Redemptive. A friend, unbeknownst
to her, recently reminded me that this is the perfect word to describe the past
year of my life. I keep staring at the
word, letting it roll around in my head.
Every form of it is beautiful to me.
Redeem. Redemption.
Redemptive. Redeemer. My heart has gone through this slow but
life-giving process; a process that I never had hope would happen.
Twelve months ago, my view of the
church establishment or organized religion was bleak at best. I wholeheartedly proclaim to follow the way
of Jesus, but I’d lost hope that the church as a whole could ever pull
themselves together enough to represent Him well. I looked around me and saw nothing but
indifference, immaturity, selfishness, pride, and self-righteous thinking. And for whatever reason, it felt like all
this indifference and immaturity and selfishness was directly affecting me,
making my life a living hell. This wasn’t
a new thing; I’d experienced glimpses of this cynicism over the course of my
entire life. But it had become too much
to bear, and I seriously considered walking away from the church
institution.
I keep trying to put my finger on
when change started happening. But it’s
like trying to remember falling asleep or waking up… sometimes it happens so
slowly, so gradually, that you don’t even notice when the process has started,
or when it’s complete. Maybe the
process started when one of the most genuine pastors I have ever met decided to
take me under his wing; decided to take responsibility for this broken,
cynical, beat up kid who was trying to make heads or tails of the church. Maybe it started when a friend looked me in the
eye and shed a tear over the hurt that I was feeling. Maybe it started when a person who hurt me
came to me with a genuine apology, a genuine sense of regret, and I finally let
her words hit my heart.
I don’t know when it
started. But in every sense of the
word, redemption was taking place. I
was sure of it. Broken things were being
restored. Wrongfully forgotten things
were being rightfully remembered. And
hope, however slowly, was coming alive in me. I have a personality that lends itself to constant internal struggle and
tension. I’m an “idealistic pessimist”. I have all these pie-in-the-sky ideas. I have dreams of grandeur. I daydream of a utopian, mission-filled
church. But in the midst of all that,
I have little hope that any of it would ever happen, because humanity is one
giant failure. So I’m essentially left
feeling defeated and deflated and disgusted.
It’s a vicious cycle, but I’ve learned to embrace it.
And maybe this redemption is just
part of the cycle. I hope not… it doesn’t
feel like part of the cycle. It feels
different. The type of hope I have feels pure, real,
God-given. Wherever it’s come from, I
have it. It's here now. I have this burning hope and
expectancy of what the church can become.
I’ve seen the tiniest evidences of it. I’ve seen what can happen when people let go
of their pride for a second. I’ve
experienced first-hand what can happen when, just for a moment, we decide that
it doesn’t matter who’s right, or who’s wrong, or who hurt who first. I’ve seen what can happen when a few people
look at humility like it’s not an option, but like it’s the only way to
live. And that breathes hope into
me.
That, to me, is the very purpose
of the church. Yeah, I know the Holy
Spirit is the One who essentially fills us with hope. But it’s the church who reminded me of
it. It’s the church who has been
speaking life back into me. It’s the
church who picked up this pathetic excuse of a Christ-follower and gave me a
second – or tenth – chance. It’s the
church who put up with my anger, cynicism, and bitterness, and listened and
stayed with me as they watched it all melt away. Little did I know, the church is the reason
all the anger, cynicism, and bitterness was melting in the first place.
I’m awake now. I’m not in the fog; the gray space between
wake and sleep, dream and consciousness.
I’m fully awake, and I see redemption all around me. I see redemption in me.
