Chapter 30 He's Relentless About It

In the thick and the thin of all that’s indefinite in the days to come, a moment should be taken to reflect on that which is certain and easily known to me and to you.

From where we sit right now, in a room or open sky, in our town and in our day.

I speak of the days that tumble backward into weeks and the months that cascade into years; the very ones that have led us to this exact point in time, with the view outside our windows. The events we’ve known and the decisions we’ve made have shaped us to become who we are. Or who we aren't. Each epoch of our lives until now can be read like a book, with absolute certainty, because they have been. They were real, not imagined.


I wrote that a few years ago, but I think of it often. It's just that ... well, I’m forever being pursued by a faithful God who is eager to show me what He’s been up to, in my life and the lives of those around me. He wants me to get a clue as to what His Kingdom is like. He's relentless about it, and He's after you too, just in case you're wondering.

He loves us that much.

For me, seven long years have passed since I set out to produce a play about Jesus. That’s old news to anyone who has followed this blog. Seven years of grappling with the reasons why I was set on this course. Seven years of stumbling around in the dark of a decrepit old porn theater; seven years spent discovering a Jesus who cares deeply for the poor and the disenfranchised. During that time, my eyes were also opened to a new view of Church (the very Bride we are), and to our Bridegroom (who by the way, looks nothing like the one I had created for my own convenience in the aforementioned play).

To Him, of course, seven years is as an instant, but it takes at least that long for new concepts to get through my thick head. Fast forward to today, and through no foresight of our own, the fledgling non-profit that rose from the ashes of a failed play is knocking on the door of potentially becoming a full-fledged refugee resettlement agency. From fledgling to full-fledged must be how He does it.

We've spent years establishing partnerships and cultivating volunteers, all with good intentions, but never quite knowing the full extent of what those relationships would mean. He knew why, of course. He knew in our un-knowing. So now, when a refugee arrives (the very foreigner His son calls us to love), we have a built-in network available to warmly welcome a stranger. A holistic approach to serving (aka “resettling”) a refugee has been His design and plan for some time, for He knows better than us the extent that someone is stinging from the unspeakable pain of leaving his or her homeland -- one of instability and war, from half-way around the world.

Oh yes, He knows. He always knows.

It is not our place to explain God and the fullness of His plans. It’s a fool’s folly. Certainly a glimpse is all we’re given, but I'm convinced that a glimpse is one of the best gifts He gives us. It's the roadmap He’s pointing us back to. Mine got pretty wrinkled, and the paper is soft from all of the unfolding and re-folding, but it marks a journey from my past to my present. A peek like that may just be the best chance I ever get to know what God's up to, at least in this time we know.

Sure, the roadmap will reveal the many diversions that we've all taken away from Him. It will expose our stubbornness and poor choices. It will surely disclose that we have far to go -- indeed, quite a distance to travel. But there’s a turning, a subtle but true convergence of this road and that, all merging together to ultimately point us due North, and back to His very presence. It's undeniable.

So, all of that to say, what about you? Will you unfold your map and spread it out on the table? Probably a lot of zig-zagging going on. If you're anything like me, you'll need to get out the highlighter and figure out where you've come from and what you've traveled through. And why you did.

What has God been trying to show you all of this time?


These are the decisions that I (and hopefully you) have made, the very choices that we need to find and re-read in the chapters that have been. Because for better or for worse, they brought my fingers to this keyboard, and your eyes to this page, from where we sit, with the view out our window.


And there are more chapters to be written.