My Magnificent Today

I thought I had ruined my chances at making this a significant day.
I had not slept much last night. I had, instead, spent the darkness leap – frogging over the hours, honestly, but ineffectively deliberating over issues that seemed to disappear with the light of day. Then I awoke with a start! My hands were still poised over my keyboard, mid – sentence, my neck aching and my head swollen and sweaty – and the rare Vancouver sun beating down on me. I had to drag myself forward, reluctant to admit that I had failed the first two tasks of the day – that is, to complete one good sleep and to get up ready for the new morning. Then after multiple checks of the clock and little affirmations from inside my computer, when I finally accepted my failing, I had to push again, reluctant to engage in the inevitable humiliation of rushing to catchup.

Thankfully, in this, my Father’s world, we don’t need to chase after the wonders of a new day. They are sitting, waiting for us to stumble – no matter how slowly, into them.

And stumble into them, I did.
By the time I arrived in my 4th class for the day, I was almost sure that this was a great day. I wasn’t exactly sure why. There hadn’t really been any outstanding events, no themes to pull the day’s threads together. I still felt I was snooping around, not quite belonging, not quite shining. It still felt awkward and inadequate. Yet, I could sense something different. No, not different – it had always been there, stirring and rumbling. But over the past 9 days it had finally begun to break its way into my conscious thoughts and now, it was starting to surface…tentatively bubbling up, gently, but ruthlessly flowing over my past 5 years like rivers of molten lava, turning what had, yesterday, been my challenges, into relics of a previous era.
But I must be careful. These things hammer through my strongholds like fortified battering rams – and yet, when I go to touch it, describe it, whisper it, they are as fragile as smoke. I am almost afraid of losing a grip on the very thing I am celebrating. But even if I do, this hammering will still continue. And eventually, what comes in spurts and bursts will eventually flood the earth like water covers the sea.

Surely this story will take many tries to tell it right – and it will take many years to tell it truly. And perhaps one day, I will better understand the specific contribution of each particular event in these last few weeks. For now I shall not even try to string it together. Perhaps in another day’s blog or in a quiet café over a friendly latte more insight will surface. For tonight, it feels like a duffle bag of doodads: a good chat with ol’ Tai & Drew, a beautiful run through the chirping forests and the winding sun – dappled trails of the Pacific Spirit Reserve, the long frustrating dead ended night, the short corridor conversation with Prof Darryl Johnson, the unexpected chat with Dr Mark & Sue Strom and the freezing walk home in the rain, the diverse mixture of perspectives in our class discussion on Leadership, my own estranged, detached observer status wandering around Regent…

Anyway. Here I am with Professor Waltke in the last afternoon class. He is teaching about Cultus: “the socially established acts and words in which a congregation’s encounter with the deity is established, developed and brought to its ultimate goal.” He is expounding the intricacies of the Old Covenant as it co – exists with the New… and the sudden question that leaps to mind is, “Why on earth am I doing all of this?” I mean, there are many ways to pursue God and many ways to serve Him in our lifetime. Pastoring a church is not necessarily the best, or the easiest or the safest!

At this point, although I had asked this question many times before, it felt like I had suddenly arrived at the right place to ask the question. It was as though I was finally ‘of age’ and ready to peer into the sacred chambers of my soul. I had surely asked these questions a million times before. But I had never found this answer – the answer – that was always there, but hadn’t matured enough to differentiate itself from all the other debris within.
Dr. Waltke was kindly continuing his highly relevant, painstaking detail about blood sacrifices and sacred sites. Meanwhile the curtains had drawn back the heavens had opened and a ray of light was beaming on a solitary wildflower amongst the rocks: the first sign of many to come.


Why am I here? There are many reasons for the things I have done, and the things I do. And I had usually understood my reason for being there, within the framework of what I was doing.
And so, the reason I was there was to preach. To lead. To manage. And they are the reasons I have a pulpit, a position and an office. But they are not the reasons I am here and not anywhere else. Why here? Why not in a different organization? Why not in a different city? Why not in a different job? And suddenly it was as clear as a bell.

I remembered a tempestuous, flamboyant 14 year old girl in a MacRob uniform who desperately wanted to be known by God, and to know Him. I remembered sobbing with a gawky asthmatic kid we used to call Champion, knowing that his own spiritual strength would somehow be the yardstick of the next generation’s strength. I remembered holding my dear friend Matt in a hug so tight and so long, longing and yearning for some, more meaningful way to communicate, to express, to put into action the deep love I could not put into words. I thought of Darren, who had laughed with me through a whole miraculous night of deliverance, then trembled through the following weeks in wretched fear of those demons, more real and constant to him than my own intermittent companionship and Christ’s own presence. I thought of my buddy Terence, who had stood by me with simple, cheery pragmatism while plowing through the most destabilizing of his own family disasters. I remembered my medical colleagues Yiyuen and Yishi and Vicky as we wrestled with finding Christ and helping others find him. I thought of Alison and how, while running through the dusk, I fell in a pothole, fractured bones in my ankle and she having to half - carry me the long trek home. I thought of Lea and Chris and Nicole and Steve and Yuli and Mum and Desmund and Aunty May and Yennie and Kev and Euge and Cher and like a torrent of meaning and purpose and promise, faces and names from the past 5 years started flooding in and suddenly I realised that I wasn’t here because I wanted to change the world. I wasn’t here because I wanted to preach. I wasn’t here because I needed to build a big church or make my entrepreneurial mark on the who’s who of Christendom. I was here because I loved these guys. And I knew that me, having a nice job with a comfortable paycheck and a societal position wouldn’t mean anything to me if I couldn’t see these guys become everything they desired to be in Christ. Suddenly it confronted me with stunned eyes – like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck – that I’m not a scholar trying to defend an ideal or even a vision. I’m not a preacher trying to get His particular message out to the world. I’m not even a religious man upholding the tenets of his religion.
I’m a kid with a bunch of friends who began a journey together – without even knowing it, back then – and who was willing to do whatever I could do to see the incredible prayers that was in each of my dear friend's hearts, answered.



I looked down at Professor Waltke, labouring at his post, as he had been for the past 50 years. I looked at my fellow scholarly colleagues sitting around me. Then I looked in my heart at the deer’s saucer eyes caught in the headlights of the oncoming glory of God. And I realised that so much of what I had been doing over the past 5 years was simply because I was scared. I was scared that I wasn’t being a ‘proper’ pastor. I was scared that I wouldn’t live up to my friend’s expectations of what great pastors did. I was scared that I would lose the grace that I had been given. And so I ended up focusing more on trying to do more ‘pastor’ things that supposedly successful pastors did – instead of doing what none of the books had said to do, but that I was here to do.



And I knew I had a choice: slam on the brakes, swerve to one side, risk the advance of this locomotive by derailing its collision course. Or, take the deer between the eyes and allow the full force of God’s love to smash into those things that I held dear, but that I now count but road kill for the sake of what Christ would do instead?

Did it really matter if I was the reknown preacher? Did it really matter to me that my structure worked? Did it really matter to me how big we grew? Apart from wanting the affirmation of a few other high achieving leaders, did it really matter if I was eligible to stand with Pastors of churches of 3000 instead of 300?



It all made sense as I listened to Dr. Mark Strom that evening: Dying with life. Living with Death. Being In Christ.
Suddenly it all made sense. Christ painstakingly paved the path directly through the things that we feared the most. And His path did not curl around them. Rather, His path nailed straight for the jugular. He set me free by his complete and utter disrespect of the self – preserving systems and structures of the age: His refusal to submit to Jewish / Greco – Roman power structures. His rebelliousness against his own desires. His strength that required no platform, no honour, no army, no team.
He set me free by His own example.

And now that I’m free? I am free to love. I am free to give my time to loving the people in my service and serving them in my love. I am not chained to a taskmaster that demands sophistication or perfection. I’m on a journey with a bunch of friends. That’s why I’m here.