I think many of us unfortunately live a life of quiet sadness because we are not perfect.  We have imperfect families, imperfect marriages, imperfect children, imperfect jobs, imperfect homes, and imperfect cars.  We try to do our best, but from time to time we yell at are kids, eat to much, drink to much, or lust to much.  Deep down we wonder if we really should be more perfect and that somehow we are missing our potential in life.

What if for a change we lived life from a perspective of grace?  What if we accepted the reality that we are imperfect?  From time to time we will make mistakes in life, but thankfully we have a loving God who forgives us.  By God’s grace we can also receive forgiveness from others and ourselves.  Then out of the immense grace we receive, we can forgive others.

Maybe our goal in life should be to accept our imperfections and to live life more empowered by God’s grace.  Out of this perspective, we can gain a more healthy balance to life.  We can learn to live less by our excesses and more out of the center of God’s love.

Now, I am a minister, teaching Christian Theology and I still embrace much of what I learned growing up, yet inside I find myself wanting to encourage people to balance an understanding of human sin with the profound teaching from Genesis that we are all created in the image of God.

Why is this important?  I think most of us know naturally that we struggle with sinful tendencies.  We know that we are not always motivated to do the right thing or think the correct thoughts.  The pervasiveness of human sin is obvious when we turn on the news and learn about wars, crime, and the drama of Hollywood celebrities.

How often do we hear that we are loved and valuable to God?  Deep down in our DNA, we are created in the image of God.  In this sense we are good, valuable, and deeply connected with the source of all life.  Our truest identity can be found as God’s creation, whether we are conscious of this truth or not.

Recently, I led a group of students in Centering Prayer, a form of silent contemplative prayer.  I invited them to consent to God’s presence and action within them.  After experiencing the prayer time, a young woman remarked that she appreciated the invitation to rest in God’s presence within us.

I think for many people, the tendency is to look inward and only see our sinfulness.  How often do we look inward and embrace our identity as God’s children, wholly and dearly loved?  When you look inward do you see God’s presence making a home with you.  In John 14.23 Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”  If the Holy Spirit resides in you, then maybe your sense of identity can be positive and hopeful.  You can look inward and find joy rather than despair.  Forgiveness rather than guilt or shame.  Peace and love rather than anxiety and hate.  I encourage you to embrace your identity as a child of God, created in God’s image.

I paused after getting the question and then told him, “No, I don’t think so.”  We began a long conversation about why I am a Christian.  I mentioned that growing up in a Christian home certainly influenced me.  I also told him that I had heart surgery at fourteen and needed to rely on God at a young age.  Then I mentioned that what influenced my faith most was my fascination with this Jesus guy from the Bible.  The frustrated caller eventually calmed down and by the end of our conversation he expressed appreciation in my answer.  He said that I was sincere in my reasons for being a Christian. 

That recent call reminded me how much my faith in God has been shaped by my great appreciation for the person of Jesus.  I know the Bible teaches that we are to call Jesus Lord and that He is the Savior of the world and deserves our praise.  I am sure my affection for Jesus is shaped by years of hearing that he is to be followed in order to have a good life.  But deep down the reason I am still a Christian over thirty years from the time I made a commitment to follow Jesus as a little boy, is because I am more in awe of this historic figure than anyone that has ever existed. 

I love many things about Jesus.  I appreciate his sacrificial love, his compassion for the poor, his devotion to his Father in Heaven.  I think he is both a radical guy and a regular guy.  He was a leader that people followed and he was someone you could sit down and share a beer with at a party. 

Jesus was also both a contemplative and an activist.  He knew how to take a break and spend hours in solitude in prayer to His Abba Father and He knew how to actively stand up against injustice.  He healed the leper and the woman with the issue of blood while others saw them as unclean.  He stood up to the religious and civil authorities when others cowered in fear.  Jesus was able to be a deeply spiritual leader who took time to reflect deeply and pray thoughtfully, yet this did not lead him to disengage from the world around him.  Instead his deep interior life enabled him to have the courage to live an active life of profound love and compassion.

This Jesus guy is why I am a Christian.  I am proud to say I am a follower of the greatest contemplative and activist who ever lived.

The normal answer  is that the person is at fault, God is at fault, or God’s will is not to heal.  I find any of these answers to be unsatisfactory and simplistic.

As a spiritual director, I believe strongly in God’s desire to bring restoration to hurting people.  In the case of physical ailments, healing  may come through  medical assistance, change of physical activity and diet, healing prayer or other supernatural intervention, or some combination of all these approaches.  Emotional healing may also come through supernatural intervention through prayer or prophecy, but usually also requires some form of counseling or behavioral change.

When healing does not occur, in my mind it is to simple to blame God or ourselves.  It is better to continue to pursue steps toward healing, while recognizing that life sometimes turns out terribly wrong.  This is part of the mystery of a broken world, God’s action in our world, and human free will.  I don’t pretend to understand the mystery of God’s healing or seemingly lack of intervention sometimes, nor do I assume humans are always responsible for what goes on wrong in this world.  I instead choose to keep praying and hoping for emotional and physical healing in my life and the lives of all other people who are in pain.

My general perspective is Jesus wills to bring healing to everyone.  When people do not experience that healing, I live with the paradox of that reality without trying to resolve it.  Does this make me weak minded.  No, I think it is a sign of courage when we pursue to live like Jesus even amidst the ambiguities of life.  The reason I believe God wills to heal is because Jesus never demonstrated any other perspective and I trust Jesus to be a full representation of the likeness of God in human form.

May God guide all of us as we seek to be healing agents in a hurting world.  May we follow the example of Jesus.