Harmony of Grace

I recently heard Jason Mraz's cheerful new song called  Look For The Good . Here are the words of the chorus: Look for the good in everything Look for the people who will set your soul free It always seems impossible until it's done Look for the good in everyone It reminded me of how often we are negative rather than positive; how we so often see the so-called bad parts of a person before we see the good things about them; how we focus on the dangers of a situation before we see the opportunities. There is a prevalent idea in many Christian circles of original sin. Basically, because of Adam's decision to sin against God in the Genesis creation story, all future generations have suffered the consequences. We are told that we are born into sin and there is no way that we can escape being sinful. Some Christians even claim that if a child dies before they are baptised, they will be condemned to an eternity in a fiery hell... Can you believe it?!  While the claim of original s...

Image Source:  Steve Halama   In a world that is so overwhelmed with evil and corruption, I am sure many of us wish that we were living in a fictional world where literal superheroes existed.  How great would it be if we could call on a superhero to come and fix all of our problems?  Unfortunately, we are unlikely to see a literal superhero fly in and save the day by defeating the villains of our story. But that does not mean that heroes do not exist in our world today. One of the reasons that the biblical stories appeal to me so much is because they remind me that ordinary people can be heroes too. They might not look like the superheroes that we have come to know and love in movies and books, but they live heroic lives of honour and valour. Every time that a person assists a widow, or stands up for a person's rights, or helps alleviate poverty and hunger, or brings a criminal to justice, I believe that heroism is taking place. As much as there are people bringing d...

Image Source:  Kelly Sikkema In his podcast titled "What to do with your ambition?" Rob Bell mentions how often we claim that our story as Christians begins with the fall of man, where Adam and Eve disobey God and separate themselves from God's plan for their lives. However, while this is an important part of the whole, it is not where our story begins. The story of the fall of man is found in Genesis 3. The Bible begins with another story in Genesis 1: A story where God creates the Earth and all that is in it and sees it as good. A story where God creates humans and calls them very good.  This is where our story begins: as God's sacred creations, not as sinful beings. Not only does our story begin with God creating humans as inherently good beings, but our story also does not end with death and despair, it concludes with the good news of resurrection and the restoration of all creation. Richard Rohr, in his latest book The Universal Christ,  claims that t...

This past weekend I had the most incredible experience. But let me start at the beginning... A couple of months ago, my friend and mentor since 2007, Darrel Hofland, told me that he was planning on moving to the UK in October this year. I knew that we would need to plan a meet-up before he left as it might be a while before we had the opportunity to see each other again. Darrel has been living in Somerset West so I decided to try and visit him there. I tried to book tickets to fly there from Pietermaritzburg, but none of our available weekends linked up. We then found out that we would both be in Knysna at the same time in July and planned to meet-up there. Unfortunately, my ouma passed away that week and we had to postpone our trip. He told me that he would be coming to Durban the week before he left for the UK which is closer to us, but I had already fully booked myself and had no way to get down to Durbs in time. We realized that we only had one last chance to meet u...

Image Source:  Eric Ward Last week a moving video popped up on my timeline about a homeless man in the UK named Andy. Andy bought a dog from a beggar and he explains how the dog (Bailey) brought meaning to his life and gave him a purpose to live... You can watch the video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1jUXnAnb7A Andy, who was previously a heavy drug addict (Heroin and Crack) for 15 years, got to a low point where he was standing on the edge of a bridge contemplating suicide. But when he saw how his dog was looking at him and how much Bailey loved him, he realized that he could not leave his dog behind and so he made the decision to change his life around. Something that Andy said has really stuck with me. He spoke about how as a homeless man, it is so painful when people walk past him and don't acknowledge him.  "When you're stood there, hungry, and no-one is noticing you, just walking by as if you don't count, in your mind it convinces ...

Image Source:  Ben White In the midst of some truly joyful experiences this year, Mel and I have had to also endure through a number of tough challenges. Without going into too much detail, we have been faced with family feuds (not the fun game-show type); financial strain; academic struggles; burnout and far more car trouble than anyone would like to deal with. Life has certainly thrown us its fair share of the proverbial  lemons. But all of this this got me thinking... Are we still able to see God's grace in our lives when things aren't going as planned? It's easy to speak about God's goodness when the road is smooth. But when we encounter bumpy patches, we are quick to forget. "God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good!" This age-old saying that we often recite in our churches is beautiful and true. But do we really believe the words that we are saying? Do we truly believe that God is good all the time? Or only when things ar...