Jerry L. Sittser - A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life

I n 2006, my kids and I took a family vacation to Banff National Park, located in the Canadian Rockies. We hiked some forty miles in five days, exploring many of the great features of this magnificent park. Along the way, we kept noticing a certain kind of pine tree, the white bark pine, dotting the landscape, especially at higher elevations. Clinging to rocky cliffs overlooking pristine lakes, massive glaciers, and deep valleys, they looked like sentinels keeping watch over the world. Each one was obviously weathered trunks gnarled; limbs broken off; bark roughed up by wind, rain, sleet, and snow; clumps of needles stealing bits of sunlight; clawlike roots gripping rocky slopes. These trees had passed the test of time and survived, sculpted by the elements into extraordinary works of art. They were truly beautiful not beautiful like a childs innocent and delicate face, but beautiful like the carved and aged face of a lifelong fisherman or farmer. These trees were strong and seasoned, full of years and memory and character.

Those trees symbolize what I believe God wants to accomplish in our lives, which is to work complete redemption. He wants to use the harsh conditions of life to shape us and eventually the whole world into something extraordinarily beautiful. Redemption promises to transform us, completely so. Once broken, we become whole again; once selfish and insecure, we become stately and serene and self-giving; once rabid sinners, we become glorious saints. In short, God purposes to claim us as his own no matter how far we are from him, how fallen into sin, how lost and lonely. He wants to restore us to a right relationship with him and to remake us according to the image of Jesus Christ, which will ultimately lead to the renewal of the whole world. This is Gods doing, from beginning to end. God is the one the only one who can, does, and will work redemption.

Redemption has become significant to me, and for very personal reasons, as I will soon explain. It is a biblical term, too. But like other biblical terms, such as justification, reconciliation, and atonement, it seems alien and even intimidating to us, the religious equivalent of an algebraic equation. We dont use the term much in regular speech, and we dont usually ask people, Hows your redemption going? which would make us appear insufferably religious and weird. The word might occupy a place in our religious vocabulary, useful to toss around at church or in a Bible study, but it hardly seems relevant to daily life.

I want to reclaim the word and make it understandable, useful, and meaningful for ordinary life. It is a rich term, and it captures the entire scope and drama of the biblical story, which is redemptive at its core. I hope to define and explain the term in such a familiar and practical way that it will make a genuine difference in your life. This is the goal set before me.

But I need something from you, too, which I am going to ask for up front. I want you to read this book with your own life in mind, your ordinary life, the real life you are currently living, whether you are young or old; single, married, divorced, or widowed; employed, unemployed, or retired; rooted in a community or profoundly lonely; satisfied with your circumstances or disappointed with them; elated about life or discontented, restless, even depressed. Redemption is the work of Jesus Christ applied to the unfolding story of life, your life and my life. It turns gospel truth into a dramatic narrative and makes theology applicable to everyday life. Redemption happens through Gods involvement in the ordinary circumstances of life, no matter what those circumstances happen to be. You are not beyond Gods redemptive reach not now, not ever. So I ask you to read this book in light of your life as it is right now.