Harmony of Grace

My wife and I welcomed two new members into our family in December. Frankie and Cooper are two lively labrador puppies that love to play. They keep us entertained for hours on end, constantly demanding our attention with their playful nature. Richard Rohr speaks about our relationship with God as a divine dance. I love this analogy. It implies that our relationship with Christ can and is meant to be playful. As Christ-followers, we are able to be playful with God just as our labrador puppies are with us. We try to take our puppies to a field near our house on most evenings for them to stretch their legs and play fetch with us. They are usually well-behaved and return to us when we call them. However, this past week, while we were playing at the field, a group of people cycled past and our dogs got completely distracted from us. They chased after the cyclists and no matter what we tried to get their intention, they would not listen. Within seconds, they were not only out of ear...

Andrew Neel To this day, I am yet to meet anyone who enjoys receiving promotional phone calls from companies trying to sell their product. Thankfully, apps like Truecaller have stepped in to save the day, informing us if a phone number has been marked as spam by other users. One of my biggest pet peeves is walking past those little stores in the middle of malls and being flagged down by someone trying to sell me a phone cover or screen protector. How often do we try to sell Jesus in a similar way as these telemarketers and salespeople? Does Jesus really need to be sold? What makes us think that Jesus is such an unattractive product that he needs to be promoted in order for others to want to follow him? In Matthew 4:19, Jesus calls his first disciples to follow him and tells them that he will make them fishers of men. Many Christians seem to think that to be fishers of men, we need to try and sell Jesus to others. I don't know much about fishing but I do know that fish...

Image Source:  Jason Blackeye All of our favourite stories have happy endings. However, just because a story has a happy ending, does not necessarily ensure that it is a good story. The greatest storytellers understand that stories need to have lows as well as highs, anti-climax as well as climax, conflict as well as resolution. Try to imagine a story that never had any moments of conflict or struggle. The protagonist is born into a loving, wealthy family, she never fails at anything and she dies rich at an old age having achieved all of her dreams. First, the entertainment value of this story is not very high. I don't think there would be any major film studios battling for the rights to turn it into a movie. Second, I don't think that the protagonist in this story would appreciate their wealth and success because they had never experienced a life without it. A happy ending in and of itself does not make a good story unless there were serious moments of conflict that...

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...

Image Source:  Bryan Minear Today I listened to an episode of the Writing Excuses  podcast. The topic of discussion was how to generate new ideas for stories. The authors encouraged listeners to start with ideas that already exist. Listen to stories. Watch TV. Read widely. Look at things that are already in existence and then use your imagination to invent new ideas or expand on previous ideas in new exciting ways. Many new aspiring authors believe that new stories need to be fresh ideas that have never been thought of before. But some of the best stories are just imaginative takes on already-existing stories. For example, the reason that stories like Shrek have done so well is that it has taken well-known fairytales and created exciting, new stories using the original stories as their inspiration. I believe that we have a similar ability to see God's grace in the ordinary and comfortable. What we seek, we shall find. If we go about our lives not exp...

Image Source:  James Bold I love reading and I love a good story. Epic fantasies are my favourite. I love the richness of the world-building, the complex magic systems and the strengths and flaws of the wide variety of characters. I often like to think of my life and the life of the world as an epic story. Every story has a beginning, a middle and an ending. As we read/hear a well-told story we can only be sure of what has gone before. We do not know what twists and turns are in store for us at the conclusion, or even during the next couple of pages. There are character developments, conflicts, climaxes and anticlimaxes. The danger with thinking of our lives as a story though, is that we tend to take credit for the authorship of our story and the story of the world that we live in. While we have an important part to play in our story, we shouldn't forget who is the author. God created this world and continues to write our story. We have an opportunity to be a p...