One thing I’m doing here in Freetown to help relax is play the Irish whistle. I’m still pretty new at it and so I’m starting with tunes that I know and couple of airs that are pretty simple. One of the songs that I’m getting pretty good at playing from memory is “Amazing Grace”. I’ve been playing it over and over for the past two weeks but at one point had to stop after pondering the words of the second verse:
T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,
and grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
the hour I first believed.
I was struck me as odd that John Newton talk about grace teaching him to fear. I usually think of grace as a
But as I thought about several of the friends that I’ve come to make here in Sierra Leone I realized that they repeatedly make the same bad choice with out considering the consequences of their actions. Some repeatedly lie without thinking of the way it affects others ability to trust them. Some repeatedly complain and ignore opputunities to say thank you without thinking about how it discourages another person. Some are repeatedly absent or late to programs that can help them with out considering the long term consequence of dismisal from the program.
I thought about how much I would enjoy seeing God grant them grace to see the consequences of their actions. Sure this might bring initial feelings of fear but if it was followed by the grace to see how God might help them change then their fears would be relieved by their faith. Like how Christian in Pilgrims Progress first feared he was living in the City of Destrcution. Eventually thought this fear caused him to take the first steps on his journey toward the Celestial City where he would find safety and joy in the presence of the Almighty. Or like how we must first acknowledge our sin before our need for a savior makes sense.
While I was praying for the slivers in my friends’ eyes I gradually acknowledged a plank in my own. I realized how much I was leaning on my own experience, training, time and energy to change, to fix, and to save those around me. Then all of sudden it struck me that no matter how much effort and wisdom I applied I couldn’t help them apart from the grace of God. I immediately disliked this idea beacuse I was finding comfort in the illusion of control with out thinking about the longer term consequence of this self reliance. I wasn’t thinking about what kind of hell on earth it would be if the health, peace, joy and sanity of everyone in Kroo Bay depending on what I, or even our community, could offer them. I wasn’t thinking about about the effect self reliance would have on my relationship with God. Instead I was thinking “if I can’t help them then what hope do they have?”
My initial fear and discomfort though were relieved as I remembered how God reveals his grace today through the power of the Holy Spirit and other members of the Body of Christ. They’ve got a greater hope than me they’ve got the Spirit of Christ at work in this world.
Please pray for our community here that God would continue to lead us into a deeper dependence on God and his grace. Pray that would in turn lead our friends not into a deeper dependence on us but into a deeper dependence on Christ.