the jagged line

sitting in bible study years ago, i remember me, as the leader asking my guys to draw a line graph illustrating the ups and downs of their spiritual life over the last 5 years. Most everyone has a crooked, jagged, up and down, heartbeat, line. Only one student had a straight perfect diagonal line up. He must have been lying. I asked each of them to look back and think what was going on in their life that caused their line to drop down? what was wrong in their lives? what sin was there? how can we learn from our past in order to keep our line in a gradual increase of spiritual growth? BULLSHIT....ALL BULLSHIT. so i have now learned. it is in the crooked line of our life that beauty is found. it is in all the lows and the highs that we are created and made and formed, transformed, into the changed, imaginative, mature, beautiful persons that matter and love and live life to the full.

when we begin to build walls around the high points in order to try to stay there, in order to stay in our safe places, our boxes of systematic theology, and safe traditions, where life becomes static, dull, dead. God will begin to melt, to destroy, to break down the walls that we build around Him, that is if we begin to cry out to Him to save us. but salvation doesn't always look pretty. salvation is not always safe. salvation can mean struggle, pain, humility. but eventually, eventually, there will be a day, when we look back and see our lives, the up and down mess, the pains and the blessings, the continual search for meaning, purpose, satisfaction, that we will see it all and with God by our side, we will call His creation with our own, beautiful. in all its wildness.

that is redemption. that is conversion. that is the kingdom of heaven here on earth. welcome home.