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.

Yesterday I walked into a waiting room where two little girls were fighting.

The seven year old wanted the four year old to obey her. The four year old wanted anything other than what her sister wanted. So they yelled, threw things and hit each other. Of course, while all of this is unfolding the only other adult in the room sat quietly watching them. And I thought to myself, what a terrible mother.

At the height of the fight she shooshed them. What makes that bad of a parent?

Then the door from the office opened and out walked the girl’s dad and mom. They put jackets on the girls and walked out of the office. Leaving me sitting with the other woman I thought was their mother – and all the judgmental feelings I had fabricated.

We live in a world where information moves faster than reality.

I had the information that there was one woman and two children in the room and I immediately associated them together. But it happens everywhere – remember that UFO-esque balloon that every cable network in America paid to have a helicopter follow for the better part of a day?

Jesus didn’t seem to live this way.

When an angry mob was ready to stone an adulterous woman (according to the Law as written in the Hebrew Scriptures), Jesus drew in the sand.

He slowed the moment down.

He found the thing behind the thing – that all sin is adultery, and therefore either everyone needed to be stoned, or no one needed to be stoned.

Instead of a flash of judgement, we saw a waterfall of mercy.

A few moments of thought changed the outcome entirely. Which makes you wonder what would happen if we lived like Jesus – quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

The sun was shining this weekend. And rain is falling today. And…

You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of you Father who is in heaven.

Central to the way of Jesus is the idea of loving the unlovable.

Reaching out to that person at work that no one gets along with.

Doing a favor for the person who rails against you.

Its showing the same love to the unlovable that God shows me – when so often I am unloveable.

Because…

(Your Father) makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Sun and rain – the elements of life – flowing freely from the heavens.

The signs that God is blessing the work of our hands. For every farmer that plants a crop relies on the grace of God to feed it with the sun, and nourish it with the rain.

So may we, as followers of Jesus flow blessing upon blessing – upon those who bless, and upon those who curse. Because we are called to stand as the image of God, releasing his grace upon the earth – like rays of sunlight and drops of rain.