"good" and "perfect" and "grace"

i've been pondering this thought, this "perhaps": that all is grace.

that all is grace.

gifts, mercies, joys...grace...challenges, struggles, trials...grace. 

(it seems counterintuitive, but go with me for a moment and consider the possibility)

if all we truly deserve is death (which Jesus took on the cross and conquered shortly thereafter) then every "good" thing (enjoyable, pleasurable, beautiful) given is is purely out of grace...yes?

if we deserve death, punishment, retribution, etc, but Jesus took all that on the cross (and God is gracious and good, slow to anger and full of lovingkindness, and doesn't go back on his word, and his word is, "it is finished")...then every "bad" thing (hard, draining, ugly) we endure is...what?

karma? satan? punishment?

grace?

"every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights..."

(james 1)

but that doesn't mean that he only gives good things, does it?

isn't he "the Father who scourges"? (hebrew 12)

but isn't discipline grace?

it's true that there are natural consequences for our actions (drunken revelry=puking your guts out, promiscuous sexuality=STDs, etc) 

and that there are inherit negative results of the fall (illness, disease, death)

but haven't we all heard stories of those who have made terrible decisions and wrap up with, "but by the grace of God, i never ________ (insert worst-case-scenario)."?

the sick child whom God graciously restored back to health?

a terrible business decision which God graciously delivers the believer from?

or the drunk driver who lost the ability to walk?

or the child who died suddenly despite prayers?

or the one who lost everything?

further in hebrews 12:

"...He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness."

paul's thorn in the flesh

lazarus' death

the thought i have pondered is that all things given,

death or life,

sorrowful trial or joyful blessing,

are given as graces from a gracious Father.

the possibility

that, as a good father knows that this child's rebellion will be best met with a warm embrace

and that child's rebellion will only be corrected with a stern word,

so the Father of lights knows that here i need gracious reprieve,

and there i need to experience the gravity of my error.

this one needs to be lavished upon in obvious blessing to bring her back to the right path,

and that one needs to be allowed to fall hard on the path he's strayed to 

to realize just how far he's wandered

this blessing will bring Him glory and He will hold me humble;

this trial will bring Him glory and He will hold me strong.

grace.

revelling in the lovingkindness of the lavish gifts of God...

grace.

growing endurance, patience, a steadfast spirit (and in the end strong character) through trial...

grace.

Jesus gave thanks when the breaking of the bread 

preceded the feeding of many thousands,

and also when the breaking of bread preceded the breaking of His body.

can i do the same?

receive all as grace?

it's a long road, with so many questions and uncertainties, to come to a place where we can rejoice with the healed lepers in having received such grace, 

and 

rejoice with the flogged and beaten apostles in having received such...grace. 

for the glory of God, for the fullness of knowing Christ, for becoming everything we were created to be, i think it's a road worth pursuing.

i think "good" and "perfect" are words worth reconsidering...redefining in our hearts,

until we can see all as grace,

and receive all with thanksgiving.

every good and perfect gift  is from above...

"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."

-2 Corinthians 12

things you should read:

-every story or verse referenced above, to read the context;

if you don't know where it is, google it, or ask

-One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

-2 Corinthians 12:7-10

-the book of Galatians

-everything else Paul wrote in the New Testament of the Bible...

talk about a guy who knew what grace was.

compassion: to suffer with. (and the reappearing of hope.)

i have been blessed, after a few months of somewhat aimless search, with two fantastic jobs. when i say "fantastic" i don't mean something along the lines of manning a ride at disneyland or being a chocolate tester at the hershey factory...i mean something closer to, in one case, holding a sick child to whom i can offer little more than a soothing pat and, in the other, teaching a similar child to take his own medicine and feed himself, and hope to shout that he takes the lesson to heart.

a youth shelter and a coffee shop/youth mentoring program.

the one breaks my heart, and the other has that potential, but thus far has only given me incredible hope.

in the process of meeting these kids and hearing their stories, i have rediscovered that compassion is not a gentle, "aww, that's sad," it is, rather, the heart breaking on the rocky ground of another's shattered experience. walking barefoot through the shards of another's hurt.

compassion hurts; it has to.

i left the shelter at midnight last night, taking a deep breath and almost laughing in shock at how intense the last seven hours had been. my first few shifts were with pretty quiet kids, or at times when the kids weren't even around. this shift was anything but quiet, and the kids were all very, very, present...

...i heard more f-words in those seven hours than i have heard...ever in the sum total of my life.

...for the first time, i had to mediate between a parent demanding to take her child home and a child who didn't want to go.

and when i got home, i went straight to sleep so i could get up and work at the coffee shop this morning at 8:30.

i woke up with f-words streaming through my mind, snippets from the kids' shouted "conversations" last night, and sighed a few times, hoping to clear those things from my brain and praying for the child who had gone home with her mother in an attempt to lift the blanket of overwhelmed/defeated feelings.

part way through making lattes i began to feel frustration and tears bubbling to the surface, but explained it away with coffee-related frustrations, until it finally hit me, like a pile of snow collected on a tree branch that finally gave way over my head: i was heartbroken for those kids.

i made it to my car before letting that heartache spill out in tears, and as i drove home past a playground full of kids my heart broke even more over the probability that at least a handful of those kids had similar stories. more of the kids from the shelter came into my mind and their stories and the fact that this shelter, no matter how much they rebelled against the rules and complained about the chores, is where they feel most safe.

knowing that their homes don't feel safe. knowing that their fathers aren't speaking identity and strength, that their mothers aren't speaking love and beauty. that their sense of value comes from things they shouldn't have even experienced at their age. that i can't fix it. it kills me.

i cried for a good long while, and prayed for the kids, and cried some more.

what do you do with that sort of heartache? i collapsed under it for a while.

(and this is where hope enters, or rather, makes itself known.)


this afternoon i recounted my night to Mark, who leads the mentoring program. i shared my heartache, and my frustration that i can't just fix it. we talked for a bit about the possibility of getting some of the shelter kids into the mentoring program, and then he reminded me of one of the most foundational principles of the mentoring program:

we focus on what we can do, and go from there, gradually expanding our circles of influence.

it closely resembles a great thought from one of Mark's favourite people, John Wooden:

"Don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do."

this reminder brought me back to the surface after my morning plunge into the depths of hopelessness. it brought me back to a healthy level of hope and truth.

i can't fix everything, all at once, but i can do something. and i am doing something: being present. and i need to focus on that until i discover something more i can do. and then focus on that. and go from there.

i realized the importance of this sort of heartache, the holy ache for redemption in a broken world. it's the aching of God's heart. and it made me thankful for the opportunity to feel that pain. and be a part of a band of people who are working to change it.



it's so important to feel your heart break over something completely outside of yourself. to hurt simply because someone else is hurting. to learn compassion in a non-theoretical way. to learn to suffer with. and to remember always that you carry the key to hope. that hope is alive inside of you.



there is (was) this fabulous show called Joan of Arcadia, about a girl in high school who meets God face to face. throughout each episode God shows up as different people, some reoccurring through the series, and gives Joan little missions or tasks that teach her things about herself and life and people.
there are a million objections you might have to this premise, but it's a fabulous show, and after my morning cry-fest and my midday hope-injection from Mark, i watched an episode that i had forgotten about, which brought on another small-scale cry-fest.
i won't spoil it for you (because you will watch it, it's called "Trial and Error", from season two, fyi) but at the end of the episode Joan is heartbroken and hurt, sitting on the city bus telling one of my favourite God characters, a sweet but straight-forward old lady, that she will never love again because it gives the person so much room to hurt you.

God puts her arm around Joan's shoulder and replies, "Do you know what innocence is, Joan? Innocence is more than the absence of guilt, it's having faith that there's goodness in the face of cruelty and pain. Some place you still feel that way. And that's me. And I'll always be there."

God is hope. and he is everywhere. and he is in me.
therefore there is always hope, and hope is always in me.
the key is learning to focus on that hope, no matter how it may seem to shrink beside the tragedy, because it will overcome, is overcoming.

always hope.


"the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -john 1:5

"if i say, 'surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,' even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you." -psalm 139:11-12

justice and harvard

i just discovered "itunes u", the section of the itunes store where you can download lectures from universities around the united states (maybe the world?) for free...i'm into it.

i found a set of lectures from harvard entitled "justice" by this guy mark sandel. over 14,000 people have attended his lectures, so i thought it would be interesting to hear what he had to say on the topic. it's such a broad thing, justice, and so hard at times to distinguish between the justice that is legal, justice that is biblical, and the average person's idea of justice--which is generally just a synonym for revenge. but this post is only vaguely about the out-workings of justice.

after listening to the first twelve minutes of the sixth lecture, my mind is already jumping at the content of what the guy said. i will finish the lecture soon, but i wanted to post a few quotes from it and get your thoughts.

here he is discussing the thoughts of this guy (i think his name is Kant) on freedom as opposed to the Utilitarian idea of freedom. this dude, kant, wrote a book called The Supreme Question of Morality...just so you have some sort of reference. I believe, although i'm no harvard student and i haven't yet listened to the first five lectures, that my paraphrase in the first little chunk shows a bit of what the utilitarian idea of freedom is. and i know they had previously discussed whether or not it was okay to sacrifice (in any sense) one person's well-being or happiness for the greater good....

so here we go:

paraphrased from the first few minutes:

some people consider freedom to be the ability to get what we want, pleasure without obstacles and the avoidance of pain. a more stringent definition of freedom: when we seek pleasure/avoid pain, we are acting as the slaves of those appetites. in a sense these appetites are chosen for us and we are finding a way to achieve them. freedom is the opposite of necessity--it is a law one chooses for oneself 

quoted directly:

"to act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end, it is to choose the end itself for its own sake

insofar as we act on inclination or pursue pleasure, we act as means to the realization of ends given outside us; we are instruments rather than authors of the purposes we pursue.

insofar as we act autonomously, according to a law we give ourselves, we do something for its own sake, as an end in itself. when we act autonomously, we cease to be instruments to purposes given outside us. we become, or can come to think of ourselves as, ends in ourselves.

this capacity to act freely is what gives human life its dignity. respecting human dignity is seeing people not as means to an end but as ends in themselves. this is why it's wrong to use people for the sake of other people's well being or happiness."

thoughts?