I can see clearly now the rain is gone

What’s it like to have a prayer you prayed for five years finally answered?  What if I extended that to seven years?  Ten years?  Eighteen years?  A lifetime?

Johnny Nash sings the song, I Can See Clearly Now (1972), and the lyrics really depict what salvation feels like, and true salvation is series of salvation moments over a lifetime—once we’re saved by the Grace given freely nearly 2,000 years before any of us were conceived.  Accept something free that can catapult you for life—now that’s a deal none of us ought to pass up.

Enough spruiking.

Here’s the story.

Driving home from my school chaplaincy work on Friday February 19 this year, at about 3.10pm, feeling tired, I sought to move lanes left to pull over and have a nap.  Only I just happened to pick exactly the wrong moment to do it.  Doing what has happened only occasionally to me, I indicated left and proceeded to move into that lane, and immediately the large truck behind me advanced and my eyes are trained on my rear-view mirror.  Almost in the same action, I indicated left again to pull into a quieter road to find somewhere to park and get my 10-minute nap.

This is one of those moments that only lasts 3.7 seconds but kind of becomes life-defining.

As I slow down further, prepared to take my left turn (remembering that in Australia we drive in the left side of the road), the truck behind me sounds its horn, which partly startles me, partly gets my ire, and partly completely shifts my focus from what is about to happen—yet I’m convinced now as I look back that this truck driver could see what was unfolding.

Remember too that I’m tired and my limited conscious thought is completely given to my rear-view mirror and not to the left where it needed to be.

Immediately after the horn sounds, about 207 milliseconds before I begin to make my turn, I hear “Oi!”

Tired, confused, intimidated, I make the turn, completely oblivious to a collision that is about to take place.  All my safety training over more three decades is ignored in the human error of the moment.

To see the cyclist out of my left eye take the turn with me, obviously livid, I am mortified in the moment.  Even as I recall it, I sense the trauma in it.  For a moment he continues with me and then before I really know what’s going on, he continued on his way.  With the mix of tiredness, confusion and now mix of trauma and guilt, I went straight into flight mode.  I did not want to face what I’d done.  Even if there was no contact made with the cyclist, I’ve done a reprehensible act.  Unforgivable.  And I don’t normally think anything’s unforgivable.

When I talk about the song by Johnny Nash, I Can See Clearly Now, I say it tongue in cheek, because anyone who knows their Bible will quickly point me to 1 Corinthians 13, which, apart from being famous about what it says about love, tells us that in this life we see as if in a mirror dimly.

But this event that I’ve just been in, that I’ve just experienced, is going to change my life.  It’s the providence of God.  Grace will use it to change my heart.  I’m about to get a fresh appreciation of mercy.  I’m about to really go much deeper into mercy and to see how judgment completely blurs the view of this fathomless mercy enshrined in the Cross.

Back to the story.

Immediately my life changed.  What was, was no more.  I was living now as a wanted man.  I tried to rest to no avail, so I continued driving home tentatively, fearful that the cyclist or another witness would point me out—a criminal.  That’s how I felt.

I could have killed a man.  I deserved judgment.

Years ago, I organised “impact sessions” with a man with quadriplegia who presented his story at workplaces—he was knocked off his bike!  Here was I, a person who has worked for half their life in keeping people safe nearly killing someone.

For the hours that ensued I wrestled about reporting the incident to the police.  I also agonised about the possible Go-pro vision that could exist.  I would then think about the fact that I could lose my driver’s licence over this.  If I lose my licence, I then stand to lose my job.  With all this fear running through my mind, I’m suddenly caught in the thought that I’m only caring about me—I’ve forgotten completely about the man who could have been seriously injured, his life and his family’s life changed in an instant.

The best thing about this event was the torture I faced for the days after, for a week or two or three after, in fact.  When I counsel people about the blessing of a brokenness that forces change, I say that it’s because the new reality cannot be changed, and that’s good, because the transformation that’s taking place in their life is sticking because of the pain they’re in.  They need to stay there.  That’s why it was life-changing for me.  I fully expected that I’d have the book thrown at me.

Then something truly miraculous happened—something only God could do.  I began to plead for mercy, seeing how much I needed it.  I begged the Lord in a mood of petition, “Lord, if you’ll be merciful to me, I’ll change and be better for you...”

The Lord answered the prayer.  Both parts.  He showed me a mercy I’ve truly never known, though I thought I knew it so deeply.  The depth I didn’t know was this: EVERYONE deserves mercy if I deserve it, and, because nobody deserves the mercy of God, I immediately saw what I needed to repent of for the rest of my life.

Verses that came to mind... “My sin is ever before my eyes... as far as the East is from the West, so far has God removed our transgressions from us.”  (Psalms 51:6; 103:12)

The past 5, 6, 7 years of our lives have been challenging—much more challenging than many of you will know.  I’ve been stuck in occasional triggers for injustice.  My usual soft heart has had these little rock-hard nodules on it, of hurt, of bitterness, of resentment, “residual hurt and anger” as it’s been put to me by people I know I can trust now.

Finally, in seeing the copious mercy that’s been poured out for me at the Cross, that mercy that bleeds hope all over me, I’ve seen the damage judgment has done, and in an instant, God has replaced that judging heart with a merciful heart.  I could not have done it.  Only God could have done it.

See how I can see clearly now?  Well, clearer.  Mercy is needed for us all.  Only since this event a couple of months ago now have I been able to see how my judging heart had held me apart from the fullness of measure of Grace God has already secured for me, but I was unable to access.  I couldn’t have it because I wasn’t prepared to give it.

Suddenly now that mercy has replaced judgment, gratitude is purer than ever before, and suddenly I’m focused more on the simpler things that are really important—like nurturing a closer bond with my young son who is growing up before my eyes.  I’ve been able to admit things that I’ve never said before—about my contributions to things that previously were the other person’s fault.  So many shards of blessing.

I say this to encourage you, if you’ve prayed for something for years, keep praying.  You don’t know HOW God will use even the hard circumstances of your life for divine glory, and for GOOD purposes beyond your comprehension right now.

The answer to this prayer is a long time coming.  It’s not a prayer of only 5, 6, 7 years.  Really in all reality it’s been a prayer I didn’t know I needed to pray, and God’s delivered on a prayer I wasn’t even praying but should have been.

The rest of life is one day at a time.  Now it’s about mercy where judgment might mar.  Justice appropriately, yes, but not without mercy.

James says in 2:13, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.”  It’s the way to life.

The power of service for nurturing a culture of goodness

Like a good many of you, I’ve been captivated by the extraordinary and easy to read book, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing, by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer.  “Tov” is Hebrew for good.  In the book, on page 176, there is this quote about how servant pastors are committed to nurturing cultures of service:

“A culture of service turns everyone toward one another instead of toward themselves.  People are first, grace matters, empathy is a first response, truth is told, and doing what is right shapes the mission of the church.”

In other words, people serving people, first and foremost through acts of an other-felt grace, empathy for the other, the honouring of truth and the doing of justice—always oriented for the blessing of others.  Service, in one word.

Service is always outward focused, not out of neediness, but out of the opportunity to honour others, “considering others above ourselves” (Philippians 2:3-4).

The essence of this is outdoing one another in works of lovingkindness, gentleness, patience, compassion and faithfulness.

It’s striving to always outreach the other’s love, never looking back to see if they reciprocate or not.  It’s loving others by serving them, simply because we can.  It begins from joy and sustains joy.

Imagine the power of the Spirit working in and through us when our sole focus is to bless others.

A culture of service magnifies the theology of John the Baptist, who said of Jesus in John 3:30, “He must become greater, I must become less.”

For me, it was while I was in the ‘church’ of Alcoholics Anonymous that I saw firsthand and learned the ethic of service.  AA has three main goals: unity, service, recovery.  (These three goals, by the way, would serve the Christian church well.  Unity is Jesus’ desire that we’d all be one as he and the Father are one (John 17:21-23).  Recovery is simply discipleship in acknowledgement that once we’re saved, being in recovery from our former selves, we spend the rest of our lives discovering how to truly live the abundant life—and service is central to that goal.

We always get much more than we give 
when we serve with a heart to serve.

You may not believe me, but I think service is close to the purpose of life.

Why?  

§     we discover through service how to treat others the way we wish to be treated (Matthew 7:12)

§     we’re useful when we serve

§     we find our way to God through it (God shows us our heart through service)

§     it’s a good way to practice humility

§     in serving we learn how to be loved in return when we’re thanked (most people find it easier to give love than to receive it)

§     we think less of ourselves when we’re thinking more of others

Most of all, service is a stringline to life.  A builder uses a stringline to chart the straight and true lines of their construction, just as service can be our stringline in providing straight and true lines with which to secure and sustain our faith.

Service straightens out our fallible moods and it’s true in that such generous behaviour good attitudes are formed.  Service helps to prevent stinking thinking.  

Converting good from evil, which is the essence of peacemaking, service sows peace and reaps a harvest of goodness because others are blessed (James 3:18).

Service straightens out the crooked things.  Simply put, serving is good.

A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing for Australians

Photo by Ismael Paramo on Unsplash

Making peace with your anger

No more guilt,
and no more shame,
when peace is built,
anger can be tamed.

Anger is present as the resolute and foreboding opportunity for peace.  It stands as an invitation beyond guilt and shame; it presses us into the valley of decision; anger invites us to accept it as a means of conquering its fury.

Here’s peace: everyone has some kind of issue with anger.  There, that ought to deal with the shame that comes from the guilt of losing control of your emotions yet again.  We all do it.  The one who thinks they don’t simply haven’t been pushed beyond their personal limit.

Here’s another thing.

Anger’s either expressed or it’s repressed.  Neither of these helps.  Only one way helps.  A third way: making peace with our anger.

It either comes out as an attack against others or it’s introjected into the self, absorbed, to harm the self.

Few people manage anger so well that they practice making peace with others and themselves as the default.  Watch out if you read this and think this is you.  If there’s one thing we’re usually in denial about, it’s our anger.  The person who thinks they’ve got something mastered when they haven’t is most dangerous of all.

Anger is a cover for sadness and fear, which is a real problem for most of us, especially for us men.

It takes strength to own our weakness; the paradox, weakness owned is strength.

Face your anger and become curious for the sadness and fear beneath it and immediately the agitated edge dissipates.  In this place you just sit.  In the place of acceptance.  Not gleeful acceptance, but a more mature acceptance that can sit through the tough circumstance and not insist things be different.

Paradox upon paradox in this space.  At just the time you surrender control, you gain control.

In the very moment you sit, even as you fume, you recognise you’re not being torn apart, that in fact you can do it, when you simply accept what you cannot change.  It’s a decision.  It’s an action.  It’s continued action.  And you prove to yourself you can do it.

It’s tough.  Nobody’s hiding the fact.  But you can do it.

We can’t do anything about anger until we face it, and we don’t face it until we face our shame.  The good news is anger affects us all, so there’s nothing to be ashamed about.  Better, let’s be done with the shame and the guilt and short-circuit the anger in preference for peace.

Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash

It’s not just those who are critical who are against you

“Adulation and condemnation are both imposters.”
― Karl Faase

In 1895, the Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling composed the poem “If-,” which later went on to become one of the most popular poems in Great Britain.

In it, he etched the famous words:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same.

If you’re aware of the full poem, and reading it not through a 19th Century lens but a 21st Century lens, you’ll know that its strength is the inspiration of reality upon all the tests of life; that if we respond with poise no matter what happens then we’ll have proven ourselves to be everything we can be.

Whether it’s triumph or disaster, we’re to respond the same.  Now, we can all appreciate the merit in the idea, but implementing this advice in loss would seem almost the impossible concept — yet, because Kipling has envisioned it, and the fact that we can resonate with its truth, we know the idea is possible and therefore, for our own sakes and for the sakes of those we care about, we ought to endeavour to go that way.

Now, here’s a but . . . 

I’ve completely skipped over the idea of how to respond to triumph, i.e., in the same way as the response to disaster.  Such an idea is unconscionable.  Basically nobody laments victory.  Just as nobody celebrates loss.

The celebration of victory leads to the need of relinquishing that glory when all the excitement dies down, just as the lament of loss necessitates an evening of recovery eventually.

The quote at top by Karl Faase reminded me of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, and the wisdom is of a similar nuance.

We’re to have the same zeal for poise in the ‘triumph’ of adulation as we are during the ‘disaster’ of condemnation.  This brings the extremities of typical response back to the midpoint on a continuum.

We’re not as some people think we are, and we’re not as bad as others might think.

This is about holding a kind of philosophy of oneself that is beyond both affect for people’s critique and applause.  It doesn’t treat the person delivering either as the imposter, but it sees what the typical responses reveal in the heart — that I’m better than I am or worse than I am; both are lies.

The response that meets disaster and condemnation the same as triumph and adulation is the spirit of Christ.  This spirit knows that pride is as much a foe as self-deprecation.  While they may be expected responses, neither are helpful.

We’re invited into something better.

That ‘better’ is the prayer of the heart that anticipates there are highs and lows in life; that if a low can be met with the realism that “this won’t crush me,” then the high can be met with an equally poised, “this too shall pass.”

And it just may be that when we’re condemned, we might hold out hope that we might win back that one through the grace of Christ, that hurt won’t be redoubled on hurt.  And hazard to say, it could also mean that we won’t meet condemnation with condemnation.

We would never consider those who always admire us as foes, but their constant adulation is actually not healthy for us.

It’s often those who carry some resistance and who may be critical that may share the same goal, and as iron sharpens iron, we’re wise to humbly consider the kernel of truth in their critique.  Hard as that is for any of us, it’s not impossible.

Remember, as the peacemakers say, “Conflict is an opportunity.”

Photo from Unsplash by Benita Anand

This is ONE thing that all Christians simply must know

Never make the assumption that people are interested in doing the right thing.

There are oodles of examples in us all that suggest we rationalise some wrong things and make them permissible for us to engage in.  Test this idea and I think you’ll find it true in your life and in all lives.

While this presents no problem for those who justify a wrong attitude and behaviour, this is a real problem for the Christian.

On the one hand, they’ve agreed at salvation that they’re a sinner needing saving; that they cannot save themselves, nor can they rid themselves of their sin — they completely agree that it’s part of their human condition.  BUT, in competition with this idea is the desire that God puts there — the conviction of the Holy Spirit — to arrest the Christian mid-step with an attack of conscience at the wrong thing they’re doing.  It’s a sign that the Spirit is alive and well in us.

My point is this: this is something that as disciples we need to be continually aware of.

Another way of looking at this is, all human beings are hunted by the enemy of God; if it’s not hardness of heart that the enemy distracts us with, it’s laziness, or temptation, or argumentativeness, or entitlement, or something else.  Read C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters?

I discovered this afresh in my own life recently.

God healed me of hardness of heart over a matter I’d struggled with for over five years.  It’s gone.  Finally.  I prayed for it to leave over all that time, and now it’s gone.  But something’s crept up in close to me, and that’s a particular form of temptation I’ve not previously struggled with — well, not like this.

But I’m glad I see it.

It’s as if the enemy has said, “Wormwood, listen here old chap, we’re in a spot of trouble.  The hardness of heart in your patient has gone.  See to it that you afflict him with something else he’ll fall for — because, as we both know, he’s hopeless with these things.”

One thing we all must know — all us Christians.  That is, we’re those who truly care about doing the right things to the very last corner of our lives, yet without the expectation of perfection as we continue to face the forgiveness of Christ when we stumble.

Whether it’s the world, our flesh or Satan matters little — we’ll all struggle in our sin.

If we’re honest, we’ll be able to see it.  And if we’re humble, we’ll accept it, repenting when we need to, partaking of the divine grace of forgiveness when there’s the need.

The one thing to remember is the enemy continues to stalk us as prey to keep us in our sin, but we serve an awesome God, and awareness together with humble repentance will ensure the enemy doesn’t stand a chance.  Accepting this is patience that wards against frustration.

Now, go visit John 16:33.

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

The frustration of wearying repetition in the grief journey

I have heard so many people in their grief journey repeat the same stories time and again. Because I’ve been there, I’m patient. Even as I surveyed my old journals of 2003 and 2004, I was reminded of this important and crucial facet of the grief process.

Grief is a love process without outlet; except that is for sadness, tears, and tired stories. It’s so true. And this has to be given increased profile and trajectory in our time, for grief is a part of each of our lives for determinate and appointed times.

Love, and you must lose, eventually.
Yet, what is life without love? It’s not life.

I recall being so tired of reeling out the same stories so repetitively with my parents, I would go and repeat variations of the same narratives of loss to any who would listen — spoken and written. Little doubt I had many mentors in those heady days. I thank God for the grace of their patience.

I would often wonder, ‘why are these people so patient with me when I’m so impatient with myself…?’ My impatience stemmed from the pain I would feel in recounting these depressing stories, yet I felt compelled to share — and I’m so glad I felt compelled, because vocalising is one sure way to process it. 

Strangely that is how God was healing me. He was giving me the avenue of purging. And the pain I felt was simply love not being met, and yet I was met in those loving, listening ears of my mentors of the time — the hands, hugs, eyes, ears and tears of God’s care.

The greatest gift we can give the grieving is the gift of our listening without judgment, opinion or advice — our ‘wisdom’ (that seems right in our eyes) they can often do without. This listening takes place in the awkward fissures of faith, the exact place none of us likes going; that awkward space that the Holy Spirit loves to fill. God is in the listening. He meets us there, if we’re there focused on the person in our midst.

We do more by intransigent silence, by the empathy of our sorrow with theirs, by mourning with those who mourn, by matching their mood, even in fits of hysterical laughter when those times come.

So, if you’re grieving and you find such frustration in the repetition of the season, go gently at this time. Learn the sweetness of grace that says you can do no wrong by repeating the same sordid narrative ad nauseam.

God has a purpose in this repetition. We need free access to this expression. These repetitive processes are necessary for our healing, even if they do make us mad at the time — “Why am I hear once again?! Grrr.” You are here because you’re here. 

Grief always seems to take too long,
but that is the nature of adjusting to loss.

Take the risk of faith to be kind and generous to yourself at this time. What we do for healing doesn’t always make sense to us at the time. And that is faith; to journey forward trusting in what can seem bizarre. Allow yourself the freedom of expressing your grief repetitively.

You will know when you 
no longer need to do it.

The season of grief is long, too long, outrageous in its length. Sounding like a broken record is part of the journey. It’s normal. Give yourself that freedom when an angel in skin willingly listens to you, and tells you for the umpteenth time, “It’s okay!”

Anger is a typical repetitive response in grief. It isn’t wrong if it is safely expressed. In grief, be gentle with yourself and others. Anger that hurts helps no one. But understand, anger and complaint are part of the journey — so don’t judge yourself.

Photo by Ian Froome on Unsplash