For the last 4 years I have been a teacher. Most recently, to twenty-five little delights. Everyday, they do much right, yet they do much wrong. Every day, the ones who do much wrong come to me and apologise, seek my forgiveness, some even make me little cards to say sorry. The next day, the little delights bundle in and repeat the same rights… and the same wrongs. My life as a teacher has been one of giving continual grace to children trying their best, inevitably failing and returning to me in forgiveness and repentance every day. It’s an awfully hard job to extend that much grace, yet in this I am reminded of someone far greater than I who does this on a far greater scale. My father in heaven, with his son Jesus and the Holy spirit.
I want to share how stunning, incomprehensible and abundant our Father’s grace is for us. I want to try and explore and convey how wonderfully beautiful his love is for us. I’m starting this journey of writing in Holy Week, Palm Sunday to be precise, a fitting time to begin some meditation on God’s greatest sacrifice and how this should radically inspire you, deeply move you and nearly break you. In the words of John Donne:
“Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand,
overthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn
and make me new”
God’s love for us is wild, powerful and determined. I am so excited to begin this season of drawing out the truths of God’s love for us. I long to abide in his love and receive more of it everyday.
Stumbling on golden roads is a series of short pieces about the picture of being a disciple of Jesus. We fail, we doubt, we suffer, we get angry, upset and mad. We feel pain, we disappoint, sometimes our decisions are so catastrophic their feels no way out. Sometimes life’s suffering overwhelms us and we cannot walk on. On this journey we stumble, heck sometimes we fall and stay still. We battle to stay on it and all too often, many of us decide to pack up and go home.
Yet the road we walk, following the feet of Jesus, is a golden road. We are invited onto a road that leads us into the most beautiful relationship we could desire, we return to our creator and father like a baby being held by its mother’s arms for the first time. This road is narrow but worthy. I invite you to walk with me through this clumsy attempt of a blog, and my prayer is that you may experience, however small, just a touch of the great love that God has for you. If even a speck of the gold dust, that is his love, could touch you I know it can transform lives and return your soul to its rightful place. I write through watery eyes as the reality of the person of Jesus has become so real to me in recent months and I am desperately hungry for you to know him too. The great apostles were hungry for us to know too, their letters and writings in the word of God are overflowing with invitations for us to step into deep. This is a wild invitation to a walk which feels terrifying, but a destination that is as sure as God himself. Let’s take this golden road together and discover more of the person of Jesus and his great, wild love and grace.
Whispers of More 