FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER
Harold L. Myra
January 1, 1986
"In our ordinary life, we have the idea that things should gradually progress, but there comes a time when there is a tumble-up, a mixture of God and man and fiends, of crime and abomination, and all our idea of steady progress is done for. … We like to talk about the light of God coming like the dawn, but it comes in terrific upheaval." This observation from Oswald Chambers made me think about how God works in our congregations. For some bizarre reason, our world's outrageous realities-from auto wrecks and the death of children to unemployment and broken homes-are the terrible workshop in which God touches persons and makes saints. Contrasting personalities are sometimes oddly-and seemingly perversely-juxtaposed. And yet, shoved against one another, as they grind and jostle through life, God's grace penetrates. This concept keeps coming through powerfully in our best Christian writers. The Dostoyevsky novel, the Tolstoy epic-full of petty misunderstandings, tragedies, triumphs-are a paradigm of how we might view God at work in our churches' laughter and grief, anger and joy. Frederick Buechner sees the sacramental and writes of God's grace in the lives of far-less-than-perfect people. Walter Wangerin, great preacher (as well as novelist) that he is, tells stories and declares emphatically that the key in his sermon is not the point he might extract and drill home, but the story. God is at work! Paul Tournier writes of life as adventure; Tolkien describes life through his hobbits. Dorothy Sayers analyzes all this powerfully in The Mind of the Maker. Malcolm Muggeridge points us to great literature rather than to theology texts for theological insights. Actually, theology and story, properly understood, are one of a piece. ...
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