
Another week. Another wild ride. I appreciated all the feedback and thoughtful comments on last week’s post. I confess my weekly meanderings in this space oftentimes end up being for my own catharsis and processing and on those occasions where there’s resonance with you, I count it a beautiful bonus. So, thanks 🙂
Speaking of my own catharsis and processing, I thought for this week’s meanderings, I’d share a bit from a recent journal entry. Rhonda and I are headed out of town in a few weeks in order to officiate a wedding of some dear friends of ours. As such, I’ve been giving some thought as to what I want to speak about at the ceremony. Like so many of us (re: all of us), life has thrown its punches at our friends and though it certainly has not been easy, there has remained, for both of them in their own right, this beautiful and courageous conviction that God will take their brokenness and bring wholeness and healing if they’ll grant it. Their wedding day will be a celebration of that profound submission. So anyway, that got me thinking, or perhaps reminded me, that their story embodies the gospel in a nutshell. Without further adieu, here’s my excerpt:
He works with us to redeem our brokenness. God is in the business of redemption. Of making us whole. Of taking all that falls apart or comes undone–whether through our own shortsighted decisions and failures or through the natural happenstance of existing in a broken and maligned world–and putting things back to rights.
He does this, most typically and most consistently, when we oblige to trust him and work with him in the redemption process. Another word for this is when we submit to him, but submit connotes hierarchy and though he’s obviously above us, He never uses that position to force us into anything. We are given the option to consent to his lead, his prompting, his Spirit tugging at us like a dog wanting to go for a walk. But he’ll never force us. He just won’t. If we choose to ignore the dog’s prompting, he’ll eventually leave the front entrance and resume sitting by the window, ever an eye on us, less we decide, in fact, to go for that walk after all.
This, I think, is the very heart of faith for Jesus followers and really it is the gospel itself. More than an intellectual ascent into affirming certain truths and more than a commitment to a particular religious tradition or set of practices or any such thing, faith in the resurrected Jesus is the conviction that there is an ever-open invitation to work with the God of the universe in redeeming my story with me. And, further, to partner in redeeming the unfurled painful story of the whole world. An embodied faith, then, is the concession of this conviction with an open heart to see where it leads and what it might look like in my immediate context, regardless of the cost.
The life of faith, therefore, consists of being reminded of this simple and profound truth every day through both our confession and our commitment to live into this and to see it unfold in our midst. I’m not saying this is easy, obviously. It’s not. In fact the darker it gets, the harder it is to see. Perhaps maturity of faith is measured in one’s ability to increasingly have eyes that adjust to the dark and can see how the God who restores is, in fact, restoring when so much seems to suggest otherwise. Let’s be real: this is an intentional naïveté. Yet those who maintain such naïveté, though at times may look the fool, are rewarded not just with a beautiful story of redemption but with an accompanying joy and peace and an even stronger hope in the ultimate renewal and restoration of all things.
Let me just say that as I penned these thoughts, my spirit was lifted as I stepped back and reflected on how the heartbeat of our community moves to an articulation of a gospel centred on a God who works with us to restore our stories. Week after week, whether from the front or through song or through a shared meal or helping hand, we proclaim this gospel and I can’t say enough what a privilege it is to serve with you in this “naïve faith.” So… thank you.
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Steve
💙