Jesus Is The Way

  It’s not true. Names can damage you deeper than just a few skin scars and offset bones. We’ve all been through playground digs and names that stuck like flung mud. For some the name calling can start to define how we think of ourselves and affect our self-esteem. Sometimes the anticipation is crippling, as we wait for the next insult to blow our way, and we’d almost welcome the sticks and stones, for some relief! We can get labelled, and it sticks out larger than the name tag mum has sown into your coat (embarrassing enough, right?). Then all too easily the label becomes who we are . Not just as others see us either, but as we think of ourselves, and it becomes a tag we are burdened with even in our deeper selves. In the cruel economy of the classroom, these kinds of names exclude us, and mark us for ridicule. They can shadow us into adulthood as well, as we have learned to think of ourselves as we think others see us. We can easily try to minimise the hurt with talk of t...

  The most disorienting sense of space for those of us afflicted with a fear of heights would see us standing at the top of a skyscraper but looking up a flagpole. There is no sense of solid ground underfoot, and huge emptiness above. The sense of falling in both directions is vulnerability multiplied.   The same as standing on the lip of a sheer cliff with a roiling sea below, as though we are tethered to the earth by the flimsiest thread, and our other option is unfathomable. Helpless and wavering.   With grace we find we’re clinging on to the undeserved favour of God. ‘He chose and called me out of sheer generosity’ (Galatians 1:15 The Message ). In other translations, he called me out of his grace .   I like the word ‘sheer’. It has that cliff-edge risky steepness but also unmitigated blessing. He comes into our vulnerability with an open hand. What God sacrificed out of sheer generosity, his Son, balanced on the edge of the rejection he risked f...

  It amazes me that the lower we get the more we find almighty God below us. There are no depths he won’t sink to in order to lift us up, if we will just raise our voice. Think about the depths of human experience, the moral mess we can wallow in. So deep we think we’ll never get free, never get cleaned up, never know we are loved in spite of the mud. And underneath us there we find the degradation of the cross of Christ. That Jesus came as vulnerable, so that our muck could be washed off. Think about how we suffer and hurt. Spiritual and physical. Again, there’s the cross, and the agony of driven nails through bone and sinew and splinters. The agony of a mocking crown to pierce the skin. The suffering of separation from the one he loved so dearly, so that we might be loved. Think again about the wounds we carry. From family, friends, the church. Those who have betrayed and left us wanting. There is God again, deserted and friendless before the night is out, sold for silver, ...

  The old saying that love is blind. I get it. How all our faults and failures are unseen by the one who loves us. A kind of holy bias. In the eyes of the lover we can do no wrong because the lover chooses what to see in us. And yet the love of God sees with crystal clarity, and still loves. Not blind at all but seeing deeply and still forgiving totally. That’s what makes it love. It may be wounded but it clings and longs for the one who cut the scar. This kind of love is beyond us, in every way, but it is a love that can be in us and through us. These three remain: faith, hope and love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Through our faith and hope we can funnel love, as we shape our faith and hope with upward arms. As we look to Christ, looking outside ourselves, our faith and hope in him give us the beating pulse to love the other. Faith and hope can make the unlovable the beloved, and as we trail faith and hope love will surely follow. And in the loving remember we are the beloved ...

  I’ve always imagined an extraordinary life. A life filled to the brim with amazing grace.   The danger is, in looking only for the amazing grace of the extraordinary flashes I will miss the amazing ‘ordinary’ grace given in the routine, the humdrum.   All grace amazes if we know ourselves inside out. Especially if we are well acquainted with our inside. The bits we cover and shield and convince ourselves remain unseen.   But One sees. One sees our bone-deep rottenness and still showers grace in spite of ourselves. One who sees beyond how we see ourselves on our worst days. He is the gift that keeps on giving, the One who unwraps us and names us ‘grace-full’. In Him our undeserving hearts are daily blessed.   The trick is to look for it where we are. To look for the grace of ordinary sight to see the everyday extraordinary. At the kitchen sink, the school gates, the queue, the drive home at the end of a long day.   And soon we see w...

  Here’s a surprise. It turns out I’m not so great at forgiveness.   I find it much easier to cling onto the stuff that irritates me than I do to let it go. I need that niggling splinter wedged under the skin to keep me alert. Something stung and the little shard of unforgiveness lets me keep it in focus so that next time that rough edge draws near I know enough to give it a wide berth. But of course I don’t really avoid it. I push the splinter in deeper so that I remember and rage.   Unforgiveness also keeps me in control. It appeals to my sense of self. I’m wronged, and don’t you forget it. And in harbouring the darkness I kid myself that I’ve captured it, tamed it, or at least stored it till I can use it.   I could make a daily list of the wrongdoers – a roll call of the guilty; the driver who cut me up, in fact anyone who jumps a queue ahead of me , the one who spreads stories about me , the neighbour who makes a noise that disturb...

  If you were to live your life as a follower of Jesus, what do you think it would be like?   Would you expect to be guaranteed health, wealth, happiness and a quiet life? You might get all of that, but I wouldn’t count on it.   Health and happiness? Yes please, even though everything in my experience of the world so far tells me both things can’t last. Wealth? A little more wouldn’t hurt, but you’ve got to be in it to win it, as they say, either by birth, by graft or just plain luck. And wealth can vanish in the breathing of a microscopic virus.   A quiet life? That might be your thing, but some of us prefer the unpredictable crash and clatter of a life lived with risk.   In my experience a life of faith can’t be restrained, cosy or materially secure to make it worth adopting as a way of being. Surely it has to be at least a little edgy, a little uncomfortable, a little challenging? Faith is going to make us step out of the boat if we want t...