I'm sitting on the south bank of the river Thames. The sun
is bathing my face in the first warmth of spring. The sky above London's iconic
buildings is luminous blue. Nearly everyone around me - tourists, office
workers grabbing lunch and fresh air, joggers, cyclists, human statues, sellers
of trinkets and soft drinks - is as good humoured as the day. I find myself
half-muttering, half-singing (under my breath) 'God is good'.
An elderly man next to me is checking stock prices in a
pristine copy of today's FT; behind me skate boarders clatter in the brutalist
under-croft of the national theatre accompanied by squeals of delight from
young spectators; a lean African man entertains us with lilting Kora music; and
an Eastern European artist offers original artwork to bemused passers-by (his
subject matter jars with the lazy spring feel all around).
I'm on my way to a meeting with the guys behind the
Community Bible Experience that so many of us have found has led us to fresh
understanding and appreciation of scripture as we've read it and talked about
it in groups. But I'm grateful for fifteen minutes in the sunshine and fresh
air, grateful for the reminder of God's opulent, extravagant creativity.
And as I watch the water and people, I can feel the cares
and anxieties that I've been carrying through the day slipping from my
shoulders, to be replaced with a serenity born of the reminder that whatever's
happening, God's on the case. As he is creating this day, so he is gently
showing me that whatever I'm wrestling with, he has the measure of it.
It's a reminder of grace. A reminder that God is constantly
favouring us with his glance, his presence, his glory, his unexpected arrival
in the midst of busyness and hassle, with refreshment, laughter, an unexpected
word, a hug...
The Macedonians had experienced this. In the midst of their
struggle to make ends meet, the sheer hard graft of putting food on the table
and clothes on their backs, God had refreshed them with his grace and they
wanted to return the favour by being gracious to those in even greater need
than them. Paul tells us about this as he announces the offering in 2
Corinthians 8. They gave themselves to God because God had given himself to
them, lavished the goodness of his presence on them in such a way that they
couldn't help but trust him and pass it on.
That's what grace does. In the midst of the pressures of
life, the voices telling us that things are too hard, that we haven't the
resources to make it through the day, that the forces ranged against us will
grind us down and bring us to our knees, God comes and sits next to us and says
'hey, remember me!'
I'm sitting with a lemonade and Joe Stiglitz, musing on the
state of economic chaos engulfing us and pondering the whither and what and why
of inequality. Of course, Stiglitz is only with me in a book of his I’m
reading. And Paul reminds us that grace is the great equaliser. He's not
wanting the Judean Christians to be lining their pockets at the expense of the
Macedonians or the Corinthians; he just wants equality, everyone to have
enough. He's reminding us that our God became poor so that we might become rich
and we should be modelling our lives on him.
And this too is grace at work, God's great work of giving,
seen in the provision of manna in the wilderness, now seen in the way his grace
opens the hearts, hands and wallets of his people, so that they become the
means by which equality is made and maintained. And in a crazy world where the
cost of my lemonade, enjoyed in the Southbank's spring sunshine, is all a
family might have to live on anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, Stiglitz makes a
lot of sense (he's won a Nobel prize, after all), but Paul makes more.
When we are recipients of grace in the way the Macedonians
were, we instinctively not only want to see those in need helped, but also to
play our part in making that happen. For if God lavishes his grace on us, so
generously, so relentlessly, so continually, why would we not open our hands
and let it flow through our fingers to those around us who need it as much or
more than we do.
We live in days of change and turmoil – in the world around
us and in the church so close to us – when our ability to trust is being
stretched and tested. And I am feeling, as the sun warms my face and chases
away the memory of a hard winter, that his grace will be sufficient to deal
with whatever comes my way. The challenges we face may be many and various,
they might be things we’ve never faced before, they may be causing us acute
anxiety. But one thing is true: God’s grace has the measure of them and mastery
over them; he can be trusted to lead us through whatever comes our way with
open, generous hearts and an eye on those who need to realise for the first
time who made the sunshine that brightens all our lives.
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