You Can’t Measure Volume with a 30 cm Ruler

I fear so often I have taken a simplistic view of life and ministry in my past. Having gone through some major adjustments these past 2 years, moved continents and countered movements, seen some major flaws in me and others, wrestled with the basics of my identity again…

And I am now happy to report that volume cannot be measured in one dimension.

What I mean is that life is complex. I come from an era of rational thought, where Modern Man convinced himself that he could conquer all by rational deduction, thorough investigation and clever invention.

Life has too much “je ne sais quoi”; too many twists and turns; too much angst and exuberance.

Life has too many questions for their to be too many solutions.

But still, even from our pulpits we can practice our 30cm reductionism. Follow these three steps. Just evangelize. Do God’s work and He will work things out for you. Just say yes. Sing! Pray! Give!

For me personally, the rapid changes in the past year have been massive. Unutterable, unfathomable at times. It has become clear to me that teaching and points of strategy can sometimes be more like vinegar to the teeth. Not completely unlike Job’s grate friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. I have too often been that kind of friend to myself, instead of finding the Friend that sticks closer than a brother. 

Job’s friends have all the answers for this cause and effect world. Like the man who wrote a book on parenting, but had no kids himself. They have answers, but they have not love. Oh dear, how often I have had that condition. Loveless answers. Quick responses. The recipes for Christian success.

But…

Why did Joseph go to jail?
Why did Saul hurl javelins at David?
Why was Jeremiah cast into a cistern?
Why was Stephen stoned to death?
Why was Paul covered in scars?
Why was Jesus hanged on a tree?

The answers to these questions, and truly the answers to our anxieties and unfathomable pathos at times, is not found in more knowledge, more Christian strategy, more behavior-changing efforts.

It is found in Christ.

It is found in this mysterious romance; this cosmic dark matter of the hidden things of God.
But out of the immensity of what He has not shown, He speaks and invites us deeper in.
This journey of the heart; this pathway to the Unknown, is not of this world. It contains within it mortal fleshly offence, and whispered requests nonsensical to the rational man.

“Give away all you have?”.
“Suffer for a while”
“Do not fear what they fear”
“Trust me”
“I am working deep within you”
“Leave your nation and go to a place I will show you”
“Let the dead bury their dead”
“As sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things”.

So, what is my conclusion? Simply this – the only way to build others up is by faith in Jesus, by preaching the Word as living and lively from Jesus, as a walk of deep relationship, not functional partnership.

We have erred by believing we can name and teach and explore our way into our future. “You cannot think your way into the future; you can only believe”. ONLY BELIEVE. Trust implies many unknowns.

Let me make this even plainer. You don’t get people to be generous, by teaching on generosity. You don’t get people happy by teaching on laughter. You don’t raise up a church by preaching on the church. You don’t get people eternity minded by preaching on deathly things. You don’t bring a man to justification by helping him justify himself. You don’t often help a man in distress by trying to find practical answers for his distress.

You show him Jesus. You show people the love of God. You find grace and peace in your own walk, before trying to help others find it. You walk humbly and don’t spend your whole life trying to hide your weaknesses, as though that qualifies you to help the weak. The weak help the weak, because in our weakness we are strong. The humble are exalted and the barren women sing for joy. The poor are rich and the rich are poor.

We all know when we have been kissed by Jesus through a friend’s ministry, or when we have been measured with that 30cm ruler, and then squared away. Like the suicidal lemming hanging by its neck from a branch – and 2 lemming friends, as they are jumping off the cliff, saying “poor old Fred, I thought he looked depressed lately”.

Many claim their stake in love,
Hearts weighed down still weighing up.
Can morbid men make me to move?
Can I be filled from those fed-up?
Love is the system’s centre
That flows incessant through deepspace;
Love is the rhyme and canter
That measures out the human race.
Love gives my heart its beating,
Love keeps the galaxies afloat -
Such is mankind’s central heating,
This atmospheric overcoat.
The One Who watches sees us;
The Source of Love, my Jesus

Bless you, bless you

Nick