Grace Ji-Sun Kim - Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World

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To my family, who teach me what it means to be new in Christ:

my spouse, Perry, and my three children, Theodore, Elisabeth, and Joshua.

And to my very special friends:

Graham Hill, who continuously inspires me to become new in Christ,

and Donald K. McKim, who encourages me every step of the way.

GRACE JI-SUN KIM

To Grace Hope Park: I thank my God for you, and pray youll

grow to love Jesus deeply. I pray youll live a full life,

shaped around Gods grace and hope.

To Felicity, Madison, Grace, and Dakotah:

Im astonished by how much you love me, and so

thankful to be doing life together with you.

And to Grace Ji-Sun Kim: your friendship is dear to me,

and a source of inspiration.

GRAHAM HILL

M y grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness, says 2 Corinthians 12:9. These words spoken by the Lord to Paul capture both the dilemma of Christian existence and its promise. Our dilemma is our weakness. We, the disciples of Jesus, are weak in relation to worldly power, whether it be military power, or the power of nation-states, or the power of corporations. Indeed, we are always immersed in the flows of worldly power. As Jesus said, we are inescapably in the world (Jn 17:14-16) and subject to its chaotic windseconomic, military, social, and environmental. Yet we do not belong to this world. We are not children created or sustained by worldly power. We are created and sustained by the Word of God (Jn 1:1-4; 1 Jn 1:1-3). The strength we live and move by is of Gods only child, Jesus, who through the Holy Spirit works in us to do Gods good will.

Our dilemma is our weakness, but so too is it our promise. God works in and through our weakness. The condition of our weakness is the stage on which God elects to work to overcome despair and hopelessness and to bring life out of death. Weakness works. But weakness is not a divine ploy, a faade that God uses to operate in worldly power. Our weakness points to the very shape of creaturely life. We are created for deep and intimate communion with the divine life. God desires to fill us with Gods own strong life, a strength that is the source of life and a triune life that is the source of strength.