Abundance, Blessing, Cost

"If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it ...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
Rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it . . .
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields . . .
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality."
 (from Work Song, Part 2: A Vision, Wendell Berry)

Last week I wrote about The Grace Outpouring, a book sent to me by a fellow blogger in the UK. The book explores the idea of God’s blessing, and how we become avenues of that blessing.

This week, thinning peaches on my three young peach trees, I was reminded of the idea of blessing, and of Wendell Berry’s poem: 

“The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.” 

I find myself in a season of abundance and great blessing. House wrens serenade me from the backyard box I put up weeks ago. Bluebirds perch on a log just yards from my front window where I leave seeds and bits of suet. Locust blossoms perfume the air, and my woodland beds of trillium, foamflower, and bluebells invite the buzz of nectar-laden bees.

The hummingbird is back, exploring the scarlet honeysuckle I’ve trained above the path from driveway to backyard. The rabbits have multiplied. I meet them along my mossy paths, or surprise them investigating my peas and lettuce nestled in a raised bed made of storm-torn locust limbs.

Most days I feel very rich: rich in friends and family, rich in health and purposeful, interesting work.

But perched on a ladder in a damp, cold wind, picking off tiny peaches so the remaining fruit grows plump and juicy, I find myself thinking about how much I take for granted.

I didn’t know, until I planted peach trees, how much work it takes to grow a peach. I bought them at the local farm market, complained when I succumbed to peaches at the grocery store and found them hard, or tasteless. I’m not sure I even knew what a real peach was like until I moved to Pennsylvania and encountered just picked peaches at a local fair: yellow flushed with pink and red, warm and juicy, sweet with a succulent sweetness food chemists still can’t duplicate.

We live in a flattened world, far from the blessings God intended.

We eat prepackaged food, shipped from somewhere far away.

We hurry through our days, missing the music of early morning birdsong, the beauty of clouds, the soothing whisper of breezes on birch branches, or streams slipping over mossy stones.

We are too often impatient, and hard of hearing.

Peaches, I’m reminded, are an investment in the future. For every peach I eat, there was someone who envisioned an orchard, and planted trees.

And someone who went out in the winter to prune.

And someone thinning the peaches, picking tiny spheres by hand, hour by hour, focused, painstaking work.

All of those investments are part of the blessing of peaches – a blessing easily missed, easily taken for granted.

Roy Godwin, author of The Grace Outpouring, speaks of the many aspects of blessing in God’s kingdom: forgiveness, health, unity, peace.

But none of that comes easily. There’s a cost. Not to the person who receives the blessing, but to the one who gives it.

Just as the grace of Christ’s cross is given freely, but cost him his life. Grace is free, but costly.

I didn’t see this the first time through my reading of The Grace Outpouring.

I found myself wondering, “Why does God answer prayer there, and not so often here?” “Why do they find themselves blessed, while we feel God is far away?”

But reading through again, I was struck by the tenacious obedience of Godwin and Daphne, his wife.

The decision to move to Ffald-y-Brenin, the retreat center, was costly, and disruptive.

The financial challenges were great.

The emotional work of rebuilding lives in a new, unfamiliar place was familiar. I’ve been down that trail: painful, costly, poised between regret and hope, far from hard-earned networks of support.

Finally settled at Ffaldy-Brenin, Roy and Daphne Godwin faced a series of strange leadings: preparation in prayer, risky conversations, small steps of obedience followed by next steps, more difficult, more costly.

Godwin describes a deepening pattern of obedience, a day of prayer in new, unfamiliar ways, a sense of contentment from knowing they’d done what they’d been given to do, then, unexpected fruit: 

“Early the next morning there was a frantic hammering on our front door, and we emerged to find the guests – who had come as individuals and not as a group – up and talking. I thought maybe the fire alarm had gone off, but it turned out that there was a different kind of fire at work.
 "During the night, Jesus had appeared in dreams to each of them and spoken amazing words individually to them, into their lives and their situations, and for each of them this had brought amazing healing. In many cases his words had touched concerns that nobody else knew about, in their childhood, very early on in their lives. There was wonderful healing and a new freedom for them all.
 "Now they wanted an explanation, and our pithy response to these thirty overwhelmed guests was ‘God is blessing you. Let’s just give him thanks, and let’s ask him to keep blessing you.”
 "That wasn’t all. In the following weeks a torrent of water began flowing out of springs above us that had been dry for many years. It was their dryness that had given rise to the name of the area here: Synchbant, which means “dry streambed.” The millstream that had been fed by the springs had dried up and was no more. But now there was a torrent of water" (p. 57).

There are mysteries far beyond me. Somehow, what we do ripples out, for good or harm. Careless choices, selfish appetites, harm the land, dry the streams, send birds into silence. And in God’s mercy, the opposite is true as well: costly obedience, acts of generosity and grace, bring healing not just to us, and to others, but to the land itself.

I have not finished with my peaches. I’ve let them grow too tall; some branches are beyond my reach. Balanced on my ladder, I consider: leave them to scatter the tree’s energy? Prune the tree back? Ask for help?

There was a time when I opted for easy, looked for the simplest solution, heated frozen dinners, watched too much TV. Took life for granted. Wondered why God seemed so far away.

Now, I choose to live like a slow growing tree, investing in wholeness, waiting for wisdom, shouldering my share in the cost of grace, so I can share the grace, as I’ll share my peaches later this summer: sweet, warm, surprising. Golden blessings to be savored. 

Pentecost People of Blessing

We live in a world thirsty for grace, hungry for any hint of blessing.

But what we find, too often, is judgment: not fast enough, not smart enough, not thin enough, not “good” enough.

Jesus said: 

“I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5) 

On Pentecost, God’s grace rained down on the waiting disciples, then poured through them to the city around them:

“The apostles performed many signs and wonders among the people. . . .More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number.  As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.  Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing their sick and those tormented by impure spirits, and all of them were healed.” (Acts 5) 

That is far outside most of our experience, yet there are times and places where grace bubbles up, rains down, flows like living water through thirsty crowds. Some of us shrug, explain it away, fine-tune  theologies that justify our unbelief.

Others of us pray, with the prophet Habakkuk: 

Lord, I have heard of your fame;

I stand in awe or your deeds, Lord.

Repeat them in our day,

In our time make them known

Habakkuk 3

I have written about praying for a young woman named Emily, struck by lightening almost five years ago. A fellow Synchroblogger from the UK, Chris Jefferies of Journeys of the Heart and Mind, recently contacted me to say he’d been reading my posts about Emily and prayer and felt God prompting him to send me a book: The Grace Outpouring, Becoming a People of Blessing.

The title alone was enough to capture my interest. How do we become a people of blessing?

But I was also drawn by the sense of God weaving bits of his church together. Chris is part of a fellowship of Christians in Cambridgeshire, England. The book tells of God’s work at Ffald-y-Brenin, a retreat center in south-west Wales.  My own little group gathering to seek God’s healing now includes a friend from Albania, a lovely woman of faith from Jamaica, a missionary’s daughter born in Korea. Our backgrounds are all different. Our longing to know God more deeply is the same.

To me, one sign of God at work is the breaking down of boundaries, the weaving together of people from different places, different experiences. At Pentecost, the boundary of language was broken down:

“Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2)

But Pentecost was about more than breaking down of boundaries. God’s people, empowered by the Holy Spirit, began to do what Jesus had promised: 

“Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”(John 14:12) 

The Grace Outpouring is the simple story of how that promise is taking shape in one small corner of the world. Roy and Daphne Godwin stepped into leadership of a remote retreat center and began to explore what it means to be agents of blessing. 

“The measure we use toward others will be the measure that he uses toward us. As we forgive we will be forgiven (Matthew 6:14-15). As we bless we will be blessed (Genesis 12:3). In Luke 10, the disciples were instructed to declare the peace of God over the towns they entered. For us today, that means asking God to manifest his character in the communities we live in. As we pray using the revealed names of God, he will come and show his beauty, mercy and compassion.” (36)

 Roy Godwin, with coauthor David Roberts, talks about the way Christians sometimes think we’re called to pronounce judgment rather than blessing: 

"I had already begun to question a culture of faith that places a high value on correcting strangers. . . . Having a heart to bless will challenge the judgmental mid-set that can color how we look at those we live with and among. We can become a “grace first” people. . .

"If we will let the wisdom of God inhabit our thinking, a consistent “grace first” pattern will emerge in our actions and words. “Grace first” prayer for healing doesn’t search for wrongdoing in a person’s life that needs correcting as a prelude to a miracle. There doesn’t seem to be much evidence for that approach in the ministry of Jesus. We simply ask that the power of God should touch that life.” 

Godwin describes the ways he and others have seen God’s blessings at work: miraculous healing of physical and mental illness, sudden insight into spiritual things, unexpected unity, restoration of relationships, conviction of sin, deep experience of forgiveness. The stories are told simply; a statement at the start of the book explains:

“God is too great to need our exaggeration. This book contains many testimonies as spoken to us by guests at various times. We want to be as accurate as possible. If the reader is aware of any error, please let us know so that we many correct it in future editions.”

 Some of the stories from the book are excerpted, and indexed, on Chris Jeffries’ Journey’s of the Heart and Mind. More recent stories are gathered at Kingdom Vision UK. 

"Coming before the cross at Ffald-y-Brenin"

These stories resonate deeply with what I’ve seen of the way God works: bringing to light deep hurts no one else could touch, meeting doubts, anger, and grief with his own great love. Revealing truth through dreams. Speaking directly – sometimes in an audible voice – to those who doubt his presence.  Restoring damaged joints, healing mysterious, debilitating illness.

Reflecting on the healing seen at Ffald-y-Brenin, and beyond, Godwin concludes: 

“It seems clear to me that it’s impossible biblically to separate the good news of the kingdom from healing, because if you actually read the accounts of the Gospels and Acts, they flow together, so that when mercy flows out to us it is not just to help us find forgiveness, but it’s also to do with all that we are. This unstoppable stream, this river, this flood that is released upon us touches every part of our lives. . . 

"When Jesus came into a community, it was good news for those who were open to welcome him. Although they were amazed by his words and teaching and dazzled by the miracles, it was the outflow of his life that was such good news for them. . . . He reached out to the sick and healed them, opened blind eyes, restored deaf ears, lifted the weight of condemnation off the guilty and prompted them to live a different way in the future.

"All this, he taught, was a sign that the kingdom of God had come upon them. His healing miracles were not an incidental happening while he got on with the real business of preaching the gospel. He was the gospel. It was the overflow of his presence empowered by the Holy Spirit that was the breaking in of the kingdom.

"When jesus commissioned the disciples, it was with the instruction to mirror his own ministry. They were to heal the sick, release the oppressed, and declare that the kingdom of God was close. God cares for the whole person, and the gospel, the good news, is for the whole person.”(13) 

To all that, I say “yes,” while I wonder: why does healing come so freely in some places, and so rarely in others? How do we continue to pray when it seems like nothing changes?

I’ll be back to this topic next week. There’s more to process, and much more to learn.

In the meantime: 

“A kingdom worldview says that mercy and grace come first. .. 

"What might the song of the redemptive community we aspire to be sound like? Perhaps these words go some way toward capturing its essence: 

We welcome all who come here.
We greet all that we meet.
May we be as warm and open as Jesus was,
With a heart for the last, the lost, and the least.
We don’t want to look away
Or sweep anybody under the carpet.
With God’s help we will not diminish anybody.
We will be the voices of mercy,
Blessing all with the love of God
In the wonderufl name of Jesus. 

"So how do you make this vision a reality in the streets and buildings around you?

Your comments, reflections, questions are welcome! 

Other recent posts on prayer:

Does Prayer “Work”? May 5, 2013
Like a Motherless Child, May 12, 2013 

Other posts on Pentecost:

Resurrection Power: A Prayer for Pentecost  May 27, 2012
Waiting for Pentecost June 5, 2011
An Altogether Different Language June 26, 2011