Jesus said we must be first drawn to the gospel of salvation by the will of the Father (John 6:44). We don’t come on our own; we are invited. I once heard a renowned Reformed preacher explain the word “drawn” in that passage as being dragged along against our power and will, even kicking and screaming, if necessary.
Okay, I get it that God must make the first move, and that we are found in a place where we want nothing to do with him. True. However, I don’t think people come into the Life of Christ kicking and screaming. That just doesn’t have the ring of new life to me.
For sure, when the gospel first intrudes upon our well-defended lair of sin and autocracy, we flail and curse and spit and strike out. Yes to all of that!
But then, grace does something to us.
It holds us like a mother holds on for dear life to an unruly, flailing child, and the spirit of compassion causes that rebel heart to melt into submission, then surrender, and, finally, finding rest (Matthew 11:28). Yeah, I’m pretty confident we’re not dragged into the kingdom. We come happily; skipping and leaping, like calves released from their confinement.
“The favored souls [who respond to the gospel of Christ] are not compelled by an unwelcome force to embrace salvation, but are sweetly and lovingly inclined through the soft influences of heavenly grace to choose, delight in, and appreciate the work and service of Emmanuel. They are made willing. Their whole heart goes forth towards the Savior…
“They love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. They embrace him as their only Savior and
his precepts as their only rule,
his promises as their only support,
his cross as their only glory,
his righteousness as their only boast,
his heaven as their only home.
If, then, I belong to this happy number, I must be willing to be saved on God’s terms, to delight in his salvation, to choose his ways.”
“I don’t want to be remembering Graham, I want to still be knowing him.” – Ken Hatcher, a friend
At first glance it’s just a leaf. But a second tells a heart-rending story.
This leaf —
battered,
weathered,
lonely,
still holding on to one more day of normalcy —
fights against change of a painful sort. Sandy and I, too, wish we had had a different outcome three Decembers ago, but God had another story to write with our son. And so we faced the inevitable, released our grip, and
Just.
Let.
Go.
Mary and Joseph felt the icy chill of their own ‘December’ all those yuletides ago. Aged Simeon prophesied to the Nativity couple, when their newborn was a scant eight days young, that their innocent bundle would grow up to cleave the young mother’s heart in half.
Nothing about this young couple would ever be on the scale of normal. From nuptials to cradle to grave they braced against the arctic cold of constant opposition. No one knew their private pain, which was pain enough. All Mary could do was ponder it in her heart.
Our son wasn’t the Son of God. He didn’t lead a sinless life, heal paralytics, or save the people from their sin. He wasn’t Immanuel or Savior or King. He struggled with himself, with his demons, and with the world, and he died, another December ago, having lost his battle with addiction.
But Graham knew Immanuel.
He was held by the Savior.
And he was shown mercy by a King who dispenses it lavishly and undeservedly.
So…we brave through yet another imperfectly perfect December, plough onward, face forward, appeal upward, hoping someone would just mention him and not forget him, reach for grace yet again that reels in joy as it whispers past, and deliberately remember all the good. With Graham, thank Jesus, there was an awful lot of that.
And…we look at the bigger picture, the one where we are still knowing Graham…because he is home, after all.
Even in this – another December – God is still good.
When Jesus blesses someone in the Gospels, he blesses only a particular kind of person. As we meander through, it surprises many to learn that the select group of people he chooses to bless are not the elite at all. After the rich young ruler walked away from the invite, Jesus never offered him so much as a “bless his heart.” (Though His heart broke)
No, when He posed his famously beloved invitation to “Come to Me, all you who are…”
Ragged,
Wasted,
Belittled,
Bedraggled,
Exploited,
Rejected,
Abused,
Tired,
Disappointed,
Unincluded…
He wasn’t opening Himself to the establishment religion, the sophisticates, nor the self-assured, but to the most, well, unlikely sort.
Jesus labels them ‘bruised reeds’ and ‘smoldering wicks’ (Matt 12:20). Now, nobody wants to be labeled, am I right? But when Jesus qualifies a soul, nobody seems to complain.
“Bruised reeds” were tall, hollow blades of grass growing along waterways. Often the winds would blow and pummel them until they were low-slung and clinging for all they’re worth to their root. Sometimes fishermen stepped on them and pushed them into the earth – or broke them off altogether.
✅This is a person barely hanging on…clinging to whatever vestige of life remains.
It is essentially useless because it grows in uninhabitable, marshy places. A reed is easily overlooked, but a BRUISED reed has been overtly rejected and deemed unfit.
Bruised reeds wonder why they even exist at all…
A “smoldering wick” was found in oil lamps where the fire had been snuffed. A wisp of smoke was all that was left of a light source where once played heat and fire, but now had lost its soul.
✅These once held passionately to a belief system, once dared to dream, faced life head-on, danced on the razor’s edge, lived with purpose, but life turned on them!
They’re finding it hard to believe again. They are hard-pressed to trust again.
Color them:
Disillusioned.
Betrayed.
Lost.
Empty.
Simon Peter was just such a smoldering stick until Jesus re-lit him and made him a lamp for the Church. Double-whammy, the grizzled fisherman-turned-disciple-turned-miserable-coward felt like a stepped-on common blade of long grass until Jesus replanted him in a garden bed on the King’s estate.
Bruised reeds.
Smoldering wicks.
Ah! But when Jesus comes along and tips their chin up with the crook of his finger, when he trims and redresses their wick to a reusable potential, the unlikely suddenly make the most sense in the Kingdom. Why? They get it. They see the Treasure in the field and, suddenly, nothing else makes sense to them.
The only things that register to them – the only things that matter, that make perfect sense – are the EIGHT THINGS that enliven them and set them on fire.
We call them “beatitudes.” Recently I looked them over again in my quiet time and this is how they looked through fresh eyes:
Blessed are those with no shot at the so-called ‘American dream’ and have hopelessly given up (Matt 5:3)
…who realize it points to a deeper and more invasive problem and are taking responsibility for it (v4)
…who have no recourse but to reduce themselves by waving the white flag of surrender (v5)
…who are drawn at great risk to a better Way than they’ve ever known (v6)
…who, having discovered Life, make it their sole mission to go to the pit they came out of – if need be (and need be!) – to rescue the perishing (v7)
…who want no praise for themselves, only redemption for others and justice for the oppressed (v8)
…who know this requires courage screwed to the sticking post because it puts them a true straights between the two poles of society, calling for their offending the establishment necessarily so as to mediate healing between perpetrator and oppressed (v9)
…who will gladly do so on threat of peril and injustice to themselves, gladly enduring the cross meant for another so as to be Jesus to a broken world and alleviate its suffering (v10).
It’s highly unlikely anyone would sign on for this life unless they’re happily populated among the company of the elite a.k.a. the Unlikely – the “whosever wills” who have felt their sagging hopes lifted and spent fires stoked.
Blessed are the Unlikely who see it, want it, and get it.
