Redemption or Sometimes All You Can Do is Breathe.

A few years ago, I pastored a church. Yep...me. For many of my friends who knew me back in the days in SE Texas, this is one of those things that many of them would never have imagined for me or my life. Quite frankly, at that time...neither could I. God is funny that way. Anyway, in that church, there was one family that sat together that stood as my image of redemption. They were a unique mixture of exes, love children, and steps...that all sat and worshiped together; they came to the Lord's Table and broke bread together. It was weird (in a good way) and wonderful experience; it was the Kingdom of God right there in our midst. It was a picture of redemption.

Redemption, in my reading and limited understanding, is, in essence, God taking the broken things and using them for divine and eternal purposes; a re-making of all things into something new...like my life and the life of the family in my church. This is different from God "willing" something to happen, as so often many of life's tragic events are interpreted. It is more along the lines of God transforming the broken things and tragedies of life into something beautiful and new. It is stealing the "last word" from the things that try to destroy us and declaring that God is ultimately the beginning and the end; the Alpha and Omega, to borrow from the Bible.

Too often, in the pain that comes from existing in a broken world, we fail to realize this. We find ourselves wrestling with a God who claims to be the definition of love and goodness, but our experience(s) are to the contrary (this seems especially so in times of tragedy). Faithful followers of Christ try to offer words of comfort; most are true, just spoken at the wrong time. We want to hope and believe, but deep down inside we are dominated by fear and doubt. In those moments, I have always reminded myself (and others) to just breathe.

In breathing, we recognize that we are still alive. With each successive breath, we take one small step beyond the chaos seeking to destroy us. In breathing, we also can be reminded that the One who breathed life into creation at the beginning is the breath of life that will enable us to walk in our time of struggle...and create something beautiful out of our chaos; something more beautiful than our eyes have seen or our minds could conceive.

Redemption.


Grace and Peace.