Redemption - Experiencing the Lower Case "R"

God is still in the business of healing and deliverance. Every day. Forgiveness, salvation and redemption are the things of His kingdom. No miracle is too big or too small.

I think I am finally beginning to understand redemption. I get capital “R” Redemption – Jesus dying for me on the cross – but small “r” redemption has never really made sense to me. When people spoke of it, I suppose I didn’t really believe them. Or Him. Okay, so something good came after something bad. But the bad thing still happened. I thought of the times I took my children to get their vaccines. A few painful jabs in the arm, with that unmistakable smell of hospital… They were too young to understand the protective benefit they were receiving, so how did we try to ease the pain? The public health nurse gave them a sticker. A sticker?! There is no way any of my kids would tell you that any sticker, even a Transformers one, was worth the experience of a sanitizer-smelling stranger stabbing them in the arm with a needle, their own mom an accomplice. But that was my view of redemption. A Dora the Explorer Band Aid stuck on a broken heart.

I remember reading about a couple whose infant had died. The father said that “God redeemed their loss.” What on earth could that mean? It sounded like the kind of ridiculous believer-speak of fundamental televangelists that freaked me out. God could bless them with a hundred other children, but they could never replace the unique life that was lost. At best they might be a distraction from the ache. But redemption? No way.

It’s not like when your car gets stolen, and your insurance pays for a new one. It’s not like replacing your old phone, or a sock with a hole in it. Cars, phones and socks can be replaced. Not children. I always hated the end of Job. (Well, I didn’t really like any of it, but the end was the worst.) “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters.” Job 41.12-13. Yeah, so he had twice as many animals as before. Great. But ten of his children died! So God gave him ten new ones? The new kids are indeed a blessing, but how on God’s not-always-so-green earth does that make up for the loss of ten beloved lives? How is this redemption?

But wait, don’t I believe in the God who can do “infinitely more than we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3.20)? That means I need to really trust that He can do things that I think are absolutely impossible. Like redemption.

Yesterday I experienced, for the first time that I recognized, the miracle of small “r” redemption. And to me it feels no less remarkable than capital “R” Redemption. (And resurrection is incredibly remarkable to me.) In a situation that has caused pain and anger, fear and shame for over twenty years, God worked a miracle. Out of that suffering He blessed me with compassion, forgiveness, and healing. He didn’t take the awful thing that happened away, but He took away its power, its ugliness. This is not like  I dropped my ice cream cone so God gave me a new one… The memory is not gone, but it is changed. He delivered me from the bondage I was stuck in. I think that is redemption. Yes, there have been many tears, but they became cleansing. Yes, I was clean, finally clean and whole after so many years of feeling dirty and broken.

I was never able to figure out how to put this burden down in my own strength, but Jesus stretched out His arms and took the burden from me, and now I feel light, like I can’t even remember what it felt like to carry it for so long. And now I sound like one of those over-the-top over-zealous TV preachers, but how can I not speak the truth? It all sounds crazy when we don’t believe, but when you experience it for yourself there is nothing crazy about it… it’s crazy how wonderful it is, but not that kind of weird crazy  that is just so, well, weird. And hard to trust. I know it sounds crazy. So did the Apostle Paul: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (I Corinthians 1.18) I know that power, and I know it is God.

God heals bodies and hearts and minds and memories. I think I used to believe that was true for others, but maybe not for me. I knew Jesus could redeem me from my sins, but it never occurred to me that he could redeem me from someone else’s sins. But He has. I have this beautiful treasure chest that He gave me, but I kept putting all kinds of junk in it – a beautiful and incredible vessel filled with pain and ugliness, sin and rot. And I forgot my Father had the key! He opened the chest, took out all the crap, and filled it with Himself. God delights in surprising me, lavishing His love on me, showing me that I am indeed His beloved daughter.

I still don’t like the story of Job much. But I now see that the redemption Job received from God was not donkeys or camels or children. It was an overwhelming revelation of how much God truly loved Him, and knowing, really deeply knowing the depths of His love for us is a miracle. (And I have to trust that those children are with God now… that God is not bound by my limited sense of justice or heaven or anything.)

I used to think of redemption in economic terms – you take something that is inherently worthless, like a gift card, merely a piece of plastic, and trade it for something of value, something that is worth something to you. But God’s redemption is far beyond that. He doesn’t just redeem worthless things, He redeems awful things, painful things, evil things.

It sounds crazy to a lot of you, I know, I can hardly believe it myself. God re-routed my neural pathways, rewrote my operating code, took out my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh. He pruned off my rotten branches, and promises to tenderly feed and water me with His Body and His Word. None of these analogies really work, because this is a case of what is impossible for man is possible with God. (Luke 18.27) 

Healing. Forgiveness. Salvation. Deliverance. Redemption.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” John 14.26-27

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Isaiah 43.1b

Thirty-nine

So today is my thirty-ninth birthday. For most people it is probably not a very significant milestone, except by virtue of being only one year away from the big 4-0. I myself am relieved to turn 39, or rather to no longer be 38. Thirty-eight has this particular connotation for me:

 

  Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda… Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed… and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5.2-6)

 

“Do you want to get well?” It seems like a rhetorical question, if not a stupid one. If you have a broken leg or cancer or a cold don’t you want to get well? Isn’t it a no-brainer? This man has apparently been waiting by this pool for 38 years as an invalid… obviously he wants to get well, right?

 

Some things aren’t as cut and dry as they seem. First of all, Jesus doesn’t ask stupid or rhetorical questions. It is a serious question and he wants an honest answer. We would expect the invalid to respond with a heartfelt “yes!” whether he realized who Jesus was or not. But instead of giving Jesus a straight answer, this is what he says:

 

 “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (John 5.7)

 

 He gives Jesus an excuse. He doesn’t tell Jesus if or why he wants to be healed; he tells him why he can’t be. And he blames it on somebody else, in fact the 38 other people that had presumably been healed right in front of him over the years. This is a man who believes in miracles – he has witnessed many – he just doesn’t believe them for himself.

 

How I relate to this fellow. I would love to say I have the tenacity of the woman with the bleeding issue who pushed her way through the crowd just to touch the fringe of Jesus’ robe. She had gone from doctor to doctor for 12 years with no success, and still she maintained the unwavering expectation that just a touch from Jesus would heal her. And it did. What a woman of faith. (Luke 8:43-48)

 

But I must admit I tend to be more like the man at the pool – offering excuses and deflecting the question. As much as I want to respond to the question, “Do you want to get well?” with a “yes”, I seem to respond with a “yes, but…”

 

Yes, but you don’t understand.

Yes, but it’s so hard.

Yes, but I’m so tired.

Yes, but it’s not fair.

Yes, but I can’t.

 

 

I feel like that man, but my paralysis is of a different kind. I am paralysed by fear, by anxiety, by depression, by despair. I have spent 38 years afraid. 38 years telling myself why I need to be afraid, why I will always be anxious, why I can’t help being depressed. 38 years paralysed beside the healing waters making excuses.

 

Thirty-eight represents that pointed question and my pathetic answers. Thirty-eight years on the sidelines are enough.

 

So I will say, “yes, Jesus. I want to be made well.” What does it mean to be made well? I have a hard time even imagining a life not ruled by fear, a life where my faith overcomes that fear and brings peace and joy. But Jesus came that I may have joy in this life, and have it in abundance. (John 10.10) I can’t even imagine this kind of life. I am so grateful we serve a God that does not rely on our own understanding, but a God “who can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3.20) And when the negative self-talk and doubts and ruminations threaten to bring out the “buts”, I will say “I believe. Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

 

As much as I would love Jesus to say, as he did to the woman who was bleeding, “My daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace,” (Luke 8:48) I don’t know if that I how I am to be made well – in an instance. Perhaps true healing and restoration for me is not simply an anxiety-free life where I happily hop on planes and ride up and down glass elevators, but rather it is a journey of letting the Word and grace and love of God seep into my soul to become my reality. When the moment of fear comes I am able to say with confidence, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, of what then shall I fear?” (Psalm 27.1) When the old despair threatens to creep back in I will know that the joy of the Lord is my strength. (Nehemiah 8.10) It is an awakening, a realization that even when my flesh is rebelling and my mind is full of doubt that I truly can do “all things in Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4.13)

 

Thirty-eight was the question. Thirty-nine will be my response – an answer I will likely need to repeat every day for the rest of my life – I will need to say it with authority amid whispers of doubt and shadows of despair. But I will say yes.

 

Birthdays come once a year, but the opportunity to be re-born comes with every moment.

 

 

Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again… born of water and the Spirit. John 3.3, 5

 

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” John 5.8