“The Day’s Last Light”

My goal this November was to replace TV and web surfing with, basically, reading.

I surprised myself and finished 10 books in 29 days, which has to be a record for me.

The last one I picked up to read was a nod to my heart, which at one time was so passionate about godly things, and then over the last few years wandered away after darker interests. I guess that has been my story as an adult, though, where I have had my phases of extreme devotion paired with seasons of disillusionment and alienation.

It made sense to pick up a Brennan Manning book to end the month’s reading. Feeling mentally refreshed from the media break, my heart remembered how Brennan has always had a way of speaking to my soul, touching my spirit when I often won’t let so many others near it.

Every few years, I revisit one of Manning’s books, and each time I always feel rewarded. And I wonder why I do not spend more time in his books.

It’s not so much that we are identical in beliefs (he’s Catholic by background, but curiously, I find I agree with most of the big ideas shared in his books anyways). It’s more that when I read his writings, I am made comfortable again within about being a Christian. For some reason, I understand the gospel message most clearly that he presents in his books, largely because he is so human in talking about it. Manning is flawed and fallible, but he is also an intelligent human, and he has heavily processed how Christ has met him and worked in his life throughout the years. And Manning verbalizes the processes and outcomes of that heavenly work in him through candid stories and anecdotes.

What Manning doesn’t do is just focus his thoughts on Manning. Refreshingly, he is as Christocentric as they come.

Which is wonderful to me, because that is what my heart needs to see, as with so many others in this world: how Christ works and is working in regular basic people.

Manning, a former Marine, and then Catholic priest, and then alcoholic, and then AA member, and then evangelist, has wrestled with Christianity questions his whole messy life- and in his writings, his reflections turn focused and clear. He has always found that God has loved him. Particularly when he could not love himself.

In his book “A Glimpse of Jesus”, my final read for the month, Manning talks about just that topic, as it has affected him for most of his life. The book’s subtitle is “The Stranger to Self-Hatred”, which Manning forwards as one sure quality of God’s Son among humanity. Where sinful, shamed, and broken people, because of the ravages of a fallen world, struggle within to find a clear and positive image of self, Jesus came to offer the correction that he himself knows and lives- alienation from self-debasement.

In basic, it makes sense, because Jesus is the Father’s son, and God is love.

More significantly, though, Manning helped me to see what other scholars have suggested in relation to two parallel verses in the Gospels, where the assertion is made that one clarifies the other.

In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says “Be perfect, therefore as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

In Luke 6:36, Jesus says “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

To be perfect as God the Father is perfect is to be merciful- to be steeped in compassion.

To have compassion is to suffer along with someone else, which describes the nature of the Father Jesus turned to when seeking His will.

Compassion is at the core of living out the Christian life. When we are compassionate, we not only allow ourselves to see others, but we look for others whom we can help, as Christ sought to do coming to earth- helping other not only by forgiving sins, but by feeding and encouraging and teaching them as well, and performing that meaningful single gesture of washing others’ feet.

Manning reminds me that love is a contact sport, and that cardinal- superlative- in the concept of heaven is community. When Christ comes, it is for his family, and his family is made up of those who have found and accepted forgiveness, correction, inspiration, and renewal from his cross experience.

You cannot go to heaven with a special first-class ticket that gives you an opt out from community and the practice of love.

Those who find themselves in this community of connection, though, do so because they discover some time in their life that God loves them to the core- tangibly, irrefutably, irrepressibly, unapologetically. And despite their humanness and brokenness, they say “Yes, God. Okay- please love me as I am, your way, all the way through.” And when they stay there and let Him do that, not fleeing from His penetrating presence and his wide-open acceptance- when they let Him become their Father, and bind their wounds, and salve their spirit- they change.

They become His church. They fully see others around them. They yield in compassion, and serve.

In gratitude for His grace, they love.

It makes sense that compassion would be the perfection that describes God’s nature. There is no self-justification, nor need of self-justification in compassion. I am not here just for myself, and I have lost all need to offer apologetics for who I am and how I am. In compassion, like the Father who sends His son to offer assistance and solutions, my attention is fully focused on uplifting others.

Lord, soften my heart to have so much more compassion for others. May it be because I have thrown wide open my heart to let Your compassion wash and heal me, and thoroughly change me.

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Brennan Manning, now deceased, was author of a number of challenging and uplifting books on living the Christian life. Today’s post reflects on contents from his book A Glimpse of Jesus, if you are interested in reading more from him on this topic.