Springs of Grace

You know I used to be afraid that this couldn't be God. God could not be this gracious. Grace too good to be true. Freedom too easy. I was afraid that I had created a god that I liked, a god that fit in with what I wanted and how I wanted to live....but then again this wasn't any of my doing. I was content to be miserable for the rest of my life because, afterall, that was The Way. I was stolen away to another way of living, a way in which I had to learn to accept not a way that I conjured up. Who has the brain capacity to do that? Who has that kind of power over their mind? Nevertheless, I was afraid that I possessed that level of cunning and deception so as to create this god I was seeing, this God I was seeing.

But this year God's been bringing all these people into the clearing. People who, near and far, are seeing the same face of God I've been seeing, asking the same questions, challenging the same ideas, and experiencing the same grace, coming the to the same peaks and seeing the same sights.

It would be one thing if this was the popular teaching, but it isn't. It would be one thing if we were all under the same roof, but we're not. It would be one thing if we were all reading the same words and hearing the same talks, but we aren't.

We are people who have found springs of living water bubbling up from the same underground Source- a network of rivers beneath the surface connecting, fueling, and carrying us all. These springs are bursting up through the ground all over and I'm finding these springs in unlikely and holy people. I'm finding these springs in old friends, new friends, and strangers alike. I'm finding that they too tapped in, they too hear the song being sung in the distance, they too move to the "unforced rhythms of grace", they too are seekers and are finding treasures they long thought myth.

And that's how I know that it's real. That's how I know it's not just me and I'm not crazy and off course. That's how I know I am not caught up in some self-forged idolatry.

If this Christian life feels heavy to you, if you've ever wondered, "Is this really it?", if you've become frustrated with the church and its demands, if you are sick of trying harder, if you are spent on works, if you are burnt out, worn out, and tired...you are not alone. You are not crazy for questioning it all. You are not damned for your frustrations. You are not a dissappointment for your weariness. You are not off course. You are not alone here. There are springs all around you, underground sources waiting to be tapped into that will refresh and awaken you just as you are with all your doubts, frustrations, burdens, weaknesses, questions, and opinions.

There are people like Sarah Bessey, Micah J. Murray, Mandy Steward, Brennan Manning, Frederick Buechner, Graham Cook, Baxter Kruger, and so many others who get you. There are artists and songwriters and musicians all about you who speak this language like Foy Vance, Brooke Fraser, Mumford & Sons, Johnnyswim, Joe Pug, Ricky Kendall, Listener, Lord Huron, Michael Kiwanuka, Run River North and countless others. You may not fit in your home church anymore. You may not click with your former comany. But you are not abandoned. There's a whole slew of vagabonds waiting for you here and will join you on this winding path we call the strait and narrow.