echoes of redemption

If you want to run something successfully you have to put the best time into the best people – everyone knows that.

If you have 99 people who are pouring into what you’re doing and one person who walks away, you let the one walk and work with the 99.

Unless you’re trying to live like Jesus.

Because for some reason Jesus was obsessed with the one. Really you could say it goes deeper than that: Jesus was obsessed with helping the lost become found.

He developed this concept with three consecutive stories: a lost sheep (one of 99), a lost coin (one of ten) and a lost person (one of two). For the religious elite, these stories ranged from baffling to infuriating – because in each story the things that were found were left by the master in order to find the things which were lost. For the master to do something favored those who were out over those who were in was ridiculous in their minds.

But that’s the beauty of God.

And it only gets more beautiful when we find that we are the ones who have fallen away.

That he would drop everything he is doing and come after us.

Pursue us – even in our wandering.

To know that he chases after the one.

I like to follow people who ask questions. Especially questions about faith. Especially questions which they don’t know the answers to. But there is a blend of theology that doesn’t allow questions – and it’s abusive.

Anyone not questioning their faith is not authentic – or their god is too small.

Either way, I’m not interested in following them.

The God I follow is immense and multi-faceted. His totality is unknowable – so no branch of human thought will ever completely understand him.  No one theology will be able to explain him.

Which is why he’s so amazing to follow.

And why we should still have questions.

Maybe the people that try to make those of us feel guilty when we doubt, question and wonder are just trying to control and manipulate us to think like they do – and maybe their view of God is monochromatic and incomplete.

So keep questioning. Let doubt spark curiosity. Embrace the wonder of God.

There are over 144,000 apps in the App Store. I’ve had over a gig of them on my phone up until today, the net result being a lot of time gazing into the glow of my phone. Which is why I’m taking a break.

Lent is a journey where we give up things that distract us from God and focus more time to prayer. So as we think through what to leave behind, we find things that distract us the most. Fog our clarity the greatest. Clamor for our focus the loudest. And we eliminate them.  In this spiritual act, we experience God in deeper ways because we’ve transferred our pursuit of freedom from our own hands into the hands of Jesus.