Life Interrupted

Sometimes life interrupts our life.
Sometimes God does.
Jonah never wanted God to forgive Nineveh.
He is outraged when they repent.
So much so that he wanted to die.
Jonah wanted judgment.
God was his God, the God of the Hebrews.
Imprisoned in one country.
One temple.
One ark of the covenant.
But the message transcends the limits of the prophet.
The message proclaims.
The goodness of God.
The compassion of God.
To every creature in His universe even.
To the animals.
All men and women are the people of His caring.
All are called.
To accept the extravagant gift of His grace.
To turn to God.
To think big about God.
God’s mercy on repentant Nineveh.
God’s mercy on Jonah and his self-pity.
Prepare the way for the gospel of grace.
God is love.

Let's Eat!

Once discovered, the table ministry of Jesus reveals not only His love and compassion for sinners and nobodies but the scandalous love He so often displayed to the downcast and lost. Nowhere in the New Testament is the privileged position of turkeys, nobodies, and marginal people on the fringes of society disclosed more dramatically than in Jesus’ ministry of meal sharing.

Today, because of our love affair with religious works a paradox exits for us. It is the very real danger that our good works, our “spiritual investments” our “meal” planning and all the rest of it, begins to construct a picture of ourselves in which we situate our spiritual self-worth.

Our spirituality becomes a by-product of all our hard work. Once we enter into this trap complacency replaces sheer delight in God’s unconditional love.

Our doing becomes our very undoing.

In modern times it is scarcely possible to appreciate the scandal Jesus caused by His table fellowship with sinners.

Being invited to share a meal from an Orthodox Jew saying “I would like to have dinner with you” is a metaphor that implies, “I would like to enter into friendship with you.”

In first-century Palestinian Judaism the class system, was enforced rigorously. It was legally forbidden to mingle with sinners who were outside the law: table fellowship with beggars, tax collectors (traitors to the national cause because they were collecting taxes for Rome from their own people to get a kickback from the take), and prostitutes was religiously, socially, and culturally taboo.

Thankfully someone forgot to tell the Son of God that He was breaking the law.

It did not escape the Pharisees’ attention in the least that Jesus meant to befriend sinners and the lost. He was not only breaking the law, He was destroying the very structure of Jewish society. “They all complained when they saw what was happening. ‘He has gone to stay at a sinner’s house,’ they said” (Luke 19:7). But Zacchaeus, not too hung up on respectability, was overwhelmed with joy.

Grace visits the unacceptable, the unlikely, the needful, the sinner and much to our confusion grace also visits the proud, the powerful, the wealthy, and the unexpected.

Grace sits down with us, shares a meal, enjoys our company, expects nothing, becomes closer than a brother and when the meal is finished, grace cleans up after us time and time again.

Set Free by Grace

Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson City, Nevada, who tearfully told me she could find no other employment to support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his last “trick,” whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday school; the deathbed convert who for decades had his cake and ate it, broke every law of God and man, wallowed in lust, and raped the earth.

“But how?” we ask.

Then the voice says, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

There they are. There we are—the multitude who so wanted to be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials, wearing the bloodied garments of life’s tribulations, but through it all clung to the faith.

My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never understood the gospel of grace.

Manning, Brennan (2008-08-19). The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (p. 32). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Numbering Our Days

"The way to learn to number our days is to count the moments of His grace" – Ann Voscamp.

Numbering our days by counting the moments of God's grace? What a life-changing, paradigm-shifting, amazing concept. It helps us not want to miss a single thing during the day, good or bad!

"Number the beats, record the blessings, enumerate the gifts, see Jesus at the center of it all, and know there is much and it is fleeting and it is in the accounting of a life that we accumulate thanks for anything in life. This way is gone all too soon…”

I think of the moments of grace, and life, I might have already missed by believing that I could be the author and finisher of my life. Mistakenly believing that enough resourcefulness and work could “make life happen” the way I want it to happen.

Life is slippery sometimes. It can be level and safe, or slopped and ice covered. We do our best to pick the terrain and to prepare for the voyage but sometimes we slip and sometimes we get lost.

Thankfully God’s grace is completely sufficient regardless of the path we take and number of times we have to get back up again.

The Apostle Paul offers some wisdom regarding life choices and living victoriously with the aftermath of all those choices… "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," Philippians 4:13 (NIV), and in 2Corinthians 12:2 “For when I am weak, I am made strong (NIV).

Our strength and our direction comes from hearing God, following Jesus, and counting the endless supply of His grace toward us in Christ. It’s all the assurance we’ll ever need. We are in GOOD HANDS!

Rest Here

Nothing is more radically backward and wrecking to our way of thinking than the idea of God's grace. It is completely counter intuitive to get the promotion before doing the work. Mind blowing to find ourselves in a position where no matter how much we falter, we remain righteous before God in Christ and yet, like the Apostle Peter, we make promises we can't keep,

Matthew 26:31-35 "Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written: ‘I will strike the Shepherd, And the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’ But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.” Peter answered and said to Him, “Even if all are made to stumble because of You, I will never be made to stumble.” Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you that this night, before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” And so said all the disciples.

Well, we know the rest of the story, Peter does deny Jesus three times...

Matthew 26:69-75 "Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech betrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly."

The Bible tells us that Jesus turned His head to look at Peter right after the rooster crowed and that look brought Peter to the truth of who he was and who he wasn't.

Peter had told Jesus that he would died for Him, and at his worst moment, as Jesus turned to look at His disciple, Peter learned that Jesus had to die for him.

He had to die for all of mankind. And those of us who know Jesus as our Lord often mistakenly spend our time trying to work to repay Jesus for what He did on Calvary. We find it so difficult to rest, to put away our works, to stop keeping score, and to rest in Jesus and the finished work of the cross.

Matthew 11:28 "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Thank God for His amazing grace, may we come to rest in it all the days of our lives.