Little Traces of Heaven

My friend Bill told me the following story: at one point in his life, his two daughters were both addicted to heroin and the dual addictions were destroying his family.  As Bill walked into his house all hell was breaking loose.  His oldest daughter disconnected from everyone and stared out the window.  In her typical frantic anxiety; Bill’s younger daughter paced around the living room.  His wife clung to thread of sanity, but she still found the energy to spray everyone with her rage.  The entire house was filled with hostility, stress and despair.

Bill wanted to flee the scene, but instead he clearly heard the Lord say to him, “Go into the living room, gently hug your daughters and your wife and tell them that they are deeply loved.”  So he did it.  With quiet authority he walked up to each family member, tenderly touched them as he looked them in the eye and said, “I love you and it will be alright.”

According to Bill all the negativity, rage and anxiety left the room.  It was like they were breathing in pollution, but then someone extracted all of the poison from the air.  They could breathe deeply again.  Bill’s slowly learning to walk in that quiet, strong, deep redemptive authority and gentleness, but he hasn’t been able to duplicate anything like that scene.

I have a hunch that God likes to give us these little traces of heaven.  In the midst of Bill’s broken life, God let Bill see his new, Christ-like, fully redeemed self.  God provided a vision of the end goal, or as Bill calls it “previews of coming attractions.”

I used to think that these traces of heaven were just flukes, like an awful golfer bouncing his tee-shot off a tree, hitting a seagull in the head and somehow getting a hole in one.  I don’t believe Bill’s experience was a fluke.  Instead, I think God interrupted his life and said, “This is who you will be, Bill.  You’re not there yet, but stay with me and I will change you into a strong and tender man who walks into broken situations with my love and authority.”

So I’ll keep hanging around Jesus, letting him into my broken places, trusting and finding little traces of heaven in my life too.

Read Full Post »

Loving Redemption Stories – Parts 2 and 3

Redemption Stories – Part 2: A bad middle

I love redemption stories (see Part 1 in the previous blog) – and they are everywhere.  They start with a good beginning, but unfortunately life has a way of unraveling doesn’t it?   The plot suddenly swells with tension.  Stuff happens – bad stuff, evil stuff, mean stuff.  In The Lord of the Rings the ring of power starts to corrupt everyone who touches it.  In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy gets whacked on the head and then those creepy flying monkeys descend on Toto.  In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne, a mild mannered accountant, acts rashly and winds up serving two consecutive life terms.

At times the bad stuff is our fault.  We betray someone, or perhaps a bunch of people.  We allow sin to fester in our lives.  We thought it would be our private sin party, but it leaks out and hurts others.  We battle an addiction and lose.  We botch a business deal or a job or a relationship.  The victimized achieve freedom, grab power and then become the next wave of oppressors.

Sometimes the bad stuff just happens: cancer, pain, betrayal, injustice, shattered dreams, church splits.  It could be a quick turn of events or a slow and deadening despair, like weeds taking over a garden.

In the Book of Ruth, Elimilech’s daring plan to save his family and start a new life unravels.  He drops dead and then their two sons kick the bucket.  This isn’t just trouble; this is a tragedy, a devastation, a freaking train wreck – and the shards of twisted steel pierce Naomi’s chest.

Stuff happens.  Wow, does it ever!  Some people get hammered by life, but eventually everyone gets something.  Bob Dylan once sang, “We’ve got to get back to the garden,” but that’s the problem: we can’t; there’s two angels with flaming swords guarding the path.  .

We try to minimize and blunt the pain by mouthing stupid clichés like “It could be worse.”  Okay, maybe, but it still hurts.  That’s one reason why I love the Bible: it’s so refreshingly honest.  Someone betrays the psalmist and he asks God to smack the guy in the teeth.  Jesus comes to the grave of his friend – definitely a bad middle for Lazarus and his sisters – and he wails like a newborn baby.

But a redemption story doesn’t just give permission for brutal honesty; like a deep and strong river, it also sweeps us along toward a happy ending.

Redemption Stories – Part 3: A happy ending

Happy endings make redemption stories irresistible.  They take us on a journey, through danger and sadness, but they lead us back home or to a better home.  Dorothy clicks her heels and wakes up in Kansas again.  Homer boots out his wife’s suitors and reclaims her heart.  A beauty loves the beast, the spell breaks and the beast becomes a kind and humane prince.  Andy Dufresne comes fully alive and then outwits the evil warden, escaping through a sewer to freedom.  Bilbo Baggins encounters unwanted adventures and near death but he finally returns home.  Boaz redeems Ruth and Naomi and the story ends with a fat little grandson sitting on Naomi’s lap.

That’s why the Bible is the best, grandest and most daring redemption story anywhere.  From Genesis, to Isaiah and right through Jesus and Revelation, the Bible declares the most outlandish and outrageous promises of restoration.  In Christ painful relationships will heal.  Addictions will be overcome.  Brokenness – even in our bodies – will become whole.  Injustice, poverty and racism are all vanquished.  Emptiness leads to fullness.  God wipes every tear from our eye.  All things are restored.

It’s almost too good to be true … and it would be if we didn’t have a Storyteller-Redeemer who can actually make redemption happen.  One of the deepest biblical miracles is that the Triune God lived his own redemption story.  As the eternal Son of God, Jesus had the best beginning.  But then for us and our salvation he plunged into his own bad middle, identifying with and absorbing all of our bad middles.  God took our failures, our wounds, our betrayals, our injustices, our sins and our addictions; he left out nothing, he ignored nothing, he judged everything; but in Christ and through Christ and with Christ, God turned all of these dark moments into facets of the bright and happy ending.  Somehow God will knit these sharp and dangerous fragments into His cosmic redemption story.

I have a hunch that we love redemption stories because God loves them too.  And maybe God sprinkles enough redemption stories into every culture – through fairy tales and films and novels and sacred texts – so that we’ll hunger for and quest after the Jesus story, the truest, deepest, most beautiful redemption story of all.

Read Full Post »

Why We Love Redemption Stories – Part 1

Flash Quiz: What do the following have in common – Lord of the Rings, Homer’s Odyssey, Shawshank Redemption, The Wizard of Oz, Beauty and the Beast, the Exodus, Cinderella and Jesus?

Correct Answer: They’re all redemption stories.

Redemption stories are everywhere.  I could rattle off dozens of redemption stories – even if you had a gun to my head and made me hop on one foot … barefoot in a puddle of hot vegetable oil.  I think you get the point: I love them.  But I have a hunch that everyone loves redemption stories, which is why we (i.e. every culture, not just Americans) keep telling old ones and making up new ones.

Every redemption stories has three basic movements:

1. A good beginning
2. A bad middle
3. A hopeful ending.

For a good beginning, think of Dorothy in Kansas surrounded by loving relatives and her doggie Toto.  Or think of the first lines of The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell … it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”  Ah, yes, sweet comfort.  Home.

Of course the Bible opens with one wallop of a good beginning – Adam and Eve in paradise.  But the Bible also contains smaller good beginnings, like the Book of Ruth.  There’s a famine in the land, but Elimelech decides to move his family to Moab. It’s a daring, dangerous move, but he’s going to make life work.  So with his wife and his two sons he treks to Moab.

God knows that we need some good beginnings.  A child’s birth, a little girl dreaming, a college grad ready for his first real job, a wedding dance, a new house, a move, a church plant – we need to receive and celebrate good beginnings.  They’re just flat-out good stories and I’m convinced that God loves them too.  Of course the only problem is that they never last … which leads to part 2.

Read Full Post »