Unexpected Grace

I don't really know why they came.

I didn't know why they had showed up at my doorstep months earlier--strangers with huge smiles and easy laughter that filled empty spaces in my heart. My friend, to whom one was less of a stranger, had invited them to visit, but then ended up being out of town when they came, and after some discussion, Eric and I invited them over for our apartment's weekly "curry night" (ie - make a huge pot of food with enough leftovers to last through the week's teaching schedule). To our surprise, they came and talked...and sang...and prayed...and blessed. They slipped out the door into the night afterwards and moved on to their next assignment, next place. And I still didn't know why they had come.

I should have recognized the same signs in the gathering this last weekend. This week was all set up to have been one of the busiest weeks of the year--regular teaching hours plus Christmas event this weekend plus music rehearsals and program arranging for a concert Sunday plus a visiting pastor and planning/leading church worship plus prayer week plus new Bible study that needs prep plus...you get the picture. When my friend told me that 5 visitors were coming to start the week off, I finally answered something like, "Sure, okay. That's fine. We'll work something out," but I might have been crying with exhaustion on the inside. My friend told me that these were 24-7 prayer people...people who pray and listen and talk. They were coming from around the world and collectively brought experiences and talents that were rather staggering. And I asked again, internally, "Why are they coming here?"

They came on Sunday evening (7 instead of 5!) and talked about prayer with us and the pastor and a few church members, sharing stories of revelations and miracles, but mostly talking about relationship, trust, and love. I heard the words as if from a distance...the price of "church work" has been that God is my boss, exacting hours and numbers and budgets. The price of church work in a disaster-hit area has been that God destroys, kills, asks for sacrifice, commands us to suffer for his sake. The price of the last year here, where those things are combined, has been sometimes too awful for words, and I have paid out so much of my ability to recognize God's love. We listened, and prayed, and then led them to different futons set up in small houses--hospitality in the close quarters of Japan. And I woke up tossing and sleepless in the night, thinking of all the details that could not be forgotten and half-dreaming of miserable business meetings and the difficult navigation of culture and choices and responsibilities and boundaries. And I wondered again why they had come.

The morning brought eggs and oatmeal and bread and lots of coffee. And they started trickling into Eric's and my apartment for breakfast and conversation...bringing their laughter and smiles and caring questions and English conversation and the precious wisdom of older mentors who work with the everlasting and ever-young God. And they talked about God as our loving Father, as One who delights in His children. They talked about the Creator God, who makes each person unique and amazing, somehow each a reflection of the magnificence of the Creator. And they talked about grace, which abounds over and above our numbers, budgets, hours, actions, sufferings, commandments, disobedience, and more. They talked about how wide and long and high and deep the love of God is, that the last word with God is not death but life, not judgment but mercy, not slave but son or daughter. And they blessed us to sin boldly (in the Lutheran translation) and to be loved fiercely by our Father and to grasp that love through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I remember two years ago, when a church member asked me what I thought of the church in Japan...how with tears in my eyes, I replied "I don't think my church in Japan knows about God's love or grace." I was amazed this week to find how much I don't know about God's love or grace. For the first time in a long while, I was not hearing gospel-words from a distance, encased in a shell of obligation and responsibility, but hearing them for me: "How wide, and long, and high, and deep is the love of God for His daughter!" Watching our visitors, one could see that the love's width, depth, and height are not "mastered"--or learned, realized, and boxed up with a bow. They were still experiencing it, even as they told us about it. In the midst of dripping tears and sloshing coffee, in the midst of strangers sharing together, it was real--a family love, a Father's love, an unconditional grace.

How do I hold onto this grace, this love? How indeed, when all the world and the church seems against it? First, I guess, is the realization that I am not clinging to the edge of a crumbling cliff, but wrapped in the arms of my Father, who does the holding. Second is praying for the Spirit, knowing that the "love-joy-peace-patience..." (cue the children's song that always pops into my head when I think of the fruit of the Spirit :)) is nothing I can create with willpower or by bending my character to a moral code of kindness and hope, but created through the Spirit of the Creator God.

If you were to ask me now, "Why did they come--those pastors and strangers and leaders in different nations? Why did they come to your city, to your home?", my first response would still probably be, "I have no idea--at least, not for a 'logical, responsible' sort of an answer." But I think...maybe they came because God was trying to give us a miracle. He was trying to speak into us the miracle of His love...speak truth into a net of deception. It makes me laugh now--a laugh of rejoicing in the Father's love. God organized a 7-person, powerful "hit team" to get His message of love across to us.

Japan is such a strange place. The driest, most difficult land I have ever known...and yet the ground for the craziest, most extravagant miracles I have seen. Please Father, continue to shower your love here...