A Break in the Clouds

Today was a cold, rainy Sunday.  

It reminded me of being young, going to church and then coming home and curling up on the couch (tucked, of course, behind my mom on the couch because it was the only place left in the room to sit) with a bowl of soup and some crackers with peanut butter and putting in a good movie.

I went to Fountain of Life today with Andy and a girl from his lifegroup for the first time.  It was incredibly out of my comfort zone, but I was grateful for that.  I would go on a more regular basis if I could carve out a 3 hour chunk of time from my Sundays more often.  But that's not likely to happen often.  I started tutoring there on Tuesdays and it's been really great to be serving, as well as setting up service opportunities for college students.  It was starting to feel a little bit weird not doing what I was making paths for others to be able to do.  The service was very different from Blackhawk.  I was a minority.  I was quiet.  I moved a little bit during worship, but not nearly as much as I'm sure the people around me were moving.  It was very freeing at the same time that it was intimidating.  But the way these people approached worship was inspiring and reminded me of my inheritance in Christ.  

I was sitting in a coffee shop with Brent after the disheartening Brewers loss that booted them out of the playoffs (sad).  There was a break in the rain clouds that cast a beautiful and interesting light upon the street outside as I was reading through Erik Dunkin's blog that he is keeping while he is doing Teach for America on the southside of Chicago.  Oh goodness.  He is in over his head, and I'm pretty sure he knows it.  But he is keeping with it despite that, which is inspiring and unbelievable.  But I was reading through a letter that he wrote and posted an excerpt on.   And I realized that Erik was asking the same questions that I have been batting around for some time now.  

So with that, I was able to ask more questions.  Here is what I wrote back to him:

It’s an interesting thing.

I was just talking with one of the pastors at bhawk about this. The Grace Works series was great and inspiring and everything. But I can’t help but feel like a vast majority of people may have missed what is truly happening at this point. That they will jump from doing nothing to doing something, but never stopping to know *why* that something is being done…without contemplating the reality of their salvation and the reason why it creates a reaction of wanting to serve the poor and the lonely and the downcast. Could it be that we have created too much of a pendulum swing? Will we create a culture where everything is purely based off of a check list now?
It’s a fine line.

And if this is truly the heart of God and this is the reality of our salvation; and if this is what it takes to truly know who Christ is and to have a relationship with Him, then the road to Him is even narrower than I originally anticipated.

And then there’s also this question: If good works are the result of a transformation in Christ, does it mean that if there is no such reaction that we really don’t trust God for our salvation just yet? –Does it mean that we never had it to begin with? Or is it more that good works are a result of a salvation that has matured?

This is something that has been developing for a while in me.  These questions are central premises to everything.  Let me try to describe to you how I feel about this:

I feel like I am looking up at this ceiling.  And on this ceiling there is a beautiful painting...we're talking Sistine Chapel here.  But there is a fresh coat of solid blue paint over the top of the whole thing.  And every once in a while, I reach up and run my finger across the paint to reveal a glimpse of the masterpiece underneath.  But the ceiling is so big.  And the paint is so thick.  And I know that no matter how much I try to clear off, it's too vast and even if I could, the image beneath would be blurry, smeared and cloudy.  

So I settle and am content to just grasp a small sight of the bigger picture whenever I have the opportunity, but I'm dying to know what the bigger picture is.  Day after day, I get a piece of the painting...a new image...revealing to me how ignorant I was yesterday on what is truly the image beneath.