God Who Makes All Things New*

Doubt and uncertainty are the precursors to deeper understanding and deeper faith. If we cannot suspend our assumptions, we cannot learn. Learning requires sacrificing our certainty for surprising possibilities, for insights we could not have previously entertained. In all the post-resurrection stories, Jesus’ followers do not recognize him. His essential nature has changed, but so have these folks been changed by the traumatic events they have witnessed. They cannot move on until they can appreciate a wider picture of what resurrection might mean. Their faith is challenged and deepened by their encounter with the risen Christ who is no longer their teacher, but also their heart, their mind, and their conviction about what they must do.

Faith, like resurrection, is a process in which we burrow deep into doubt and new thinking, and rise up not exactly the same, but reborn and changed. That is how the gospels describe the risen Christ too, risen but changed. For Christians, this process of dying to old ways and rising to new vision — new life — is essential to spiritual development. To refuse to enter into the process is to hide in a tomb, to embrace death rather than new life.

So we cherish the questions that we encounter, the uncertainty that may drive us in and out of the wilderness. We learn that these times of uncertainty are the fallow times before our spirits burst with new faith, new life.

“God’s grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God’s grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word… it’s that God makes beautiful things out of even my own sh*t. Grace isn’t about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace — like saying, “Oh, it’s OK, I’ll be the good guy and forgive you.” It’s God saying, “I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.”

― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint*