I've Got Good News!

"The Gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word.  He is evil in the imagination of his heart and when he looks in the mirror what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, and slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for. That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn't believe them or doesn't want them or just doesn't care. In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen. Zacchaeus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. Altogether they are the truth." Frederic Buechner: Telling the Truth-The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.

Frederic Buechner is another one of my favorite authors, and this brief description of the gospel has been a favorite passage for more than twenty years. I find myself reading it over and over, sometimes to remind me that I am loved and forgiven and that God can set me free from the darkness that still creeps into my heart. At other times I read it to encourage myself to continue to love and pray for those who still have not responded to the Gospel and who need the God who makes the impossible possible in their life. Sometimes I read it just because I like the way he writes and the images he uses to express the reality and bondage of sin as well as the hope and joy of being set free by the power of God. Just last night, I read it to my wife again as we were going to sleep and thought to myself...someday, when I grow up, I want to write like that. Someday...