Sometimes its easy to see the tree and lose sight of the forest.  “Without oxen a stable stays clean,” the proverb begins.  Just think of the owner of the stable – if he’s lazy, he might find himself relieved to see that his daily work of cleaning up after the ox is no longer necessary.  If he’s short-sighted, maybe he’s more interested in a clean barn than in a harvest.

“But a strong ox is needed for a large harvest.”  (Proverbs 14:4)

How many cars are washed and detailed but never driven?  How many homes are spotless but everyone living there is miserable?  How many McMansions with pools and “entertainment rooms” have gates surrounding them to keep their guests out?

Now, how many small huts are filled with hospitable hearts that give everything they have to the stranger that needs a place to stay?  How many clunker cars are what get a day laborer to his job each morning to help him feed his family?

The word “sterile” comes to mind when I read this proverb.  The double meaning of sterile is at once “free of dirt and germs” and “fruitless.”  What is the purpose of YOU?  What stables in your life are empty and clean, yet sterile and fruitless?  What would it feel like to get those areas dirty for the sake of truly fulfilling their purpose?

This is a great time of year to re-examine your life’s purpose – and to get focused once again on the harvest.  Don’t lose sight of the purpose of the things you have.  Don’t lose sight of your own purpose.  Make sure there are no “sterile stables” in your life.  Yes, try to keep your stables clean, but do it so your ox is happy, and so your harvest is that much greater.  This makes your life messy – you’ll say things like, “my life was so much simpler without the headache of working in this field.”  But when the harvest comes, you’ll be glad you got a little dirty.

My friend recently wrote a fantastic paper on grace – grace given to us from God, and the grace we offer from God to others.  In short – there is a grace by which we are saved and a grace for which we are saved.  Much of the Church has experienced the insights on the grace by which we are saved through the Reformation – but we are only beginning to unpack what it means to live into the grace for which we are saved.  What significant grace do you have to offer a desperate world?

Read these two quotes below from two radical Jesus followers (borrowed from the paper) and consider what grace may be hidden in you just waiting to save the world in your own small way:

“Let it be clear to us in our Head the very source and spring from which grace pours forth through all his members in accord with the measure of each.”

— Augustine

“In elevating us, grace also heals us, for it corresponds to our nature’s deepest aspiration. God in giving us participation in the divine inner life gives us to ourselves and releases within us the authentic powers that make us who we are as humans. One is finally free to become one’s genuine self.”

— Aquinas

At this point I can say it:  “We’ve been here in Chicago for a full year.”

Its a completely new place from our previous home of Abilene, TX where Katrina and I met and grew to love each other and our Father in such amazing ways.  The sights, the smells, the sounds of the city fill my senses even as I write this in one of my new favorite coffee shops.  I sit back for a moment to reflect on all that has happened in the last year, and what this work here in Chicago is all about.

This is a movement.  In a culture that says that we must live alone, live for ourselves, breed racism, injustice, apathy and violence in our hearts – this is a movement of love.  Against religious abuses and elitism, we invite people to enter a Family of grace.  Where they can receive and give grace with everything they have.  Where they have a place at the table with God.  This is the Church – the Family of God.

This work is about an invitation to join that movement.  So often the great movements of God have been swept up and kept behind the doors of the seminary, or within a certain socioeconomic class.  But this dream is about crossing boundaries with the good news of God.  Going from rich to poor and back to rich, from black to white and all the colors of God’s rainbow, from coffee shops to barber shops to Polish bakeries to corporate offices and brothels.  This invitation calls out the adventurer in all of us – to cross the chasms and rivers that separate us in this city, and reimagines the city as a mission field to be discovered.

This movement is taking us into the New Age.  Jesus spoke of this “coming age,” one very much available and experienced now, but yet quite elusive and mysterious.  A new age unique to (but not mutually exclusive of) the popular term out there today.  It is a new age of sanity, even in the midst of chaos, an age of family in the midst of fractured tribalism and competition, an age of missional living – actively participating in the mission of God to embody the New Age in our everyday lives.  Yearning for the revolution, and then going to do the dishes and clean the toilet.

This movement aims to saturate the city – every nook and cranny – with the news that this New Age has truly come.  It’s bigger than any church, any personality, and truly bigger than any geographic locale. (but hey, ya gotta start somewhere!  And what better place to shine than in a dark place?)  Authentic communities of faith from every tongue, tribe and neighborhood in Chicago is our strategy, with the goal being the complete transformation of a city from top to bottom.

All this doesn’t mean we don’t live without fear and stress.  I am seeing a pattern: we are given a new insight from God, and then are systematically attacked by the Evil One.  In a faulting, wounded way, we’ve spent the last year planting and resourcing new churches, making friends, getting jobs, and inviting others to join the movement of Christ.  We’re so thankful to be a small part of what God is doing here.  We know that it is because of the love and support of so many that we’ve made it this far.  We’ve seen multiple house churches started, a network of faith worship together, and people come to faith in God.   As I reflect on our year, maybe the hardest of our adult lives, two words come to mind… It’s happening.