How much is enough?

"Kamens said on his blog that the airline offered him a $75 refund."

says this article about two young girls who were placed on the wrong flights earlier this week. Considering the situation, I would have considered $75 to be a greater wrong than the mistake itself. How much would the airline have to offer for me to feel properly compensated for the wrong they had done to me and my child?

This begs an important question regarding our faith journey. How much is enough for our relationships with God to be restored so that we move from enemy to friend? outcast to family member? death to life? It's through faith in the death of Jesus as the only payment big enough to pay for our sins. After reading this article, I wondered how God feels about our feeble efforts to make our own way.

"Receiving" the Power of Forgiveness

I've written about forgiveness twice here already. Once about giving it and another about whether it's real. However, something hit me like a ton of bricks today. What about the power of RECEIVING forgiveness? On a real superficial level, a lot of us have experienced the relief of receiving only a warning ticket instead of a sure-fire insurance rate raising speeding ticket. Many of us have been caught in one or more lies and eventually forgiven.

I have offended friends, coworkers, family, . . . . . , in one form or another and caused sometimes very deep hurts. In those times where the offended party extended undeserved forgiveness, I remember the emotional release it created in me. I remember the freedom I felt to resume normal relations with that person. And I remember the awareness of grace that had been extended to me.

Today was one of those days for me. I was very graciously forgiven. I knew I would be eventually offered such, but not this soon. I gained a deeper appreciation of just how much that person cared about me. I witnessed and experienced firsthand the sacrifice of one's own feelings for the importance of relationship and the greater power of love. It was a divine thing.

Today's experience reawakened my appreciation for what has been done for me so I could be on a faith journey. My journey, like the journey of many people, is filled with events that moved me gradually in a specific direction. But it has a definite point in time when I said this is the journey I want to be on and I knew I couldn't start until I received forgiveness. I remember the rush of joy, sorrow, relief, and so many other emotions when I realized that I had been loved enough to be forgiven even though I did not deserve it. It was the moving of divine grace on my life.

As I bask in the warmth of this grace-filled day, I am filled with many thoughts. I'm thinking a lot about grace. I'm thinking about how I have received it. I'm thinking about the power it has given me. And I'm realizing how much power I hold in my hands to give to someone else the next time they need some.

Grace & Hollywood

I thought about writing about the Super Bowl and all the hoopla that comes with it, but quickly got bored with the idea. I instead wanted to comment one more time on End of the Spear. I came across a post on another blog via another blog I read regularly. He touches on an interesting subject which I myself wondered about, but in a slightly different vein. I'll post a link to his blog at the end.

As someone who is concerned about the faith journeys of other people, I wonder how a film like Spear affects the people involved with its production. This is a movie with an obvious Christian message. It is, afterall, about missionaries. I wondered the same thing when The Passion of the Christ came out two years ago and you don't have to be a rocket theologian to know what it's about. I have no reason to believe that everyone involved called themselves a "Christian" just like I have no reason to believe that everyone in my church on any given Sunday would call themselves one either.

I posted last month how overtly Christian themes pop up with regularity in movies all the time. Are the people in those films affected in any way by the presence of those themes and ideas? Do they see and recognize the hands of grace at work around them? For that matter, do we always see the hands of grace at work around us? Do we see the gazillion ways that God is talking to us through the everyday events of our lives? Judging from my own experience, I'd say no. Usually it happens after the fact with a big "a ha" moment. Whether we recognize grace or not, I think it it still working and I think it is steering us in the right directions for our faith journeys.

How have you seen grace working in your life? How has God been talking to you?

BTW, here's the other blog.

End of the Spear - the power of forgiveness

This weekend my wife and I saw what may be the best movie of the year because it is true and gives us a very powerful message. Of course, I'm a little biased because of the content of the message. If you plan on seeing End of the Spear and don't know the story and don't want it spoiled for you, then skip the next two paragraphs or STOP READING NOW ;-)



Man, what a powerful movie. I've known the story of Jim Elliot and the other four missionaries that were killed by the Waedonis (us white Americans called them Acusa's which meant "naked people"). And I knew the ending of how the wives of these men moved into the village ANYWAY because sharing the Gospel was too important. But this story focused very little on Elliot. It centered around Nate Saint, the pilot of the mission and his son Steve. Steve later came back as an adult to live with the Waedoni to help them cope with the change in their society as they tried to integrate into the modern era.

There were a couple of lines that were extremely powerful. Right before Nate Saint takes off in his plane with plans to make contact with the violent Waedoni, his six or seven year old son Steve asks, "Will you use your gun if they attack? Will you defend yourself?" Nate stops and looks at his son and says, "I can't. They aren't ready to go to heaven yet." Forty years after the event, one of the Waeadoni who was part of the attack that killed all five missionaries recounted the story to now adult Steve. He described seeing heaven open up to receive the souls of the men, very much like Stephen witnessesd in Acts chapters 6 & 7. The leader of the tribe who actually killed Nate finally admitted his act to Steve, opening himself up to be killed for his act. Nate's response to Mincayani was, "No one took my father's life. He gave it!"




Forgiveness was woven throughout this film in a powerful way. And what it made it so easy to do was because it was true. We're not talking forgiveness for stealing something from me or for lying to me. This was about forgiving you despite killing someone I loved. And of course the ultimate act of forgiveness was the fact that God allowed US to kill his son so we COULD be forgiven! Now that's a concept that can be hard to wrap your mind around.

I don't have any original earth shattering thoughts of my own. I do have some questions that continually run through my mind. I am curious about the role or frequency of forgiveness in our society. I wonder if I could ever be as forgiving as the families of these men. I wonder if anyone else wonders about forgiveness. I wonder how many people out there are crippled because they need forgiveness and can't find it or maybe they're crippled because they are withholding it. I know where the true power of forgiveness comes from. If you are looking for such a power yourself and don't know where to start, I'd suggest this movie. It will definitely help you on your faith journey.