NEW BEGINNINGS
Life is a collection of new beginnings. It should be. Some are new radical beginnings; these are interspersed with small corrective beginnings. . . Without beginnings, our life becomes stagnant and predictable, guarded against the perpetual waves of change. Changes that come from without are neither helpful nor harmful in themselves. It is how we respond to changes that determine the outcomes.
More important still is the inner growth and turmoil that beckon our response. Inner growth and turmoil are more intricately related than we give them credit. Inner turmoil often serves as great opportunities for growth. Inner turmoil happens because it triggers or disturbs something deep within. Beginnings in our life are intentional and thoughtful responses and adjustments (sometimes radical or gradual) to inner turmoil.
God expects us to live our life with new beginnings. The freedom of God grants us humanly impossible-to-discern type of boundaries we often don’t know what to do with it. Often, we interpret the freedom of God as God being too distanced, unengaged, and uncaring. At the same time, life without freedom cannot truthfully be lived, as freedom fundamentally is freedom to be. How can one live life without freedom to be oneself? Freedom to be oneself is the ultimate ground on which we experience the freedom of God. It is within the parameter of such freedom that we perceive, discover, and forge new beginnings. (Beyond the freedom of God lies the yet another humanly-impossible-to-discern expansive love of God. So freedom rests upon the fail-proof safety net of God’s expansive love.) To say that God is the God of freedom means that God is a God of risks. At first glance, this sounds too risky and dangerous. However, God’s risks are ultimately couched and controlled under God’s goodness and protection while to us, risks seem out of control and just plain wild. Our out of control-ness of risks can never outweigh God’s controlled risks.
I am at a brink of a new beginning in my life. This phase feels weightier and categorically different from any other beginnings I have undertaken in my life. I feel more grounded and find myself approaching life more from a fundamental and lucid point of view than before. I’ve been part of the evangelical missions movement for well over 30 years. It is true that within those years, I’ve pivoted life and ministry with small (and perhaps predictable) beginnings but all within the evangelical missions boundaries. My evangelical faith has gifted me with countless blessings but also has produced serious flaws and blind spots that do not help me navigate this life. Both my wife and I realize that evangelicalism has been and is indeed part of our spiritual heritage and we are who we are because of its impact and blessings. At the same time, we see that the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus is not identical to evangelical faith. I sense what God is inviting us is to pursue the way (that is narrow and generous at the same time) of Jesus and to the Kingdom of God beyond rigid religiosity that is antithetical to the Kingdom.
More specifically, one of the ways of Jesus I am deeply captivated by is the dignity and respect for each human being that Jesus modeled and taught. To me, this is and should be fundamental to how we usher in God’s kingdom on this earth. Thus, the Kingdom is a collection of each human being fully alive and each human culture fully transformed, essentially to be themselves, neither a uniformed collection of same kinds of individuals and people nor a prescribed hierarchical structure of humanity. Without this premise and foundation, we force others to become like us, believe what we believe (as in a set of belief systems), and act according to a standard set of behavioral code that stifles rather than empowers.