years were going to be tought. Doesn’t sound like Prosperity, does it? 

Down in a foreign place, Babylon, they would live and move and have their being.  Jeremiah tells them to adjust and make peace with it.  They were to go about their days, however, always remembering that their lives and times were in the hands of God.  In the captivity they were to go about the business of living.  They were to set up homes, raise their children, allow their children to marry and have children of their own.  He called them never to give up, to look forward, to hang tough, and to remember their God.  This captivity was not to be the final chapter in their lives.  God was in their midst, and no matter what they might experience they were to live with their eyes fixed on God and to pursue the hope that always comes when God is present.

The problem with a bumper sticker theology that says, “God wants me to prosper,” is that it lays aside what God means by prosper and replaces it with the good old thinking that generally is western, monetary, and fully expressed in the realization of the American dream.  We want God to prospers us so that we become healthy and wealthy.  Therefore, surely, that’s what God must mean when He seeks to prosper His people.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it tends to reduce God down to our understanding and we being to think that what we think is what God thinks. From this comes the bad theology that if you are not healthy and wealthy, you’re not “in” God.  You have a spiritual problem.  If you are really spiritual God becomes “Johnny-on-the-spot” with His prosperous blessings.

What if God has bigger plans for you than health and wealth?  What if God wants to enter down into your story and walk with you everyday as you live in the realities of your life?  What if God doesn’t keep you from facing tribulation but establishes Himself as your God in it?  What if God doesn’t keep you from dying at the end of your days but promises to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with you so much so that He prepares a feast before you in the presence of your enemies?  What if in this very real and dangerous world we are invited to walk by faith in a God who is holy and faithful and truthful and gracious and compassionate, a God who meets us right where we are and who “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race”? 

What if there is more to life than wealth, more to life than health, more to life than dying with the most toys in hand? What if God wants to prosper us with the abiding presence of His own Holy Spirit, to walk with us into our days, covering us with the reality of His own divine life, and embracing us in the majesty of His divine grace and peace and mercy and love?

What if God were to so establish His life in our lives that the truthful testimony of our lives would be that even though we are “afflicted in every way” we are “not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; stuck down, but not destroyed” (See 2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

What if God’s prosperity was so powerful that we could truthfully say, “We do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison… (See 2 Cor. 4: 16-17)?

What if God’s prosperity was so powerful that we could truthfully say, “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place” (2 Cor. 2:14).

What if God’s prosperity was so powerful that the foundation upon which we live and move and have our being will never give way so that even if the rains fall and the floods come and the winds blow and slam against us we won’t fall because we have been founded on the Rock of Jesus Christ (See Matthew 7:24-25)?   

Isn’t it true that we don’t need God’s money; we need God?  We don’t need God to give us the American dream; we need God. We don’t need perfect health; we need God.  God has promised to be with us day-by-day.  Isn’t that enough?  And, if it isn’t, can we at least concede that there are untold millions of people on the planet who don’t live in America, don’t know what the American dream is, who don’t know what a health insurance plan looks like, don’t have a bank account and who are looking to find where their next meal is coming from, and that millions of these people live and move and have their being in Jesus with a faith that makes ours pale in comparison.  

May God meet your needs, embrace you in His love, forgive you of your sins, fill you with His Spirit, empower you for life, and take you home to heaven when you die.  Now, that’s prosperity. With this is mind, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16).

A REFLECTION ON THE QUESTION, “IS THERE ONLY ONE WAY TO GOD?”

We’ve all heard this question and maybe even asked it ourselves.  I think it is a fair question, begging for a discussion.  Last weekend pastor Dave took on this question and I, for one, am glad he did.  As I sat under the teaching I was confronted with my own prejudices and predispositions, and to the fact that I don’t have a corner on truth, God or life after death.

With all my heart I believe Jesus is the messiah of God.  There aren’t too many issues I am prepared to die for but this is one of those issues.  Eliza Hewitt articulated my testimony years ago and I turn to it often.  She wrote,

My faith has found a resting place

Not in device or creed;

I trust the ever-living One—

His wounds for me shall plead…

I need no other argment,

I need no other plea;

It is enough that Jesus died,

And that He died for me.

Rooted in this Faith is the fact that God is holy.  Reginal Heber said it so well in the words,

Holy, holy, holy!  Lord God Almighty…

Holy, holy, holy!  Merciful and mighty,

God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, holy, holy…only thou art holy;

there is none beside thee,

perfect in power, in love and purity.

There are some things the Bible tells us about God.  For instance, we know only God is holy.  Only God is perfect in power, in love and purity.  Only God knows what is in the human heart. Only God is qualified to judge how people come to Him.

I have some friends in the faith who seem always to be asking who’s in and who’s out when it comes to eternal life and heaven.  Not only do they ask the questions, they know the answer. They know the answer so succinctly that if certain things are not addressed in certain ways, then by this they know a person is out.  I don’t think they would agree with me but in there thinking God has been narrowed down to a certain way of being in the world, and people need to know the secret key to coming to God in the world. 

I think God is bigger than our belief about Him.  I believe Jesus is a Savior for the whole world and that He is not limited in how he chooses to draw near people.  His grace is so lavished on the world that we would be stunned at how big the heart of God is should we be able to measure it.  It is not ours to judge who’s in or who’s out; that’s God’s business.  Our business is to live a redeemed life in the world that stands as a fragrant aroma of God -- salt, light, truth, justice, love, acceptance, and forgiveness.  I will unashamedly proclaim Jesus until the day I die, but I will not limit God in any way, shape, or form.  He doesn’t want anyone to perish, and He is constantly present in the world seeking and searching for prodigals of a thousand kinds.

The father in Jesus’ story of the prodigal son is outrageous in his forgiveness of his wayward son.  The son comes back home not to be a son anymore but to be a hired-hand on the family farm. He didn’t understand the depth of love the father had for him. Upon arrival he encounters a father who would have nothing to do with hiring a new employee.  He didn’t need another hired hand; He wanted his son back in the fold.  The father literally trips all over himself as he leaps off the front porch, lifts up the skirts of his garment so he can run better, and races out to meet the son who has come home.

Is God like that?  Could he be more willing to save us than we are to be saved?  Is God so gracious that we don’t even have to “get it right” before he will leap off the front porch and run to us with arms open wide and a heart filled with forgiveness?  Has God really established a series of T’s to cross and I’s to dot before we can get in?  Is God that narrow?  Does the cross reveal a narrow God or a God who will forgive even a thief at the moment of his death, a thief who never had a chance to get it right, but had just a crucial moment to cry, “Help”?

I surely hope and pray that God does not write people off too easily.  He didn’t write me off and, Lord knows, He could have.  Charles Wesley wrote that God “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.”  That doesn’t sound like a narrow God to me.  That sounds like a God who will fight against all the forces of hell itself to find that son and daughter of Adam’s helpless race.

If it is true that human beings look on outward things but that God looks on the heart, maybe we ought not to be too quick to fulfill God’s part. Maybe we should trust God to be “holy…merciful…mighty…perfect in power, in love and purity.”  One of the things we know about Jesus is that each step along the way He got it right. He can be trusted.  We don’t have to fret over who’s in and who’s out.  Jesus’ words are never, “Get in or get out.”  His words are always, “Get in…Get in.” 

We may or may not get our speech down perfectly but we know that God will come running to us in mercy, love, acceptance, and forgiveness, even if we didn’t get it right.  Isn’t it a wonderful thing to know that we don’t have to judge people?  That’s God’s assignment.  Our assignment is to abide in Jesus, to be His witnesses in the world, and to live as His ambassadors.  He is our story.  He loves everybody in our world and whosoever will may come to Him.  He sees perfectly and we can rest in that awareness.  We don’t judge.  We pray and live and witness and share and invite, and then we let it all go to the God who “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race.”