Last week I started "Light Force." It chronicles the efforts of Brother Andrew (who wrote "God's Smuggler") in his attempts to bring the Gospel of Christ to bear upon the violent conflicts in the Middle East - Lebanon and Palestine specifically. I'm blown away by his patience and moreover by the powerful effects of the Gospel.
Last night I started, "Irresistable Revolution," by Shaine Claiborne. Not that much older than I am, this Eastern University graduate placed one of my best friends from high school in the throes of his radical vision to bring the Gospel of Christ to some of the most materially needy in Philadelphia - the homeless. In his quest to understand what "being a Christian" really means, he spends a summer in Calcutta, India, working with Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity. One passage he write hit home significantly in which he comments on John 14:12, "Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father"
"...what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touches lepers. And the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives in us."
The "big" things are not so much what matter, as the love that is manifested with each action. I came to see again that Christ is not so much to be trusted and admired because of His tremendous acts, but because of His love that undergirds all that He does - and the gracious manifestation of that love that we get to experience toward others because the Spirit dwells in us. May we all do "greater things than these" by giving the Spirit greater reign!
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