Grace Notes: April Free Preview Philip Yancey Daily Readings with a Fellow Pilgrim Table of Contents Cover Page Title Page April APRIL 1 Grace-Starved APRIL 2 Absentee Landlord APRIL 3 Free Partners APRIL 4 Unanswered Prayer APRIL 5 Prayers from the Heart APRIL 6 Touching the Void APRIL 7 Scent of Scandal APRIL 8 Servant in Chief APRIL 9 A Time to Laugh APRIL 10 In Search of a Both/And Church APRIL 11 Hope from a Jewish Extremist APRIL 12 A Healthy Start APRIL 13 God’s Face APRIL 14 The Wager APRIL 15 Out of Time APRIL 16 Tragic Lessons APRIL 17 Keeping Faith APRIL 18 Better APRIL 19 Weight of a Nation APRIL 20 Jolt of Tragedy APRIL 21 Happy Ending APRIL 22 New Moon in the Moral Universe APRIL 23 The Flame of Ideals APRIL 24 An Unhappy Life APRIL 25 Staggering on the Path APRIL 26 Truth Minus Grace APRIL 27 Second Chance APRIL 28 Two Spiritual Guides APRIL 29 Grace for All APRIL 30 Safety Net Copyright About the Publisher Share Your Thoughts April APRIL 1 Grace-Starved I saw in Russia in 1991 a people starved for grace. The economy, indeed the entire society, was in a state of free fall, and everyone had someone to blame. I noted that ordinary Russian citizens had the demeanor of battered children: lowered heads, halting speech, eyes darting this way and that. Whom could they trust? I will never forget a meeting in which Moscow journalists wept—I had never before seen journalists weep—as Ron Nikkel of Prison Fellowship International told of the underground churches that were now thriving in Russia’s penal colonies. For seventy years prisons had been the repository of truth, the one place where you could safely speak the name of God. It was in prison, not church, that people such as Solzhenitsyn found God. Ron Nikkel also told me of his conversation with a general who headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The general had heard of the Bible from the old believers and had admired it, but as a museum piece, not something to be believed. Recent events, though, had made him reconsider. In late 1991 when Boris Yeltsin ordered the closing of all national, regional, and local Communist Party offices, his ministry policed the dismantling. “Not one party official,” said the general, “not one person directly affected by the closings protested.” He contrasted that to the seventy-year campaign to destroy the church and stamp out belief in God. “The Christians’ faith outlasted any ideology. The church is now resurging in a way unlike anything I have witnessed.” In 1983 a group of Youth With A Mission daredevils unfolded a banner on Easter Sunday morning in Red Square: “Christ is Risen!” it read in Russian. Some older Russians fell to their knees and wept. Soldiers soon surrounded the hymn-singing troublemakers, tore up their banner, and hustled them off to jail. Less than a decade later, all over Red Square on Easter Sunday people were greeting each other in the traditional way, “Christ is risen!”…“He is risen indeed!” What’s So Amazing About Grace? (256 – 57) APRIL 2 Absentee Landlord F our parables in Matthew 24-25 have a common theme lurking in the background. Consider: an owner who leaves his house vacant, an absentee landlord who puts his servant in charge, a bridegroom who arrives so late the guests fall asleep, a master who distributes talents among his servants and takes off. In effect, Jesus’ four parables anticipated the central question of the modern era, asked by the likes of Nietzsche, Marx, Camus, and Beckett. “Where is God now?” The modern answer is that the landlord has abandoned us. We are free to set our own rules. Deus absconditus. Reading on, I came to one more parable. I knew well the message of the Sheep and the Goats, but I had never noticed its connection with the parables that precede it. This last parable answers the question raised by the others, the issue of the absentee landlord, in two ways. First, it gives a glimpse of the landlord’s return, on judgment day, when there will be hell to pay—literally. Second, the parable gives an insight into the meantime, the mean time, the centuries-long interval when God seems absent. Matthew 25’s answer is at once profound and shocking. God has not absconded at all, but instead has taken on a most unlikely disguise of the stranger, the poor, the hungry, the prisoner, the sick, the ragged ones of earth. “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.” Jesus’ final parable leaves the church with a heavy burden, yet one that offers the only lasting solution for the world. We must oppose anarchy by insisting that there is a leader, a landlord for the entire planet who, unlike some policemen, will dispense perfect justice. Furthermore, until the landlord’s return it is up to us to demonstrate God’s presence. We reach out to needy places not out of paternalism, but out of love. By serving the needy, we serve God in disguise. “Back Page” column, Christianity Today, July 20, 1992 (64) APRIL 3 Free Partners N o one can reduce to a formula the secret to close communion with God. The English bishop Hugh Latimer wrote to a fellow martyr, “I am sometimes so fearful, that I would creep into a mouse-hole; sometimes God doth visit me again with his comfort. So he cometh and goeth.” We may experience a spiritual high one day and spend the next month wandering in the desert. “The wind blows wherever it pleases,” Jesus told Nicodemus. So he cometh and goeth. On the hill behind my mountain home, each spring a pair of red foxes raises a litter of kits. When I whistle a greeting, sometimes the young ones poke their faces out the crevice in the rock, sniffing the air and staring at me with alert, shiny eyes. Sometimes I hear them scrabbling around inside. Sometimes I hear nothing and assume them asleep. Once, when a visitor from New Zealand stopped by, I took him to the den, warning him that he may see and hear nothing at all. “They are wild animals, you know,” I said. “We’re not in charge. It’s up to them whether they make an appearance or not.” A bold young fox did poke his nose out of the den that day, thrilling my visitor, and a few weeks later I received a letter from him, now back home in New Zealand. As he reflected on it, oddly enough, my comment about foxes helped him understand God. He had just gone through a long season of depression. Sometimes God seemed as close as his wife or children. Sometimes he had no sense of God’s presence, no faith to lean on. “God is wild, you know,” he wrote. “We’re not in charge.” “Come near to God and he will come near to you,” wrote James, in words that sound formulaic. James does not put a time parameter on the second clause, however. He reminds me that keeping company with God involves two parties, and I have an important role to play in the relationship. As James suggests, I can purify my heart and humble my spirit. I am learning to take responsibility for my part and then leave the rest to God. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (207 – 8) APRIL 4 Unanswered Prayer A s I was writing on unanswered prayer, my wife recommended that I interview some senior citizens about prayer. “Most of them pray, and they’ve been at it a long time,” she said. “Surely they’ll have some wisdom for you.” She was right. I accompanied her to the retirement center where she assists as a chaplain, and I heard one miracle story after another. One woman had felt a sudden urge to leave a card game and go home. As she walked in the door she saw that a candle had burned to the nub, igniting a bouquet of plastic roses—a fire she was able to smother with a pillow just in time. Another told of remarkable survival stories from World War II. Another told of her husband choking on a homemade cinnamon roll, just as two paramedics walked past who saved his life by performing the Heimlich maneuver. I heard, too, of prayers for world peace and against injustice. One African- American senior reminisced about praying while growing up as a second-class citizen in the South. Who could imagine then the changes she would live through? Although I probed for accounts of unanswered prayers, most of the seniors preferred to talk about answered prayers. All could tell of family tragedies and health breakdowns, but somehow these events did not shake their faith in prayer. After our meeting, however, I wandered through a portion of the facility that cares for seniors who need more assistance. They lay in beds or sat in wheelchairs. I tried talking to these seniors too, but the lights in their minds had gone out. Any secrets they had learned about prayer lay hidden beyond retrieval. I drove away from the facility more convinced than ever that the only final solution to unanswered prayer is Paul’s explanation to the Corinthians: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” No human being, no matter how wise or how spiritual, can interpret the ways of God, explain why one miracle and not another, why an apparent intervention here and not there. Along with the apostle Paul, we can only wait, and trust. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (247)