students of jesus

Last week I heard myself saying about a certain situation, “I think the grace is running out on this thing.” Did I hear what I was saying?

“This thing” had been going on for more than a year. The details are not important: I can tell you a year is a long time. But the fact was I was simply tired. I had run out of patience. And without pausing to think about it, I had slapped a religious label on my feelings—the very kind of religious label that allowed me to apply “God’s will” to my lack of patience.

How quick we are to suppose God sees things the same way we do! And perhaps the danger is greatest among those who’ve walked with God long enough to learn a few of his ways.

God’s grace has taught me plenty: I’ve walked with God enough years to have learned the “correct responses” to many situations, and I’ve ordered my life around the priorities of the Kingdom enough to tilt in the direction of righteousness, peace, and joy. I’ve tapped into wellsprings of life flowing from the Spirit and his inspired words.

An image: walking with God is a bit like digging a well. We go deep and discover the sweet wellspring of the waters of grace. The surprise in this metaphor is that our hearts are the well. We dig down below our self-will and discover the sweet source of life available to every student of Jesus. We’ve opened up a well of grace. But even a good well needs maintaining. It can go dry or go bad.

But does grace really ever run out? Actually, yes: if we’re talking about the well of grace in our own hearts. The well of grace yields pure water, but in some seasons we must dig a deeper. More accurately, God’s grace hasn’t run out at all; we must tend the well. “Watch over your heart with all diligence,” say the Proverbs, “For from it flow the springs of life.”

No one who digs a well takes the water for granted—in the first year. Still, through countless trips to draw the water we need, we might take the flow for granted. We forget what first opened the spring. Jesus himself cautioned a faithful and persevering church to remember their beginnings, and to do the deeds they had first done (Revelation 2:2-5). He called them to repent, which means to rethink their way of life. Why would a believer need to rethink the way of life?

I can tell you personally: the goodness of God flows so surely we begin to think of his grace as our own possession rather than his daily gift, and when we begin to mistake his supply as our own strength, we find ourselves making foolish statements about grace coming to an end. We might be tempted to think that because we drank deeply of his grace we are somehow the suppliers of his mercy. In the everyday challenges of life we might just presume the well will flow forever, even while we fill it with the debris of our bitterness, envy, or self. Worse still: we might poison the well and yet draw the waters.

The Spirit supplies water without limit. Still, the very practices that first brought us to the well of grace must continue if it would remain pure. Our thirst, our humility, and our repentance are the maintenance of our hearts. From his hand grace abounds forever, yet our hands must tend the well.

Plain, but subtle: Jesus told an unadorned story filled with great wisdom, a story so important he asked, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?” Every Sunday school child knows this story by heart. Van Gogh painted it three different ways. Churches have invested untold fortunes to preserve the tale in stained glass. Jesus even took time to explain the story, so we think we get it. But hearing one answer is not the same as living all the answers.

When Jesus taught in parables, he led with the Parable of the Sower. Whether you read in Mathew (13), Mark (4), or Luke (8), Jesus put this story first. His disciples asked for an explanation, but I think the Lord gave us only the broadest brush strokes of his meaning. I think he invited us to meditate on his simple sketch and discover layer upon layer, meaning upon meaning. Perhaps he wanted us to fill in the details.  What if his story is the rough draft and our lives are the finished work? Woe to us if we think of this parable (or any parable) as a story with only one meaning. One sower, four soils, and countless seeds yield ten thousand permutations.

Consider the possibilities. Who is the sower? Why did Jesus use the metaphor of a seed? And why is the sower so careless with the seed? (Or is he?) How should the soil be prepared? Who should do it? How can it be done? The best teacher is not the one who answers a few questions, but one who suggests questions capable of changing your life. Each question gives way to an hour of meditation. Each meditation is a chance for the Spirit to speak.

For example, I began to ask questions of this parable. Why does Jesus describe the harvest from good soil as 30, 60, or 100-fold? What does God expect of me? How can I know whether I’m growing into my full potential as a disciple of Jesus? In short, what is the meaning of a fruitful life?

I began to see that my faith took root in the soil of the North American church, which (like all churches) is a mix of influences both godly and worldly. We are a people who prize action and effort. We judge results quarterly, monthly, and sometimes daily. Our cell phones can give us “market updates” refreshed by the minute. We are not farmers; we are capitalists. Results matter, and they matter now. You either produce results or the boss will get someone who will. Whether you earn minimum wage or Wall Street rewards, you’re only as good as the profit you’ve produced at the end of the day. But God is no capitalist; he is the wise steward of creation. He is the Sower of an imperishable seed.

I was challenged to understand what the sower expected, and when he wanted it; I was challenged to ask what fruit I had grown; and I was challenged to consider when the harvest comes. From my meditation I found great peace in this one idea: my life could (by his grace) produce 30-fold fruitfulness. What if—across the years of my lifetime—I could impact 30 other people with the word of the Kingdom? As I asked these questions pressures of North American life began to fade away. The marketplace pace of modern “ministry” gave way to the unforced rhythms of grace.

I began to see that in a lifetime of 80 years I could “afford” to invest deeply and patiently in the lives of others, without demanding an immediate return. I began to see the wisdom of God in the beauty of the seed and its slow decay. I began to welcome the good news that I did not need to abide alone but that by dying to self there was much fruit ahead. And most warmly, I began to welcome the harvest of my life: my spouse, my children and grandchildren, my neighbors and community. I found contentment that his parable could well be a promise, the promise of a 30-fold life, at the very least.

My friend read Shakespeare’s Hamlet when he was an 18 year-old high school senior. Over the decades he has returned to the story every ten years: at 28, 38, 48, and yes, now at 58. He reports to me that the play is radically different with each reading. The words have not changed, the reader has.

If this fresh experience is true for one who reads, I began to wonder about the one who writes. What we write in our youth may bear no relation to what we think and write in our old age. Which brings me to David, who wrote so many of the Psalms. David, the shepherd boy who became the prophesied hope of Israel, who was then chased by a madman king, then himself became the great king of God’s people. As David aged he became the husband of several wives, the father of many children, and finally an old king—a man with scores to settle. David was, in effect, more than one man: his years and experiences shaped him even as God’s favor and anointing pushed him forward.

When I read David’s psalms I’m left to decide which David wrote what Psalm. Sometimes the introduction of a Psalm tells us plainly, as in Psalm 18 (he was running for his life). But most often we are simply given the words, “A Psalm of David.” We are left to imagine when each Psalm was written and under what circumstances.

Here is an exercise in spiritual imagination: take David’s most famous Psalm—number 23—and imagine it from the mouth of young David, the shepherd boy.

Then read it again, this time hearing the words of a young man on the run for his life against the murderous rage of the insane King Saul.

Or yet again as the newly crowned king of all Israel.

Or (finally) yet again as the dying king who has witnessed the death of his own children and the infighting among those who want to succeed him to the throne. 

Or, in a darker vein, take any of the Psalms where David cries out for God’s justice and rescue, or even for God to take vengeance on David’s enemies: the kind of Psalms C.S. Lewis says could only be written by “ferocious, self-pitying, barbaric men.” (As just one example take a quick look at Psalm 28). As I read these Psalms I imagine a very young David, someone unaware of the events he will face in the decades to come. In the passing years David will discover he himself is capable of lust, adultery, intrigue, murder, and pride. It's a cautionary tale of self-righteousness. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it is a comforting notion that even someone “after God’s own heart” can feel and think such thoughts. Or more simply still, that David was human, no different from you or me. We do not know what the years will bring, or what the events of life will surface in our own feelings and actions.

This exercise can lead us to greater insight, and what’s more, it can lead us to greater humility. The kind of grace which could seal our lips when we are tempted to criticize others because we are so convinced of the rightness of our cause, never realizing that even when we are on the “right side” of an issue, God looks at our hearts and actions far more than our opinions.

Will we be like young David, who rails and demands divine action (or worse, human action) or will we become the kind of person who enters each day with humility, recognizing the fact that our future holds experiences—and attitudes—for which we are not yet prepared?