Making Friends for Jesus

When I was 5 years old, our family was shaken to its core. It was a hot August day and I was playing outside. The windows were open – these were the days before air conditioning! – and I heard the phone ring, and then I heard my mother crying. I remember a newspaper man coming to the house for a picture of my father, who had been seriously injured in the factory where he was employed.

A machine had exploded and Dad was hit by flying metal. It sheared off about half the fingers on his left hand, which he had raised to shield his face, and opened a life-threatening gash into his forehead. His brain was exposed to the atmosphere and to infection. He was in a coma. We didn’t know if he would ever wake up. We didn’t even know if he would live. Picture my mom, 32 years old, with four boys between the ages of 2 and 14, her husband somewhere between life and death.

Across the street and down seven houses lived Ollie Ewell, a Christ follower. She heard about this tragedy and knew that a young wife and mother needed a friend. So Ollie, the hands and feet of Christ, took a risk. She walked down the street, knocked on our front door, and introduced herself to my mother. They became lifelong friends, coming to see each other as sisters. Ollie was a disciple of Jesus and faithfully did what her Lord wanted done. A simple act of love to a total stranger – a young mother who needed a friend.

Eventually my father recovered, returned home, and went back to work. Some years later, I started going to church with Ollie and her family. And on Tuesday of this week (March 24, 2015), Ollie went home to be with God at the age of 92. I firmly believe that my coming to faith in Christ is a direct result of Ollie’s act of friendship in 1955. I further believe that any good I might do for the Kingdom is now credited to Ollie, for none of that good would ever have been done without Ollie’s walk of friendship sixty years ago.

I write this today to encourage you to do what Ollie did for my mother when my father lay between life and death in the hospital. Be a friend to the friendless. Bring hope to the hopeless. Bring joy to the joyless. Take seriously Christ’s call on your life. Be Jesus to every person you meet. Treat everyone as a child of God. Give gifts of love, acceptance, and friendship to those in need. Make friends for Jesus. After all, it’s really what he wants you to do!

Biblical Reconciliation

My employer is Anderson University School of Theology, whose mission is to form women and men for the ministry of biblical reconciliation. Lately, we’ve been talking about the meaning of biblical reconciliation. Prospective students, and others, wonder what we mean by that. So let’s think about it for a few minutes.

“Reconciliation” implies that a relationship has been broken. Two parties need re-conciliation. So at its root, reconciliation denotes the healing of relationship.

It seems to me that the whole Bible is the story of God’s work to heal his relationship with humanity, which was broken in the garden when Adam and Eve chose disobedience. Their disobedience broke their relationship with God, and the whole rest of the Bible is the story of God’s initiative to heal that brokenness.

Building on the idea that Adam and Eve’s sin broke their relationship with God, my understanding of sin is any thought, attitude, word, or action that is harmful to relationships: our relationship with God, with creation, with other people, you name it. I can’t think of a sin that doesn’t fit that definition. Any thought, attitude, word, or action that is harmful to relationships.

So everyone needs reconciliation. Everyone needs healing of relationships. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And all have the pain of broken relationships with family, friends, neighbors, nature, and “others” (like ISIS, Al Qaeda, and so on). So everyone needs reconciliation. Everyone has relationships that need healed.

II Corinthians 5:18 says that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is to say, God has given us the ministry of healing broken relationships. Along two dimensions: vertical and horizontal. It is ours to help people reconcile with God and with others (and with creation).

And so the seminary’s mission might be understood as forming women and men for the healing of relationships. This is only accomplished with prayer, with humility, with dependence on the Holy Spirit (who is the Reconciler), with obedience to God (who commissions us to disciple others and who commands us to love God and neighbor), and with the full understanding that we ourselves also stand in need of some healing of relationships.

Shalom.