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.

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.