Good
And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to
his purpose. (Rom. 8:28)
Robben Island
consists of three square miles of windswept land off the southern tip of
Africa. Over the centuries it has served as the home for a prison, a leper
colony, a mental asylum and a naval base. Most significantly, it was the home
of one of the most famous political prisoners in history, Nelson Mandela. He
opposed South African apartheid – a system designed to extend the rule and
privilege of the white minority by excluding blacks from "whites
only" buses, "whites only" beaches, and "whites only"
hospitals, to name a few of the “whites only” restrictions. Blacks couldn’t
even run for office or live in white neighborhoods. Apartheid legalized racism.
And Mandela was the perfect man to challenge it.
As a descendant
of royalty, he was educated in the finest schools. As the son of a Christian
mother, he embraced her love for God and people. Under the tutelage of a tribal
chief, he learned the art of compromise and consensus. And as a young black
lawyer in Cape Town, he experienced a thousand slights and indignities which
produced an inward fire to fight the system that imprisoned his people. Mandela
was a force with which to be reckoned. He was passionate, bitter, given to
retaliation. With his enviable pedigree and impressive stature (6’2,” 245 lbs.)
he was, for many, the hope of the South African black culture. But then came
August 5, 1962. Government officials arrested Mandela, convicted him of
treason, and sent him to prison. And for the next twenty-seven years, he stared
through wired windows. Surely he wondered how a season in prison could play a
part in God's plan.
Maybe you've asked
similar questions – maybe not about time in prison, but about your time in a
dead-end job, or living in a puny town or a feeble body. Certain elements of
life make sense. But what about autism, Alzheimer's, or Mandela's prison
sentence? Was Paul including those conditions when he wrote Romans 8:28? “And
we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who
have been called according to his purpose.” And
we know…. We do? Really? There are a million things we don’t know. We don’t
know if the economy will dip, or if our team will win. We don’t know what our
spouse is thinking, or how our kids will turn out. We don't even know
"what we ought to pray for." (Romans 8:26) But according to Paul, we
can be absolutely certain that God works in all things.
Panta is the Greek word for “all,” as in
"panoramic" or "panacea" or "pandemic." It means all-inclusive.
God works, not through a few things, or through the good things, best things or
even the easy things, but in "all things." Your life is a crafted
narrative written by a good God who is working toward your supreme good. God is
neither slipshod nor haphazard. He planned creation according to a calendar. And
the death of Jesus was not an afterthought, nor was it Plan B, or some sort of an
emergency solution. Jesus died "when the set time had fully come"
(Galatians 4:4) according to God's "deliberate plan and foreknowledge."
(Acts 2:23) In other words, God isn't making up a plan as he goes along. Nor
did he simply wind up the clock and walk away. "The LORD will not turn
back until he has executed and accomplished the intentions of his mind."
(Jeremiah 30:24) "In him we were also chosen . . . according to the plan
of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will."
(Ephesians 1:11) “Everything” changes everything. And the Apostle Paul's life proves
his words.
Paul grew up in
Tarsus. He called it "an important city." (Acts 21:39) He wasn't
exaggerating. Tarsus sat only a few miles from the coast and served as a hub
for sailors, pirates and merchants from all over Europe and Asia. Any child
raised in Tarsus would have heard a dozen languages, and witnessed a tapestry
of cultures. Tarsus was also a depot city on the Roman highway system. The
empire boasted a network of roads that connected business centers of the
ancient world – Ephesus; Iconium; Derbe; Antioch; and Caesarea. While young
Paul likely didn't visit these cities, he grew up hearing about them.
Tarsus tattooed
a Mediterranean map in his heart, and a keen intellect in his mind. Tarsus
rivaled the academic seats of Alexandria and Athens. Paul conversed with
students in the streets and, at the right age, became a student himself. He
learned the language of his day: Greek. He mastered it. He spoke it. He wrote
it. He thought it. Paul not only spoke the international language of the world,
but he possessed the world’s passport. He was born a Jew and a Roman citizen. So,
whenever he traveled throughout the empire, he was entitled to all the rights
and privileges of a Roman citizen. He could enter any port, and was treated,
not as a slave or foreigner, but as a freeman.
Young Paul left
Tarsus with everything an itinerant missionary would need: cultural
familiarity, linguistic skills, documents for travel, and a trade for earning a
living – he was a tent maker. And that was only the beginning. Paul's parents
sent him to Jerusalem for rabbinical studies. He memorized large sections of
the Torah and digested massive amounts of rabbinical law. He was a
valedictorian-level student, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He bragged about it. "I
was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely
zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers." (Galatians 1:14)
But before Paul
was following God, God was leading Paul. He gave him an education, a vocation, and
all the necessary documentation. He schooled Paul in the Law of Moses and the lingua franca of his day. Who then better
to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the law than a scholar of the law? But
Paul had a violent side, too. He tore husbands from their homes, and moms from
their children. He declared jihad against the church, and spilled the blood of
disciples. (Acts 22:4) Could God use this ugly chapter to advance his cause? That’s
not a hypothetical question – we all have seasons that are hard to explain.
Before we knew
God's story, we made a mess of our own. Even afterward, we're prone to demand
our own way, cut our own path and hurt people in the process. So, can God make
good out of our bad? He did with Paul. "Now it happened, as I journeyed
and came near Damascus at about noon, suddenly a great light from heaven shone
around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me . . ." (Acts
22:6) Saying what? Saying something like "I'm going to give you a taste of
your own medicine"? Or, "Back to the dust with you, you
Christian-killer"? Or, "Prepare to meet your Maker"? Did Paul
expect to hear words like these? If so, he didn't. Even before he requested
mercy, he was offered mercy. Jesus told him: “I have appeared to you to appoint
you as my servant and witness.” (Acts 26:16)
Jesus
transformed Paul, the card-carrying legalist, into a champion of mercy. Who
would have thought? Yet who would be better qualified? Paul could write
epistles of grace by dipping his pen into the inkwell of his own experiences.
He’d learned Greek in the schools of Tarsus, tent making in the home of his
father, and the Torah at the feet of Gamaliel. And he learned about love when
Jesus paid him a personal visit on the Damascus Highway. “All things” worked
together; all of his life’s experiences.
It’s a picture
of God's work in us. All the transfers, layoffs, breakdowns, breakups and
breakouts. Difficulties. Opportunities. All of them – sifted and stirred and
popped into the oven. Heaven knows, we've felt the heat and we've wondered if
God's choice of ingredients will result in anything worth serving. And If
Nelson Mandela had those same concerns, no one could blame him.
His prison life
was harsh. He was confined to a six-by-six-foot concrete room. It had one small
window that overlooked the courtyard. He had a desk, a mattress, a chair, three
blankets and a rusted-iron sanitary bucket with a 10” concave porcelain top for
washing and shaving. Meals came from corn: breakfast was a porridge of corn
scraped from the cob; lunch and supper consisted of corn on the cob; coffee was
roasted corn mixed with water. Mandela and the other prisoners were awakened at
5:30 a.m. They crushed rocks into gravel until noon, ate lunch, and then worked
until 4:00 p.m. Back in the cell at 5:00, asleep by 8:00. And discrimination continued
even in the prison. Africans, like Mandela, were required to wear short pants
and were denied bread. Yet God used it all to shape Nelson Mandela.
The prisoner
read widely: Leo Tolstoy and John Steinbeck. He exercised daily: a hundred
fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee bends. Most of all he
honed the capacity to compromise and forgive. He developed courtesy in all
situations, disarming even the guards who had been intentionally placed by his
cell to trouble him. He became particularly close to one jailer who, over two
decades, read the Bible and discussed Scripture with Mandela. "All men,”
Mandela reflected later, “have a core of decency, and . . . if their heart is
touched, they are capable of changing." After twenty-seven years of confinement,
at the age of seventy-two, Mandela was released. Those who knew him well
described the pre-prison Mandela as "cocky and pugnacious." But the
refined Mandela? "I came out mature," he said. He was devoted to
"rationality, logic, and compromise." Journalists noted his lack of
bitterness. And within four years Mandela was elected president and set out to
lead South Africa out of apartheid and into a new era of equality.
God needed an
educated, sophisticated leader who'd mastered the art of patience and
compromise, so he tempered Mandela in prison. He needed a culture-crossing,
Greek-speaking, border-passing, Torah-quoting, self-supporting missionary, so
he gave grace to Paul, and Paul shared grace with the world. And you? In a
moment before moments, your Maker looked into the future and foresaw the needs
and demands of your generation. He instilled, and is instilling within you
everything you need to fulfill his plan in this era. "God made us to do
good works, which God planned in advance for us to live our lives doing."
(Ephesians 2:10)
Do good and see
if, in all things, it’s actually a good God working for those who love him.
Grace,
Randy
No comments:
Post a Comment