Did Dad ever want to wring the son’s neck? Ever?

Where was Mom in all this?

What happened six weeks or six months later?

Did the kid suffer a relapse?

Questions.

So…let’s pretend.

Imagine if Father’s Day fell a week following the prodigal son’s return. No, check that. Let’s pretend it occurred about six or seven months later. On that morning, the father—let’s call him Chanan (Hebrew for gracious)—awakens from a dreamless sleep and rubs his eyes so as to roust them from their hours of inertia. It is still dark, but an oil lamp casts a coppery glow inside the master’s bedroom, and he looks at the pleasing, sleeping form of his wife—oh, may as well: Chana. Hannah. Grace.

She stirs slightly and for a moment he only wishes to look at her, not interrupt her slumber, and when her breathing again falls to a soft purr, he smiles. Ah, Chana! How gracious our Yahweh is! The woman I adore is the woman I awaken to each morning…

He persists in this reverie for a few more holy moments before something draws his eyes past her to the tapestried fold in the door. Just over the delicate slope of Chana’s hip he sees the corner of a small parchment partially slid beneath the curtain. His brow plunges in puzzlement so he quietly rises from the bed and pads over to the door and stoops to retrieve the paper.

As he carefully slides it to himself, he notices a familiar hand has addressed it: “Gracious Father.” A note from Habib (dearly loved). His youngest. Chanan’s eyes mist as he remembers the long nights spent in this very room praying for Habib’s return, crying out to G-d with Chana that He would keep their boy from peril and destruction. The years were long and their inner woundings great, but Elohim proved powerful as always and His providential blessing brought palatial healing and restoration.

Chanan’s eyes welled and spilled over, mirroring his heart’s release. Habib. The little lamb that was lost. Now home. Their lamb once again. The moment was only spoiled by the jealousy of Aaron (lofty, exalted one) who, even to this day sulks and harbors inner hatred. He has gone to his own far country. Chanan sighed and petitioned for Aaron’s “return” once more…

Old, gnarled fingers lifted the parchment to his heart as Chanan walked nearer to the light source for better reading. He sat by the table and unfolded the document. Chana lightly breathed from the bed behind. Outside he could hear some of the animals coming to life and those who tended to them. Dawn was moments away.

Gracious Father,

It was your love that found me where I was—that despicable, hellish place—and with tender bands to my wrists and ankles, you pulled me home. I am a slave to your love and forever choose to remain in your care. I will spend the rest of my life in awe of such grace that never gave up on me, searched for me, located me and has made a home for me. And I will let such grace run its full course in me until I, too, become this grace to others. You and Mother are everything I never knew I wanted, but now that my eyes have been opened, I want naught else.

I thank Eternal G-d that I was delivered from the pit, but I also consider the far country a closed chapter in my book. I know it will come as no surprise to you, Father, but since my return, I have entertained thoughts of going back, but they were only thoughts, praise Yahweh, never actions! Today I declare I could never go back to where I was, for the beauty of where I am is so alluring and permanent.

But, Abba, I also want you to know that I am not only delivered from the pit and done with the far country, but I am determined to choose life always. You never let me finish my little speech back there on the hillside where I fell at your feet. I know now it was grace that stopped me short that day; your grace that finished my best intentions. But you must know, Papa, on this Father’s Day, since you gave me life, to quote beloved David: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in your house than to dwell in tents of wickedness.” I know he was singing about the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but I feel the need to declare my intent to serve you, Father, by living out all of my days as your son. This is my promise: your name, your values and your heart will be perpetuated through my life. With you is life. With you always I will remain.

This is the best way I know to thank you, Father. And to honor you. These are not mere words. Watch me. You will not be disappointed.

Happy Father’s Day.

Yeah, that’d be a pretty cool card. Parents of prodigals would die smiling if this scenario ever became their own.

But in the larger story: do you see yourself anywhere in this narrative?

This is how he described it:

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.

Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.

From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob

not of the philosophers and of the learned.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

GOD of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.

Your GOD will be my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.

He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Grandeur of the human soul.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I have departed from him:

They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.

My God, will you leave me?

Let me not be separated from him forever.

This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.

Let me never be separated from him.

He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:

Renunciation, total and sweet.

Complete submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.

Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.

May I not forget your words. Amen.

Here it is, completely unedited, as is. That’s what makes it so powerful:

Hi my name is Graham and I’m a drug addict. This is a little about me. This is coming from a recovering addict of everything I put my hands on. Meth was my drug of choice. I wish meth would’ve never been invented. I was so trapped in the chains of addiction to meth that I didn’t care about myself or anyone else. I begged borrowed stole and hustled daily to get high. I will forever be haunted by the memories of myself and the things I’ve done. Meth changed who I was. I became this “zombie” who cared nothing about anything other than the drug. Thankfully I have a God who cared enough about me to stop me before it was too late. A year ago I was cashing fake checks for a dealer of mine so that I could have money to buy whatever I wanted. Out of the thousands of dollars I stole, I have only one thing to show for it, I bought a 400 dollar cell phone a few days before I was arrested and thankfully I still have it. I also bought two cd’s: Gucci mane Back to the trap house and Outkast stankonia. (I don’t have those anymore.) The rest went to Oxycontin 80’s Roxie 30’s and meth. I was arrested 4-22-10 with 9 counts of forgery (felony) and 3 counts of theft by deception (felony) not to mention I was on first offender probation for Possession of marijuana with intent (felony). Needless to say I wasn’t getting out. I did 6 months in the county jail and six months in Coastal State Prison then Clayton County CI. God had to slow me down. I was on the path to death. I am thankful for it. I wish you would never try meth. It will destroy you. Trust me. I could tell you all this till I’m blue in the face and you’re going to do whatever you want and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you. But for the people who are still chained to addiction, my prayers go out to you. I am not perfect in any way trust me, but I’m doing my best. I feel better about myself. I have made amends to my family and we are doing great. To all the people I stole from, robbed, cheated, and tricked, saying sorry isn’t enough, but I’m sorry. I’m not the same person, and I work daily to become a better person. This is my curse. This is what I have to deal with daily. But today I will wake up and chose to be sober. Today I chose not to be a zombie. I chose life to the fullest. Not a fake world of illusions that drugs brings but a real world. It’s funny as I was writing this; I got a call from Johnny’s Pizza. I got the job! I start tomorrow. My God is an awesome dude. He helped me break the chain of addiction in my life, granted me parole, and got a 3 time convicted felon, currently on parole, tatted to the gills, a job within a month of my release. Sweet. Thank you God.

I imagine Jesus called him or her up to the front and the little person approached, perhaps sheepishly and skittishly, but obediently. His or her countenance surely reflected openness and readiness, eyes widened for whatever the Master had in mind. Also, I am sure everything in Billy’s or Sally’s body language resonated with humility, don’t you think? Can’t you just see the child feeling uncomfortable beneath the stares of the throngs and don’t you imagine their heartbeat quickening with each uneasy step?

I also picture the child having hesitated, not because of her weighing whether or not to go—indeed she wanted to go for all she was worth!—but wondering if she should go without her parents. The child looks back at his parents hoping to have them go as well but Jesus’ reassuring words allay all that. It’s all right, child, you can trust Me. Come to Me.

Obediently. Trustingly. Humbly. That’s how it’s done!

Then Mark’s narrative offers a handful of scenarios showing what many try to carry into the kingdom. These are things you cannot have.

Scenario #1: A wealthy man “RAN” (Mark 10:17) to Messiah and fell to his knees and asked the Savior how he could solidify his place in heaven. This is the only time in Scripture where we see someone kneeling before the Lord but leaving in worse shape after such an act of deference. Should we see a parallel between this and what happens in modern day church gatherings? How many ‘posers’ are there on Sundays at 11:00 in the morning who have head thrown back, eyes upward, arms extended but heart empty and self-serving? Or, how many like this young man who came to Jesus, are truly sincere in their piety but far from the kingdom because they are not ready to make Jesus everything through the week?

You know this vignette well, I suppose. Jesus touches on the one thing that blocks this young seeker’s way into the kingdom: his riches, yes, but more importantly, who reigns? (see note following) Messiah even tells his disciples afterward, “How hard is it for the rich to enter?” It was a foregone conclusion to all in that ancient culture that the rich were “shoo-ins” with regard to the kingdom of God. In the day’s thinking, obviously the rich were highly favored by God on the evidence of their wealth so their hallowed place was a no duh.

But here Jesus turns this notion on its head and says, “Not so!” Riches can be an obstacle to faith, He reasons sadly. This tragic story tells us that one cannot BUY their place at the King’s table—yea, the turnstile onto the narrow road permits no luggage. He must be given Lordship over everything or we have no claim to eternal life. Check all at the door, if you will.

(NOTE: I am not saying all rich people are going to hell; the issue here and everywhere is the reign of Christ. Do not miss the obvious: I don’t think Jesus was merely testing the young man to see if he would sell his possessions as I have long thought. Could it be that our Lord was commanding him to do so—and he refused? This is the so-called ‘faith’ of many today: Lord, I believe, but I still want to manage my own life. Fat chance that heaven sees this as saving faith!)

Scenario #2: A few verses down (Mark 10:41-45) the disciples have been having one of their epic tiffs with one another over which would have the higher place in the kingdom. Jesus quickly diffuses it with a sound bite on authority with God, that authority is given to those who are servant-hearted, who are willing to sit at the kids’ table. One cannot muscle their way into the kingdom. The kingdom is for those who will be made weak (as a child).

Scenario #3: The last treasure found in this Markan trilogy of childlike faith is about a blind man who calls out to Jesus for healing. The man has no name. You say, yes he does! It’s clear as day his name is Bartimaeus! And you’d be…wrong. That’s not his name. It’s how he was known in the community: “Son of Timothy.” He couldn’t even rate a name, his situation was so pathetic! Here is something else we cannot have in order to lay claim to the kingdom of God: a name.

We are so busy trying to make a name for ourselves, to be recognized, to grapple for influence and status, but this nameless blind beggar who “got in” tells us that we must lose our names if we will wear the namesake of God. “Son of God” should be our response when someone requests our name.

So there you have it. Three things we cannot have if we are to come through the turnstile onto the narrow road:

• Treasure on earth. (in the stead of giving God its ownership)

• Personal power and status.

• A prestigious name we make for ourselves.

We must have the heart of a child: obedient, weak, humble, empty-handed and dependent. To such the Lord offers His lap and eternal life.

He was a man’s man. A tough guy.

He lived hard, fast and free, with no discernible moral restraint or conscience.

His colorful life ran the gamut from fighting bulls and running with them to being one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His resume popped and sizzled with entries like lion hunter, globe-trotter, war hero, womanizer, Hollywood celebrity, expert fisherman and he could drink you under the table. For a time he was the most well-known figure of the last century and though his oeuvres are canonized in modern literature, his philanders were legendary.

If I told you the man I just described was a miserable wretch, would you believe me? Before you answer, consider these plaintive words, spoken autobiographically:

“I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead, and there is no current to plug into.”

Alcohol-related depression plagued him and he received shock therapy to reduce the depression and paranoia. Tragically, the therapy caused him to lose his memory and thusly, his writing skills. He left Mayo Clinic one day in the middle of treatments and returned to his home in Ketchum, Idaho. In the early hours of a July Sunday, Ernest Hemingway, the man who had lived such a storied life, decided living was too painful, so he rose from his bed, went to his basement and carefully picked out a shotgun among his collection. When he returned to the upstairs foyer, he found a place to sit down and placed the barrel of the shotgun between his teeth and blew the top of his head off. It was just a few weeks before his 62^nd birthday.

What is rarely known about Mr. Hemingway is that he was born to parents who were devout in their relationship with Jesus Christ. He was raised in a home that could adequately be characterized as evangelical. His dad, a doctor who practiced in the suburbs of Chicago, was a personal friend of D.L. Moody, and young Ernest was himself a dedicated churchgoer into his youth.

After leaving home to join the war, Hemingway abandoned his earlier professed faith. So much death and debauchery challenged his thinking about God and his rebellion showed in his writing. His earliest works so horror-struck his parents they returned the volumes to his publisher and all ties were severed.

It is interesting that one of Hemingway’s short stories The Capital of the World hints at the autobiographical. The story deals with the falling out between a father and his teenage son and the son’s resultant flight from home. Over time, the father was so distraught over the broken relationship he searched all over Spain for his boy but to no avail. Finally, he took out an ad in a local newspaper with the words: “Paco, Meet At Montana Hotel Noon Tuesday. All is Forgiven. Papa.”

On Tuesday at noon, as the story goes, over 800 Pacos showed up, looking to be restored to their father. Each had hoped the message was for them.

That story gets me on so many levels. Of course, it can address what Eldredge’s Wild At Heart calls the “father wound” that is found in so many men and boys in today’s society. It is true that men are tragically estranged from their fathers and consequently from the fullness of their own manhood. But in the context of this post, and my futile wish that the story of Ernest Hemingway could have played out differently, I wonder if “Papa” (his nickname) saw himself throughout life not as the main Paco of his story so much as the 800 Pacos who would not be given the satisfaction of forgiveness.

The demons he lived with were unpardonable tyrants. He saw no way out.

And so he reached for a shotgun.

And the blast could not drown the cacophony of 800 plaintive wails released from his dying soul with the single pull of a trigger.

I realize the whole of my limited readership are those who follow Christ but every once in a while someone stumbles across this page who has no idea why they did. Perhaps, just maybe (especially if you’ve read this far) you are not here by some random improbability. And so, before you click off, I want to say…

…Cry Out To Jesus.

Believe me, you are being lied to. That bottle sitting by your bedside. That strange woman you are bedding. Or want to. That next fix you are dying for. The invitation you received to that wild party. Even your vain philosophy. The code you live by: I’m the Captain of My Soul. The estrangement from your family. The penthouse, the pearls, the pools. The porn, the booze.

Lies. All lies.

Remember what this so-called modern man said of his own piteous life?

“I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead, and there is no current to plug into.”

You feel like that, don’t you?

You will never find what you’re looking for until you give yourself completely over to the One who can silence the inner cries of your 800 Pacos and set them free. He will set you free and make you a son, a citizen of a new Kingdom. Until you allow the Son of God to reign over your life, you are subjecting yourself to the reign of another, and that is called bondage. Stop kidding yourself. You keep chasing the wind, you’ll reap the whirlwind.

Turn to Christ, not to religion.

Do it now.

800 Pacos are waiting.

Theologically speaking, I am closer to Wesley than I am to Luther or Calvin, the same way ’3′ is closer to ’1′ than, say, ’10′ is. I’m sure this will surprise or even disappoint some of my fellow theologues out there but there it is. Once upon a time I was a strict dispensationalist. A cessationist. A fundamentalist (note the emphasis is on the last syllable). I still adhere to the fundamentals which include the virgin birth, the vicarious death of Christ, His victorious resurrection and visible return to earth and the veracity of the holy scriptures . If you notice from that list I have conveniently alliterated it, showing my homiletic roots from which I can never stray very far. Tragically, there are more than three points, however, and no poem.

Well, you can’t please everybody.

Some time ago, the Lord had me all in knots over Paul’s first missive to Timothy when he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the startling prediction that “in the last days some will depart from THE faith…” This taxed me to no end especially when I laid it alongside Christ’s sobering conclusion to His famous Sermon (“MANY will say to Me on that day…”), my neatly packed world began to writhe and sway. This tumultuous “sword drill” further rocked my world when God added more beef to the stew through this interchange between Jesus and a seeker:

“Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?”
“Strive to enter through the narrow door,” He replied, “for MANY, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able…”

I see little ‘striving’ these days. I garner that such a message has been deemed non sequitur by moderns and we evangelicals have retooled it so we can help God turn the “few” into “many.” Sorry, Lord, but we think we can get You bigger numbers with some favorable repackaging. Whaddaya say we tone down the Gospel a smidge, hide some of its dicier demands, and make it easier to get in? Hey, I know, let’s get people to pray a quick prayer, shake their hand and tell ‘em they’re saved? Forget the aisle or public confession, just have ‘em pray it silently in their seats with no one looking around! Wouldn’t want ‘em to feel self-conscious…even if they don’t connect with a faith family, no matter. They’re in. It’s all done.

If Barna’s right, then there’s not a whole lot more to do in America because 8 or 9 out of ten polled people consider themselves heaven-bound. Hooray! Our way has worked!

Oh, sorry, Jesus…uh, You’re still Lord and everything…

When it comes to evangelism, the church in our era is more like the proverbial hare, like a rocket out of the gate and hurry-scurry across the countryside, and Jesus’ style is more like the tortoise, plodding, purposeful and particular. And terribly effective.

When I was a teenager in the 70s, our youth group at church would go door-to-door witnessing on Thursday nights in area neighborhoods. I, however, would board a church van with three or four other guys and we would be taken into the seedier side of town, amid drug deals and shootings, to share the gospel on street corners. We were the ‘preacher boys.’ Our goal was to get as many saved as we could, so our presentation went something like this:

“How many of you want to go to heaven when you die?”

There was always a group of ten, fifteen, or thirty curious listeners, mainly children, and mostly puzzled by upper middle class white guys converging on their turf. When the question was raised, so were the hands. Even some adults lifted an arm to the air. Immediately, we knew we had them.

“If I could tell you that you could have a mansion one day, walk on streets of pure gold and live forever, would you be interested?”

They were hooked. Mostly by the mansion thing, but hooked, nonetheless. By now, some more children were filtering our way and they, too, were betaken by visions of fairies, angels and huge marble palaces. And gum. Not hard to see, really, when the streets we proclaimed this gospel from were not golden and lined by rows and rows of shanties. Well, anyway, I would hurry through the death, burial and resurrection part of the gospel because you couldn’t stay on these matters too long or you’d lose them. They were in it for bigger game. How do I get a mansion, mister? So, I would wrap up the “sermon” part and reel them in.

“So, if you want to live forever and have your very own mansion, repeat this prayer after me…”

Many did. We’d count the noses then report back to the van our great success. Never did know what became of those noses, however. The difference between our method and the first century understanding of the gospel was that we’d count noses and jump for joy! Those early disciples would make disciples and change the world.

Though the above scenario is absolutely true, I realize that I’ve caricatured to an extent and culled something from a different time, but over all I see very little in the western church that reflects the last sentence of my previous paragraph. Going back to those earlier texts, I am greatly burdened by a man-centered gospel that is powerless to save and weak against the kingdom of darkness. I fear for a people who are basing their salvation on “greasy” grace (slide in on a wing and a prayer), a little prayer and handshake, a raised hand during an invitation long, long ago, a gospel about heaven and not Him and who are unwitting targets for the great falling away.

Brothers, something’s wrong. And we’d better address it.

The following is an important article posted in a recent issue of Christianity Today. It is both daring and courageous, and I, for one, am glad someone had the guts to address this lingering issue in modern evangelical Christianity–or at least what passes for it.

JESUS AND THE SINNER’S PRAYER
What Jesus says doesn’t usually match what we say
David P. Gushee

Is it permissible to reopen the question of salvation? If we do, how will Jesus’ teachings stand up to our inherited traditions?

These questions came to me acutely not long ago. I was getting ready to preach. As the worship leader was finishing the music set, he offered some unscripted theological reflections. He said something like: “The only thing required of us is to believe that Jesus’ blood saves us. Nothing more. It’s nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

In my Baptist context, we’ve heard these thoughts a thousand times. The problem was that I had in my pocket a message in which Jesus himself had a very different answer to the question of salvation.

The Big Question

In reading through Luke, I had discovered that twice (10:25, 18:18) Jesus is asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

In the first passage, Jesus turns the question back on the lawyer who asks it. The lawyer replies with the Old Testament commands to love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself (cf. Mt. 22:34-40). Jesus affirms his answer: “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.” The lawyer then tries to narrow the meaning of neighbor. So Jesus tells the unforgettable parable of the compassionate Samaritan, who proved to be a neighbor to a bleeding roadside victim.

In Luke 18, Jesus responds to the same question, this time from the man we know as the rich young ruler, by quoting the second table of the Decalogue, forbidding adultery, murder, theft, and false witness, and mandating honor towards parents. His questioner says that he has kept these commandments, and Jesus proceeds to call on him to “sell all … and distribute to the poor.” Jesus assures him, “You will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The “extremely rich” ruler won’t do this, and Jesus goes on to teach his disciples about how hard it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God.

Trying to be an honest expositor of the texts in front of me, I told the chapel students that morning that on the two occasions in Luke when Jesus was asked about the criteria for admission to eternity, he offered a fourfold answer: love God with all that you are, love your neighbor (like the Samaritan loved his neighbor), do God’s will by obeying his moral commands, and be willing, if he asks, to drop everything and leave it behind in order to follow him.

I concluded by suggesting that the contrast between how Jesus answers this question and how we usually do is stark and awfully inconvenient.

Getting Radical

In my Baptist tradition, especially, we direct people to “invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior,” an act undertaken using a formula called the “sinner’s prayer.” Or we simply say, “Believe in Jesus, and you will be saved.”

But Jesus never taught easy believe-ism. Whether he was telling the rich young ruler to sell all and follow him or telling a miracle-hungry crowd near Capernaum that to do the work of God was, yes, to believe on him (John 6:28-29), he called people to abandon their own agenda and trust him radically. Radical trust calls for both belief and action. (emphasis mine)

I suggest that we tend to confuse the beginning of the faith journey with its entirety. Yes, believe in Jesus—that’s the first step. Yes, invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior. Then, empowered by God’s grace, embark on the journey of discipleship, in which you seek to love God with every fiber of your being, to love your neighbor as yourself, to live out God’s moral will, and to follow Jesus where he leads you, whatever the cost.

If Jesus is to be believed, inheriting eternal life involves a comprehensive divine assessment at every step along our journey, not just at its inception. (emphasis mine)

Mediocrity and hypocrisy characterize the lives of many avowed Christians, at least in part because of our default answer to the salvation question. Anyone can, and most Americans do, “believe” in Jesus rather than some alternative savior. Anyone can, and many Americans sometimes do, say a prayer asking Jesus to save them. But not many embark on a life fully devoted to the love of God, the love of neighbor, the moral practice of God’s will, and radical, costly discipleship.

If it comes down to a choice between our habitual, ingrained ways of talking about salvation and what Jesus himself said when asked the question, I know what I must choose.

Amazing that such a song can overpower you with its winding-river grace. I speak, of course, of the old hymn penned by a former slave trader, John Newton (who is also featured on my ‘biography page’). I discovered that Mr. Newton, though marking his own conversion to Christianity in the mid-1700s, remained in the slave industry for a number of years, but finally made a clean breast of things after falling in with the likes of John Wesley and George Whitfield. Afterward he became a preacher of the grace that so gently lifted him from the vomit bucket of the world. That’s right: this venerated clergy-poet had once, during the lowest abyss of his debauchery, offered himself to the service of satan.

It was during a giant storm at sea, Newton testified, that he heard the voice of God speaking to him out of the tempest, calling him to Himself. In the days leading up to the nor’easter, the Lord had been thawing out the sailor’s cold heart for He had him reading a Kempis’ book, The Imitation of Christ. But with the onslaught of the storm, the embittered slave ship captain’s ever so gradual turn to the Eternal Giver of Grace was hanging in the balance. With water filling his cabin and timbers being jerked free from the hull, Newton frantically pumped water alongside his crew but to no avail. Finally he lashed himself to the wheel, hoping to steer the ship through, but at the height of peril cried on the winds, “Lord, have mercy on us!”

In his journal Newton said of this very occasion that he promised God he would be “His slave forever” if only He would rescue them. God in His great mercy did just that. And John Newton, former slave ship’s first mate, former slave himself, and former slave captain, was ardently captured by Grace.

I also learned today (not from the film) that the Cherokee nation considers this song to be a national anthem of sorts as it was sung on the Trail of Tears by their ancestors. Same tune, slightly different words but still a testimony to redemption through God’s Son, Jesus Christ. It was also the most-oft sung hymn during the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s. Through many dangers, toils and snares indeed…

Amazing Grace. Go see it. The tagline of the movie says, “Behind the song you love is a story you will never forget.” How true. It is thought that the melody came from slaves songs which haunted Newton throughout the years of his herding innocent victims. It is a delicately simple tune, built on the pentatonic scale, and played on the black keys. Five notes. That’s it. But what an amazing song whose enduring message can change the world.

We were given a window of three hours in which to make a ten-minute call to our boy. I repeatedly held my watch up to the morning light, waiting for the exact minute we could call. Sandy and I both agreed that we would call the first tick of the allowable time because we wanted our son to know we were living for this moment. And indeed we were. With ten minutes to go, we snuggled close, held hands and prayed. I asked the Lord a question. I wanted to know how the tone and tenor of the conversation might go as we had been warned by the headmaster that the first call is often quite horrible. Everything from begging to come home, wanting to know why they had to be sent away, questioning the parents’ love, threatenings to sabotage everything, calling out hateful diatribes and calling down curses. The works.

In the Lord’s gentle way, He answered my query by taking my mind to a particular destination. He shepherded my heart to the story of Paul and his ministry in the troubled little town of Thessalonica. The man of God spent a scant three weeks founding the church there before an eruption of persecution cut his time short. Railroaded out of town, Paul spent long nights and days wondering how those spiritual babies were faring, having had their support system yanked from their lives.

In the Acts account*, Paul decides to send Timothy back to Thessalonica once the smoke had cleared from the atmosphere. There he waited in Athens, tremulously fidgeting, praying, wondering and praying some more about this fledgling church. When Timothy returned, he brought good news: the newly birthed church was thriving. The faith of those babe-in-arm disciples was holding strong. You wouldn’t believe them, Paul; the Lord’s joy abounds in them and they are fastly becoming a model church for the surrounding region!**

I know the fireball apostle must have put his face in the dirt and rejoiced with weeping and laughter. He may have even danced, kicking up dust all around him; perhaps he lifted a hymn of thanksgiving. He certainly couldn’t wait a tick to sit down and write a letter to those suckling disciples with an amazing appetite for steak.

All of that flooded down on me as I prayed and as Sandy and I lay in the bed, head to head in prayer. I told the Lord, “if that is You, we praise Your Name forever. But if this didn’t come from you, Lord, and the call we are about the make is not good or worse than we imagined, we will still praise Your Name forever…” The petition then being ended, I looked again at my watch and saw we had a single minute. I fumbled for my cell phone, flipped it open and dialed the number. “Do you have the code?” Sandy asked. “You need the code to get through.” “I’ve got the code,” I assured her.

The phone rang and one of the staff picked up. “Who are you calling?” I told him my name and who I was hoping to reach. When he asked for the code, I gave it. “Just a moment,” he said. Suddenly I heard the scraping of a chair being pushed back and the echo of a door being opened. Next a voice calling down what I assumed was a hallway, calling my boy’s name. My squeeze on Sandy’s hand intensified. This is it, we thought together. A few more moments of suspended animation then the phone rattling. Someone was picking up.

“Hello?”

It was our son, and in just a single word on speakerphone, Sandy and I knew God had spoken to us and was giving us good news from Thessalonica as we waited nervously for it in our ‘Athens.’ We could hear a gentleness and kindness in his voice, not one stitch of ugliness. No bitter harangues or threats. Conversation poured out like sweet wine and, though the call was only minutes, it was drenched with laughter and glad tears. “Incredible things are happening here, Dad,” he said without divulging any details. No time for it. I just latched on the word Dad. He still calls me Dad.

After what seemed like mere seconds, the call was over. But those moments with our son were like gulps of precious air for someone who had been without. His faith was strong, and that was enough. He was holding fast to the Lord he had for so long felt distanced from and betrayed by. We could see through unveiled eyes washed with tears how God was repairing breaches and shoring up crumbling foundations. It’s Him, all Him, and He knows well how to care for His sheep, no matter where they are.

So, how was your Saturday?

*Acts 17
**1 Thessalonians 1:6,7; 3:5-8