Living by grace

(Thanks, Ryan, for the book recommendation!)

I’ve got my theology straight: I am saved by grace.  Sometimes, though, I think of grace only in the past tense – something I once experienced that made me God’s child – instead of something that continues to impact and influence me today.  A paragraph in John Ortberg’s book The Me I Want to Be reminds me of how I am not only saved by grace but how I also continually live by grace in the present.

Self-improvement is no more God’s plan than self-salvation.  God’s plan is not just for us to be saved by grace – it is for us to live by grace.  God’s plan is for my daily life to be given, guided, guarded, and energized by the grace of God.  To live in grace is to flow in the Spirit.  (p. 39)

Jesus in my boat

Sandwiched between miraculously feeding 5000+ people and teaching the multitudes that He is the bread of life is the story of Jesus rescuing His disciples from a storm.  The disciples had gone down to the Sea of Galilee, hopped in a boat, and set off for Capernaum.  But half way into their three-hour tour, the winds pick up and the waters grow rough.  Then comes Jesus walking on the water.  He approaches the storm-tossed boat and calls to His frightened disciples: “It is I; don’t be afraid.”

As amazing as that is, what happens next also gives me plenty to reflect on: “Then [the disciples] were willing to take Him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.”

First: The part about the disciples’ willingness to let Jesus into the boat reminds me of how Jesus does not force His presence on anyone.  The disciples needed to be willing to have to Jesus; an invitation is necessary for Jesus to join them.

I wonder how often Jesus is standing on the water near my storm-tossed boat in the middle of a tempest, waiting for me to invite Him in.  But I ignore Him or forget He is there, thinking that I can handle the situation on my own.  He might not be there to calm the storm, but He’s offering to calm me with His much-needed peace.

Second: The part about the boat immediately reaching the shore has led to speculation that this is a bonafide miracle.  At one moment, the disciples are in the middle of the stormy lake; then, in the blink of an eye, they discover they are safely in the harbour, just like that!

Regardless of whether it’s Jesus’ supernatural ability that instantly powers the boat to shore, or the disciples just don’t realize how close to land they actually are, the disciples are infinitely better off when Jesus is in the boat with them.  In fact, I’d add that I reach my destination the moment Jesus joins me no matter where I am going.

(Graphic from Marquette Magazine.)

What are THEY doing here?

I figure it’s never too early to begin thinking about next Christmas, and I’ve got a great idea for it!  I’d like to share my idea with and get your feedback.  Actually, I’d love for you to catch my vision and join me in this endeavour.

I think what our town needs (and you might be interested in doing this in your town, too) is a great, big, massive nativity scene!  It will be of such size and grandeur that people will drive for hours just to see it.

And it’ll be a nativity scene like they’ve never seen before.  Sure, it’ll have a baby, and Mary and Joseph.  But instead of shepherds, we’ll put cut-out figures of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock on display.  Instead of a wise man, we’ll set up a statue of Nelson Mandela.  And sheep?  Forget about sheep.  Everyone’s nativity display has sheep.  For our roadside attraction, picture this: smurfs and hobbits.  And finally, we’ll rig something up so that a character can fly in circles around it all – not a boring angel, but how about a pterodactyl?!

This is my vision for a nativity scene next Christmas.  Who wants to sign up and help me turn this into reality??

…I suspect that I’m going to have a hard time finding people who will catch my vision.  There’s something awfully wrong with it, isn’t there?  Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Nelson Mandela, smurfs, hobbits, and pterodactyls aren’t supposed to be in the Christmas story, are they?  Just just don’t belong.

Well, guess what?  Even though we’re so used to seeing them there, neither do the magi!  But the fact that they are indeed present in the Christmas story says something about belonging – about how the magi belong and about how God sees us as people who belong, too.

Please continue reading here.  And, for the first time ever online, you can also hear and watch a video of me delivering this sermon here!
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Come and see

Here is one of the first sermons I ever wrote!  It’s one that somehow has never slipped out of my memory despite having written hundreds since.  It might be a bit weak in the application department, but I still appreciate what I discovered and shared about what makes Nathanael tick, the fig tree, and the stairway to heaven.
— Scripture:  John 1:43-51
— Message:  “Come and See”
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The future

As Monica and I look towards 2012, we hold to the truth of this old saying…

I do not know what the future holds,
—- but I do know who holds the future.

So as we enter a new year with all its potential, we give to you as well as receive for our family this traditional Gaelic blessing…

May the road rise up to meet you;
—- may the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
—- and the rain fall soft upon your fields.
And, until we meet again,
—- may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.
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Crowding the manger

Writer Marcy Hires saw the Lordship of Jesus in a simple nativity scene. 
I pray you will see it this Christmas, too…

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My husband thinks that every Nativity scene should be packaged with an authentic barn smell.  Shall we call it Eau de Stable?  He believes it would be a powerful testament to the love of the Father and the humility of the Son of God.

I think it’s a great idea.  Really I do.  But I still prefer a pristine kind of manger scene.  I am especially fond of ours.  The handcrafted pieces, made of sturdy pine, are simple figures of the most important characters in the Christmas story.

At our old house, this Nativity sat at the crossroads of household life, on a half wall that separated the kitchen from the living room.  It was a small display, but I hoped its central location would give it pre-eminence over the presents gathering under the Christmas tree.

But, as crossroads have a tendency to do, this junction in our home attracted a lot of traffic and a lot of clutter.  Sure enough, the detritus of daily life sifted down and landed around my precious exhibit.

I looked over one day to find stuff crowding Jesus and company.  So I took inventory: one toy monster truck, one shoehorn, one prayer list, one present, one stereo remote, one toy fighter jet, one Advent devotional book, one ballpoint pen, a bundle of Christmas cards and a bunch of coins.

The everything-has-a-deeper-meaning side of me was taken aback.  I knew it had to be a sign that we were too busy and our hectic lives had to be simplified.  The pragmatic mother part of me wanted to whisk all intruding items away from the Nativity and restore it to tidy perfection.

But maybe our family got the Nativity right that year, after all.  Work, play, worship, service and relationship were all represented in the items laid at the feet of Jesus.  And if He was so bothered by messes, why did He choose that smelly stable for the place of His birth?  Maybe I could put aside my own pretences of perfection and come to my Saviour, who is “gentle and humble in heart,” and find rest for my soul.

This year, watch what lands in your Nativity display.  Is there anything you need to add?  Maybe a cellphone or TV remote, a calendar or shopping list, your laptop or chequebook?  Whatever it may be, lay it at the feet of Jesus.  Then, with the quiet figures at the manger, stop, and find rest.

© 2011 Marcy Hires. This article originally appeared in the Dec 2011 issue
of Thriving Family. Posted here with the kind permission of the author.
Nativity set pictured above is available for purchase from Little Alouette.
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Holy day

The postmaster at our local Canada Post office says she’s been instructed by her superiors not to say “Merry Christmas” as it’s insensitive in a multicultural society where not everyone celebrates Christmas.  I don’t want to get her in trouble, so I won’t tell you what she thinks of that particular rule!

This year I’ve noticed that the pushback against this particular form of political correctness has gone up a notch: I was encouraged at one point to boycott stores that don’t use the word Christmas.  I guess that means in order to pick up my mail and parcels, I’ll instead need to go to… Um… Uh oh.

Personally, advocating such a boycott strikes me as rather demanding and quite graceless, especially considering that it’s supported mostly by Christians.

What’s more, few Christians seem to notice the irony in how “Happy Holidays” is usually an acceptable alternative when “Merry Christmas” is not permitted.  As my colleague Michael Engbers reminded me the other day, the word holiday is derived from holy + day.  In saying “Happy Holidays,” people are still acknowledging whether they realize it or not that there is something sacred about the Christmas season.  When someone says “holiday” instead of “Christmas,” a follower of Jesus can affirm that there’s indeed something special – holy even – about this day on which we celebrate the birth of our holy Redeemer.  A winsome response will likely get one further than a harsh protest.

So be blessed as you celebrate the Christ child’s birth, and be a blessing to others regardless of what they call this season.
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Scandalous

When talking about the story of Ruth, you have a choice to make about the motives and morals of the main characters.  I grew up hearing about a bitter old widow (Naomi) and a kind young woman (Ruth) who experience God’s providence in God’s good timing.  Everything is aboveboard, even the part where Ruth lies down at the feet of sleeping Boaz on the threshing floor in a bid for him to become her family’s kinsman-redeemer.

That’s the way I know (and am currently preaching) the book of Ruth.  But not everyone reads it that way.

Some people see Naomi not as helpless, but as shrewd and manipulative: Her instructions to Ruth to sneak up on Boaz in the middle of the night on the threshing floor is a sly way to arouse the rich relative of Ruth’s late husband.  Naomi’s instructions to Ruth include this line: “Don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking.”  The verb to know often has sexual connotations in Scripture, such as in Genesis 4 where “Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived” (KJV).  When Ruth uncovers Boaz’s feet, the original Hebrew can alternately be read to mean that Ruth uncovers Boaz all the way up to his waist, exposing his private parts.  Finally, historical evidence suggests that the only women who visit a threshing floor at night are prostitutes offering their services to the workers there.  Is Naomi hoping that Boaz and Ruth will have sex, which Naomi could possibly use to pressure Boaz to marry and then provide for Ruth?

Personally, I still go with the reading I grew up with.  Naomi seems too despondent to be devious.  Boaz sounds like a righteous man beginning with the first words we hear out of his mouth (“The LORD be with you!”).  Ruth is characterized as “a woman of noble character;” her words consistently echo of loyalty and humility.  With the whole threshing floor incident, I see a Godly woman taking a bold initiative with a man who is righteous.  I myself do not question the integrity or purity of any of the characters.

But even if one day I am proven wrong – that Naomi and Ruth indeed acted scandalously, even immorally – I don’t think I’ll be overly distraught.  Regardless of Naomi and Ruth’s motives and morals, Ruth is still the great-grandmother of David and the ancestor of the Christ child laying in the manger on Christmas morn.  That is to say, God will use and bless us when we’re at our best; however, God will also work in and through us when we’re at our worst.  It’s not that Spirit-filled people strive for it, but scandal does not frighten God.  Regardless of whether Ruth is at her best or at her worst on the threshing floor, God graciously wove her story into His larger tapestry of redemption.

And it’s into that redemptive tapestry our stories are woven, too.  Even the embarrassing and scandalous parts.

Credits:
Two resources I have on Ruth that reflect the “alternate” way of reading Ruth and the way I grew up with are Kathleen A. Robertson Farmer’s commentary on Ruth in the New Interpreter’s Bible series and Restored! God’s Salvage Plan for Broken Lives by Daniel Schaeffer, respectively.

Artwork found here.  Original artist unknown.
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The personal, healing touch of Jesus

There’s indeed something very personal about the way Jesus works in each of us and brings us healing, as John Eldredge explains in Wild at Heart…

If you wanted to learn how to heal the blind and you thought that following Christ around and watching how He did it would make things clear, you’d wind up pretty frustrated.  He never does it the same way twice.  He spits on one guy; for another, He spits on the ground and makes mud, and puts that on his eyes.  To a third He simply speaks, a fourth He touches, and a fifth He kicks out a demon.  There are no formulas with God.  The way in which God heals our wound is a deeply personal process.  He is a Person and He insists on working personally.  For some, it comes in a moment of divine touch.  For others, it takes place over time and through the help of … others.  (p. 127)

What healing is God offering personally to me today?  And personally for you?-
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Practicing heaven

It’s natural to think of biblical encouragements and admonitions as examples of ways to live that show we’re walking with Jesus.  Some maybe even think you live these ways in order to get into heaven.

What if we “keep in step with the Spirit” and “live such good lives” not only as evidence that we’re heaven-bound, but as practice for eternity?

I’ve mentioned the “parable” below (it’s not a parable recorded in the Bible) to a few people before, and I came across it again the other day.  It connects with this instruction from the apostle Paul:

Let each of you look not to your own interests,
—- but to the interests of others.
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Listen now to how the parable goes…

A man was taken on a tour of both heaven and hell.

In hell he was shown a banquet hall filled with diners seated at a table laden with the choicest food. Each person’s back and left arm were tied to the chair so that bending at the waist was impossible and the left arm could not move. The right arm was stiffened so that the elbow would not bend. The diners gazed at and smelled the food just inches from them, but they were starving.

In heaven the picture was the same – backs and left arms shackled, right arms stiffened – but the diners were feasting and rejoicing because each diner used his stiffened right arm to feed the person to his right.

Could it be that living in Christlike ways today is not only evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in us, but also practice for when we’ll finally get it perfect in the new heaven and new earth?

Credits:
I read this parable again recently in a meditation in Forward Day by Day.  The piece concludes with this quote by Jean Jacques Rousseau: “When a man dies he clutches in his hands only what he has given away during his lifetime.”

The photo of the banquet tables is from The Banff Centre in Banff AB.
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Great is my faithlessness

Does my faith save me?  In one sense, I don’t think so.  I’d be in trouble if I had to rely on my own faith for salvation.  Or, to clarify: I’d be in trouble if I had to rely on my own ability to be faithful.  My doubts get in the way.  I falter in following Jesus.  Inconsistencies between my beliefs and actions are embarrassingly frequent.  And this really bugs me.

So reading Psalm 91 acts like a balm for me, especially verses 3-4:

Surely [God] will save you
—- from the fowler’s snare
—- and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
—- and under his wings you will find refuge;
—- His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

That last part especially – God’s faithfulness to me is what shields me “from the stormy blast” of life’s trials and Satan’s temptations.  He wraps His loving arms around me like a bird will protect her young with her wings.  Similar to how a baby chick is too weak to defend itself, my faith all on its own would never be enough to save me.

Thankfully, that’s not what God demands nor desires.  In His grace, God can do mountain-moving things with “faith as small as a mustard seed.”  I wouldn’t expect such a small kind of faith to save me from the enormity of my sin.  For that I turn to Jesus.  But I can offer my small faith as a gift to the One who is always perfectly faithful to me.  And as I do so, I pray that my faith in Jesus will grow – not in order to be saved, but because I already am.

Credit:
Graphic found at Chinny’s Soul Thoughts.
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Redefining friendship

As far as I know, Monica and I are friends with everyone at Telkwa CRC who is on Facebook.  We are also friends with my mom (who just recently signed up to see what it’s all about) and Monica’s mom.  Then there are several of our current and past colleagues as well as acquaintances we have made through our children at school whom we have befriended online.

I’m curious how widespread Facebook’s influence is in redefining friendship.  Several years ago, we would not necessarily have thought of everyone in our online friends list as friends – some are relatives, some are colleagues, some are acquaintances.  That doesn’t mean we don’t like them; it’s just that all these people are now lumped into a single category: “Friends.”

Rev. Peter H. Holtvlüwer, pastor of Spring Creek Canadian Reformed Church in Tintern ON, views this with alarm in his article I read last week.  I appreciate his concern of the potential inappropriateness of considering someone in authority over us as a friend, an equal.  And his observation is true that having hundreds of friends really does rob the word friendship of its value: A long list of friends may speak more of our selfish tendencies than the authenticity of our relationships with the people in our list of friends.  (I mentioned this a year ago, too.)

On the other hand, I wonder if in one way, Facebook is actually redeeming our concept of friendship.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve seen the theme of friendship with God and with one another crop up quite often (most recently here and here).  Jesus says to His 1st century and 21st century disciples, “You are my friends if you do what I command…  I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”  When we are in Christ, we are friends with Jesus!  It stands to reason, then, that if we are friends with Jesus, we are also friends with each other, regardless of how else we relate with one another.

To put it another way, I am my parents’ son, and the Bible teaches that I am to honour my father and mother.  But they are also my brother and sister in Christ, are they not?  Thinking of them as such does not negate the command to honour them, but it does remind them and me of how we are equals in a bigger sense – sinners equally in need of and receiving God’s grace!

Facebook friendships can remind us that before we see each other as parents, children, employers, employees, teachers, students, leaders or followers, we are sisters and brothers – and I’d like to add friends – in Christ.  Who and what we are in Christ is what defines us first.

One last comment: I commend to you the section in Rev. Holtvlüwer’s article on “The Real You” as it’s a good reminder of how real friends relate – whether online or irl.

Graphic credit:
Facebook friends mosaic created by Jennifer Daniel and several hundred of her friends, found at The New York Times.
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