Well, I’m not sure how this is fair because I don’t know if you know, but I’m in the middle of my holidays as well. I don’t know what uh what was planned here for a sermon today, but whatever it was, it fell through. So, I’m second choice. Uh Doug contacted my wife knowing I was on holidays and to give her the responsibility of deciding if I was rusted enough to take on a sermon in the middle of my holidays and she decided I was. So and and she she was right. I was that that’s a I enjoy preparing a sermon, but but given those circumstances, I was busy still this morning at 7:00 a.m. Well, actually, I didn’t get up till 7:30 and and uh and putting final touches on this. So, I hope it holds together and makes sense because I’m probably still figuring out this sermon as I stand before you. But uh I’ve titled this the shape of grace. Art and life reflects God’s grace. I hope that’s true in your life. And I hope you’ll understand more clearly what that means and how to do that uh in your in your life uh after this morning. Uh I think I think there’s a lot of truth in that simple statement. I want to begin with a story. It’s from John chapter 9 verse 1-2. It’s very fascinating story. As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. Rabbi, his disciples asked him, “Why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. This happens so that the power of God could be seen in him. We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the one who sent us. The night is coming and then no one can work. But while I am here in this world, I am the light of the world. Then he spit on the ground, made mud with the saliva, and spread the mud over the blind man’s eyes. He told him, “Go wash yourself in the pool of Saleom.” So the man went and washed and beca and and came back seeing. His neighbors and others who knew him as a blind beggar asked each other, “Isn’t this the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said he was, and others said, “No, he just looks like him.” But the beggar kept saying, “Yes, I am the same one.” They asked, “Who healed you? What happened?” He told them, “The man they called Jesus made mud and spread it over my eyes and told me, go to the pool of Saleom and wash yourselves. So I went and washed and now I can see.” “Where is he now?” they asked. “I don’t know,” he replied. Then they took the man who had been blind to the Pharisees because it was on the Sabbath that Jesus had made the mud and healed him. The Pharisees asked the man all about it. So he told them, “He put the mud over my eyes and then I was when I washed it away, I could see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man Jesus is not from God, for he is working on the Sabbath.” Others said, “But how can an ordinary sinner do such miraculous signs?” So there was deep division of opinion among them. Then the Pharisees asked again questioned the man who had been blind and demanded, “What’s your opinion about this man who healed you?” The man replied, “I think he must be a prophet.” The Jewish leaders still refused to believe the man that had been blind and could now see. So they called his parents and asked them, “Is this your son? Was he born blind? If so, how can he now see?” His parents replied, “We know this is our son and that he was born blind, but we don’t know how he can see or who healed him. Ask him. He’s old enough to speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders who had announced that anyone saying that Jesus was the Messiah would be expelled from the synagogue. That’s why they said, “He’s old enough. Ask him.” So for the second time they called in the man who had been blind and told him God should get the glory for this because we know this man Jesus is a sinner. I don’t know whether he is a sinner the man replied but I know this. I was blind and now I can see. Let’s pray. Lord we thank you for your word as we uh as I share a few thoughts that come to mind on this topic this morning. And I pray that your word would be um understandable to us and applicable to our lives and that you would bring to us the encouragement and the challenge that you have in Jesus name. Amen. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience. I think many of you probably have. You’re sitting in the kitchen and suddenly for no apparent reason the clock begins ticking and it begins ticking very loudly. Now some of you maybe uh are young enough that you didn’t have ticking clocks in your lifetime but but that’s an experience that many people have had or some other other sound a fan that’s going or something like that and you wonder well I know the clock was ticking for the last 5 years. Why did I all of a sudden hear it? Now, it’s an odd thing, isn’t it? I was curious about this question. So, I looked into it and uh and I found that there’s there’s a there’s something I I never really thought about, but a major thing a majority of the of the activity of your brain is to edit out information. So most of the time the ticking of the clock is hitting your eard drum. The sound is there. It’s it’s making an impact on your physical body, but somewhere between your eardrum and your conscious thought, your brain edits out that information as unimportant and you don’t hear it even though it’s happening all the time every day. I know this quite plainly because uh because I’m a motorcyclist and uh I I pay attention to safety and I I I I uh look up things and read and learns to to be safer on the road because it is a dangerous activity. And one of the things that you learn when you start to learn uh safety things about motorcycles is that um one of the things you learn is that is that other drivers on the road, especially in spring, actually don’t see you. And that’s because all winter long you’ve been driving and and your brain is is trained to understand that if a car or a truck or something like that is coming down the road, you don’t pull out. And so when the motorcycle comes down the road, the eyes take in the visual information of that motorcycle, but it never reaches the conscious mind because your brain has been trained that that’s unimportant information. There’s a lot of information out there. If you’re going to drive safely, your brain has to edit out a lot of unimportant information to highlight the important stuff to keep you safe. And then you pull out and the motorcycle slams on the brakes and all of a sudden your brain says, “Oh, that’s important information.” And the rest of the summer, you see the motorcycles. And you’ve probably had that experience where you pull out and and the car just slams on its brakes and you and it’s kind of scary, but driving often has scary incidents. But the the most frustrating part about it is you you could swear that you looked and there was no car there. Well, something went wrong in that connection between the visual information of that car that actually hit your eye, your retina, and your brain decided you don’t need to be conscious of that information and edited it out. So you you can you can give yourself an excuse for for that incident, but probably you were just thinking about something else and weren’t paying attention. So here here’s the science of it or a little bit of the science of it. Um because I read actually this week on holidays, I read three scientific papers, but I enjoy that kind of thing. So So it was fun. But uh your your physical body through smell and sight and sound and touch takes in 34 gigabytes of new information every day. So just to imagine what that is. Um one you know a gigabyte is a billion. So, um, if you were to start counting 1 2 3 4 about two numbers every second without taking a breath or an interruption or making any mistakes and you were to count to 1 billion, it would take you over 95 years. That’s one one gigabyte of information. Your body, your senses take in 34 gigabytes every day. to count to 34 gigabytes, that would take you um 3,233 years. That’s how much information you receive every day. If you do that in terms of steps, the average person walks about 3 miles per hour. And if you were to start walking right now on the equator, to get to 1 billion steps would take you more than 15 years or more, sorry, more than 15 times around the Earth. So to get to 34 billion steps would take you 535 times around the equator. That’s how much you take in every day. So your brain has a job to do out of all of this information. What’s going to become conscious? What are you going to think about? Your brain edits. Your brain edits out the unnecessary information. And sometimes it makes mistakes and edits out stuff that’s necessary. And uh and that’s that’s an important thing. And so when I’m thinking about this and and reading this kind of thing, my brain goes to Isaiah chapter 6:3. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And we usually focus on the glory bit, but this morning I want to focus on the full bit. The whole earth is full full of information, full of stuff, full of colors, full of sounds, full of touches. The earth is packed full and we experience it every day. So here’s the question. How are we to make sense of all this information? How do we do it? Some people don’t and they go crazy. That’s why I need holidays because over over over a long period of time of just taking in the information and trying to make sense of it and try to try to try to do something that with that information, it gets tiring. You need a period of time and that’s what Sabbath is about to just just reduce the amount of information coming in for a while so you can start to make sense of it. And we make sense of the world, I believe, through art. Now, this is my opinion. This isn’t a scientific study, but my opinion is that all good art is story. And all stories are the first steps of something becoming art. Now, there is art that doesn’t tell stories, and that has a place in the overall story, but as an individual piece, uh I think good art tells a story. and uh and as we make sense of the world, this is what we’re doing. And I want to try to get get into that. But let’s give an example to start off with. So I’ve put on the screen a picture of trees, a picture of a forest. Now, it’s a fine enough picture. Um there’s some color there. There’s some trees. There’s some sense of life, life there, and stuff like that. But if I take another picture of a of a forest, just a photo of a forest, and make it like this, that’s quite different, isn’t it? Immediately, when we add a trail and a and a light further down with some some fuzziness, some foggess, your brain starts to create a story. So that’s edging towards art instead of just a picture. And you’ve noticed this in your own pictures. You take a hundred pictures on your holidays and one of them stands out as that’s a really good picture. You don’t know what you did. I mean, professionals know how to do that, but but but but you accidentally captured something that that reaches more towards art than the other pictures. It tells a story that other people can understand even if they weren’t there. And so if you were walking down a trail in the woods when you were young and you encountered a bear, a picture like this might inspire in you some feelings of anxiety. It might inspire in you a story of danger and and that kind of thing. But if you’re like me and grew up on the prairies and went to the mountains every summer on holidays and my dad would then and and you walk down a trail like this as I did with my dad and his camera and we were on a treasure hunt cuz my dad’s goal in life, one of his goals was to take a photograph of every native species of flower in Western Canada. And so so we would walk down a trail like this. He had all the flowers that grew in the prairies already. So when we got to the forest to the mountains, we were looking for new species that we he hadn’t captured yet. So it was a treasure hunt. And so a picture like this brings to me warm feelings and memories of my father and I begin to tell a story in my own mind about what it means. But if we go one step further out of the photographs and into a painting and this painting by Emily Carr, who is one of my favorite artists, we start to see something different. There’s less detail. there’s less information. It’s not as realistic as the photograph, but the potential for stories begins to expand because if you’re if you’re a lover of the ocean, immediately those those branches and and leaves on the tree are going to remind you of waves in the surf. You’re going to start to to almost smell the saltiness of the air as as you look at that picture. And the trees, they don’t stand straight. It’s almost as if they’re I mean, they’re obviously not, but it’s almost as if they’re swaying. And maybe they could pull their roots out of the ground and start walking around. And there and and it’s clear that in this picture you’re in the dark, but just before you in the forest, there’s a light. What’s the source of that light? Is it something good? Is it something bad? And so your your your brain appreciates a picture. And I know I know it’s uh just a small thing, but it it’s it’s what we do. It’s how we make sense of things. And this is what this is what Emily Carr said. She wrote this down. real art is religious, a search for the beauty of God deep in all things. And I think she’s right. But that’s not just art. Because your life can be artistic, even if you’re not an artist. The way you live can tell a story that’s beautiful, and that’s art. That’s making sense of the world, of all the information. How do we make sense? So, let’s go back to the scientific study. In one of the studies, there was this picture. And I know you probably can’t hardly read the words, but but that’s not so important. Um, it’s a it’s an illustration of all the research that went into how brains work and make sense of the world. And what it’s what it’s showing you here is is up here we have awareness. That’s all that 34 gigabytes of information. So it comes in and and I’m not going to be explain all of this because I don’t understand all of it but I can understand enough. You have select or sorry select content for personal personal narrative. So that’s what your brain does. Your brain is telling a story and out of all the information out there, it selects some content that fits in that story and can make sense of and stuff that doesn’t fit, it edits away. And so then what you do is you here it’s talking about um about language and about about uh gestures and stuff like generate language and mental representations. And so what we do is we say something or we do something or we put a facial expression on our face into the world into that sea of information and we see what kind of feedback we get back and then we edit the story. We edit the narrative to fit what’s coming back to us. So there’s a feedback loop and and so that’s how our brains kind of kind of do this process. And scientists now believe that that that’s what our brains are doing much of the time is is taking in information, fitting it into the narrative that you’re construct that that that you understand yourself to be in and then and then putting stuff out to see if that matches with reality and then editing the story. And that’s how you know what’s real. That’s how you know what’s true. That’s how God designed your brain to work. You God designed your brain to work in a story format. So, as I told you, I’m on holidays right now. Um, the first week of my holidays, I went on a motorcycle trip and uh so just just on Friday, Colin and I were at a wedding uh for some friends of ours and uh somebody found out I was on holidays and asked me how the holidays were going. Now, none of you have asked me that. Maybe you will after the service, but I was asked that on Friday. and and um there’s a lot of information that I could give, right? And if I just if I just put the data points out there, you’d glaze over and stop listening within 30 seconds. And I didn’t think about this till I was looking at this sermon afterwards and thinking about it. What I did to answer that question is I told a story. I said, “Well, I was pretty tired. I hadn’t had holidays since Christmas time. Work’s been busy. There’s been a lot of things to deal with. And and I didn’t say it this way to my friend, but because of what I’ve just told you, I can I can expand a little bit. But the stories in my mind weren’t making sense. I was tense because it because it wasn’t fitting together. I couldn’t I couldn’t fit the stuff of my life into a consistent narrative that made sense. That’s when you get tense. That’s when you get tired. That’s when you can’t concentrate anymore because it’s not working. in this process of making sense of the world isn’t working anymore. You need a holiday. You need less information coming in for a while so you can have time to sort out the story. And so I didn’t say that to my friend cuz I’m just adding that here. But what I said is, well, I was tired. I really needed a holiday. I could feel it. And so I was planning what I was going to do. And I know that motorcycleycling, the main reason I do that is because it’s my meditation. It’s where stuff gets relaxed in me. So, so it’s valuable to me. So I wanted to go on a trip. So, I talked to my wife and other things and we kind of figured out what what what days would be possible for me to get away by myself without disrupting the family and we picked some dates and then I got out the maps and Google maps where have I where haven’t I never been and so I figured out well I’ve never been to Bellacula so I’m going to drive my motorcycle to Bellacula and the advantage of that as well is I knew that once I got past Williams Lake there’s no cell service so for several days I wasn’t going to even be able to check my email if I wanted to and I’d be really a lot less information in my life which would be would be restful and helpful for me. And so I got out on that trip and the first day was exhausting because it was very hot and I was in the in the area around uh Lake Louise and and uh Golden and and it was very very busy, lots of traffic and and so the next day um I got up and I got going and and as I got a little bit away from the number one highway and stuff and and things started to calm down, I there was a point in time when I could physically feel my body start to just let go of the tension and I knew that what was happening is the the stories that were competing for my attention in my brain were were were drifting away and becoming unimportant. And as that happened, I could literally feel the tension in the source part of my back start to start to move out through my body and and go away. So, that was feeling really good. And then I got out on the on the more remote areas, bush camping, um, with nobody around and really started to feel relaxed. But then something happened. I was on that road and talking to some local ranchers in the area and I I hadn’t done enough research obviously because I found out that there’s a section of the road before you get to Balakula where there’s about 100 km that’s not paved. So it’s gravel and that gravel section contains the steepest grade of any road in Canada. So, I’m going to be on two wheels on a gravel road on 18 to 20% grades on switchbacks with cliffs on all sides. I just about there was forecast for rain. Now, I thought I could do that. Uh I thought I could manage that, but if it rained, I I thought I’d probably be in pretty big trouble. Uh but I kept going. I went ahead. I I was I was nervous. I was tense. And and I and I got to that hill, which you can see a little bit of it there in the top picture. And um and I and I carefully went down, did a few switchbacks, started to gain some confidence, go a little faster, and I made it down the hill to sea level and and enjoyed the scenery around Bellacula on the coast, and then uh came back up. Up’s always easier on a motorcycle than down. And uh and got out of there. And you know, despite the tension that happened, um, I came out of there feeling satisfied and rested and strong, like could I could conquer anything. And I thought, you know, I just about I just about skipped that challenge because I didn’t want to add tension to my holiday. But I took it on and I conquered it, though I felt at times like I might die. and I came out strong feeling like I can take on anything. So that’s what I told my friend when he asked how my holidays were going. Now there’s a thousand other points I could have made, but I told a story and that’s what you do too. That’s what you do on the daily. Somebody asks you, “How was your day at work?” Again, there’s a thousand different points of information that you could put in an answer, but you might say something like this. Well, work was work was kind of normal, but you know, on the way to work, I was on the Anthony Hendai and the traffic just came to a complete stop. I couldn’t see what was going on. Was it an accident? Was the road closed? Was like I didn’t know what was going on. And so, I was kind of thinking, should should I try to get out of here and take a different route, but there’s a lot of traffic around. And then uh and then and then I looked in my mirror and there was an opening. I just cut across two lanes of traffic into the exit and went through all the residential areas and and I didn’t know if I’d be far enough, but I came out the other the other uh clover leaf onto the Anthony Hendy and I was past the jam up and I got to work on time. And guess what? Your husband and wife’s probably satisfied with that answer. You didn’t say a single thing about work. They asked you how was your workday. Doesn’t matter. You made sense of your day. You took on a challenge and you conquered it. And that’s satisfying. It’s satisfying to experience. It’s satisfying to tell. It’s satisfying to listen to. It makes sense of the world. This isn’t by accident. Stories point us towards God. Do you know that there was no limitation on how God would reveal himself to humans? There could be a loudspeaker blaring in the air 24/7 of his voice. There could be visible angels coming up to you every day to give you messages. God could do anything. But what did he do to reveal himself? He gave you a book of stories. He gave you a book of stories to make sense of the world. And all those stories together make one big story which I hope you’re all capable of telling. God created the earth and and it says in the beginning it was formless and void. No sense could be made of it. And then for six days, he put it into order. He put things in their proper place. He told the sea where its boundary was. He brought the mountains up out of the sea. He did all of those things. And you know what was possible at the end? What was not possible at the beginning? Rest. God made rest. And that’s our destination. But we messed it up. We decided to take on our own paths and make our own way and make our own decisions and not listen to him. And it’s called sin, rebellion against God. So how would a God who is love and grace and kindness bring people who are rebellious against him back to him without using force and meanness and autocracy? How would God do that? Well, the way God does that, the way God did that is by sending his son to show us love. And he died on the cross. He took on the challenge. He made the sacrifice so that we could believe in him and he took our sins upon himself and then join him in the journey of that story that’s not over yet. That’s how God reveals us himself to us in a story. And our stories line up with that story. What do I tell when you ask me how my holidays went? I tell about a challenge that was challenging and I overcame. That’s the story of the Bible. It’s the same shape. The stories we tell one another have the shape of grace. That’s how we make sense of the world. CS Lewis, a a master of narrative. This isn’t his writing. This is someone else writing about him. CS L Lewis, the author of the Narnia Narnian Chronicles, who believed that what he called subChristian values can be identified in much of the best secular literature, in other words, art forms, even pagan myths that he loved from childhood and throughout his life. By sub-Christian values, he meant images and principles that can form a foundation for understanding full-fledged Christian doctrines. He also believed, perhaps more controversial, that human beings are designed by God to be deeply attracted to ideas in literature that draw us closer to the knowledge of God. I think he’s right. At the risk of of stretching the definition of art, let me give you an example. I don’t know what you think about Harry Potter. Uh there’s was there was at least initially maybe still controversy about about uh the the this this massive five books uh story about witches and warlocks and casting spells and horcruxes and and all of that kind of stuff. And I’m not here to argue one way or the other, but here’s the thing I want to say. You could hardly find a piece of fiction that is more uncchristian on its surface. We we do not follow the dark arts. We do not follow uh magic. And the Bible clearly teaches us against looking for seances and and witches and and people that tell the future and stuff like that. And that these stories are full of that stuff. But if you look at the story and and I know you can’t read the details, but that’s outlines the the the ups and downs of the five books, the stories. And if you if you if you look at it, there’s countless battles. Now, some of the battles are actually in games uh where that the children play uh but but still they’re battles and uh some of the some of the battles are are much more um serious than that. But each of those stories within the bigger story follows a similar pattern. The people involved, the heroes of the story are faced with a challenge. Sometimes it’s in a game, sometimes it’s a life or death death situation. And they have to voluntarily enter that challenge. They could go the other way down the other hallway, but they have to voluntarily enter that challenge knowing it’s going to cost them. And when they get to the the the center of that of that challenge, um there’s great danger and they almost die. and something of them is given up and they come out the other side having grown being different people than they were before which has prepares them for the next challenge and uh and that’s how the story goes. So within each challenge there’s there’s levels of this and within but the whole book follows that that type of of thing and and when it comes to the climax in the final battle at Hogwarts um the forces of evil are now in their full strength fully visible and coming against uh the the heroes of the story and the and everyone fights valiantly and bravely but yet they are defeated and the hero of the story Harry Potter is killed. He finds himself in a place of bright light. And there’s only two things there. Well, three, I guess. There’s a railway track, but there’s two things. There’s a small shriveled up dying creature that we never are told what it means, what it is, and there’s the voice of wisdom. And he talks to the voice of wisdom for a while, and a choice is put before him. This is my interpretation. I believe this the the the small dying um thing is is the the part of him that’s connected to Voldemort, the part of him that’s evil, the part of him that’s always tempting him to go wrong. And it can’t survive in the place of light. And so it’s dying. So he can go on, get on the train and go on and never go back to earth where there’s suffering and tears and all kinds of stuff. And that would be the right thing to do. Or he could, not for any gain to himself, but only because of love for the others, go back. And he goes back. He’s resurrected. And now he has the strength and the clarity to defeat the evil. Is that not a god-shaped story? Even when the world tries to tell a story that is contrary to Christ, they end up telling a story that has the shape of grace in it. They can’t help themselves. They cannot help themselves. Here’s one representation of that shape. See the familiarity at the top? Everything’s normal. Life goes on. You’re not really thinking about just day after day. And in every story, well, there are other story plot lines, but this is the most common. In every story, something happens where the main character of the story realizes that below the surface things aren’t as they should be. And then they have to decide, am I going to just carry on with what’s familiar or am I going to cross the threshold into into the adventure? And when they cross the threshold, there’s helpers along the way. There’s temptations along the way. There’s always some kind of mentor that comes along and gives advice, but when they get to that final challenge, they have to go alone into the abyss. Now, if it’s tragedy, that’s where it ends. And that’s a story type that’s valuable for us to learn from. But in most stories, they conquer whatever it is at the bottom there. And then when they come out the other side, they’ve learned the things they need to know to bring the world back to its right shape. Now they can make clear decisions. Now they’re not indecisive. Now they’re not going this way and that way. They have a clear path and they they make atonement for their for their sins and they return and things become familiar and they live happily ever after. You know that shape. You’ve seen it a million times. You’ve told it a million times. How was your day? That’s the story you tell. Almost every time. That’s the story you tell. you know, the the beautiful young lady’s engaged to be married to the right man. And then this dangerous man comes along and she does something with him and starts to question whether she should should just stay in the familiar and get married or or or go down that dangerous path. And then you get to the bottom there and that’s always a place where both the fiance and the dangerous man have rejected her. That’s the valley of death. That’s the the end of all things. And that’s when she either is going to going to lose love forever or learn what she needs to learn to be the person she should be and come out the other side, make up with the fiance who says, “Yeah, we were never good for each other.” You know the story. And then they get married and they live happily ever after. Things are familiar again. That’s the shape of story. Now, here’s what I’m trying to say to you this morning. um is that this this is a shape that’s it it it doesn’t exist because we make it up. If you think about um I’ve never been, but I’ve seen I’ve seen pictures and movies of people who go to Hawaii and visit the volcanoes and you see that hot lava running down the mountain side and sometimes in those in Hawaii you can get right up to it. The lava doesn’t make the volcano. The depth of the earth make the heat. That’s where the true reality of it is. That’s what I’m talking about here. The structure of God’s reality is shaped like grace. And so we reflect it in our stories. We reflect his image in the way we understand the world whether we know it or not. So, let’s go back to the blind man and think about that for a minute. Something everyone’s in familiar land, right? For the blind man, it’s it’s a diminished reality being blind from birth, but but it’s everything’s familiar. And then something comes along named Jesus that disrupts that familiarity. I mean, who would spit on the ground and make mud? You notice later on when he tells the story, he doesn’t talk about the spit. He just said made mud. I don’t know if if that’s important or not, but it’s kind of funny to me. Um, but but he he puts the mud on the on his eyes and then the blind man is then at that threshold in the story. Do I enter the adventure or do I stay in the familiar? Do I take that chance because it’s going to be costly? Do I take that chance that I could manage the abyss and see redemption? because he could have gone home and washed the mud off in his basin. But he went to the pool of Saleom. And when he washed the mud off, he could see. And this challenged everybody. It didn’t fit their story. The new information didn’t fit their story. So for the village people, they refused to admit that he was the same man. Here he was standing before them, the man who had begged for their money every day for the last, I don’t know how many, 20, 30 years. And now they’re saying, “No, you’re not really that guy. You’re just a person that looks like him.” Talk about loss of identity. All the people that know you refuse to accept you are who you are. They didn’t want to edit their story with this new reality. The religious so that that’s their medical scientific story, right? People born blind don’t see. We’re not willing to adjust that information. We want to stay in the familiar. We don’t want to enter the world where Jesus goes to the cross because that’s a dangerous world. But it’s a world where redemption is possible. And so that’s the the scientific story. But then there’s also the religious story. What do the Pharisees say? Only a devil would contradict scripture and work on the Sabbath. I’ve said things quite similar to that in different words. My perception of what a good Christian person is and you don’t fit. It challenged their religious story. They acknowledged the miracle but not the source. It challenged their political story. It caused division between anyone everyone. It even challenged the family story. His own parents, though they knew the truth, wouldn’t stand up for him. They didn’t want to be kicked out of the synagogue. He’s a man. Ask him. They knew that when Jesus said, “I am the light,” he was reflecting the words of God to Moses in the burning bush, “I am.” They knew, his parents knew that Jesus was making the claim that he was the Messiah and proving it with the miracle, but they wouldn’t say it out loud. It’s a high cost that the blind man went through. Nobody could tell the story except for one. Such a simple story. I was blind but now I see. And you see the shape of grace. What is he saying in those simple words? You don’t have to be eloquent to tell this story. Simple words. I was in a place where everything was familiar. I was blind from birth. This was normal. Everybody knew it. Nothing was disruptive. I was blind. But I chose to believe the words of Jesus and enter that adventure, go past into the place of unfamiliarity. And when I was washing my eyes in the pool of Saleom, he probably knew the cost, at least some of it. He couldn’t anticipate all of it. but I’m going to go with Jesus. And he came out of that the deep dark place. He doesn’t explain it in detail, but we know the story. Now he’s challenged. His own friends don’t recognize him and won’t acknowledge who he is. The religious leaders interrogate him again and again like a criminal. His own parents don’t stick up for him. But he says, “I don’t care cuz I can see clearly now.” And it’s much deeper than my physical sight. I can see that the world runs on a different axis where we don’t have to accept blindness. Where we can go with Jesus to the cross and come out redeemed, come out forgiven, come out with a story that is going to go on for all eternity and then participate in that story and bear witness. I was blind but now I see. See, he didn’t have to say all the words I said just now. He just said those words. But the story had a shape and it was the shape of grace. Probably the best known telling of this story for many of you is in John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. going to go back. You see the shape? God loved the world. Everything’s normal. People rebelled. And what did Jesus do? He left the familiarity of heaven. If you want the details, go to Phil Philippians and read. He left the familiarity of heaven where everything was perfect. Where there was no suffering, no tears, everything was good. He crossed the threshold into the physical world in a physical body, not for any benefit to himself, but for the love of you and me. He faced many trials and temptations, but he did not sin. And he came to the place of the cross, the deepest, darkest place, where he took upon himself all the sins of the world and took them down to death and hades. And then by the power of God, he was transformed into a resurrection body and promised that if we go there with him, we will have the same experience and we will make atonement. He will make atonement between God and us. And as those who follow him on this journey, we will make atonement between one another. We’ll be ministers of reconciliation. And the story’s not over yet. because he want to take wants to take many with him back to the place where the world flips back right side up. And we live in that place of blessing, where there’s no tears and no no suffering and no hardship. I knew I’d go longer than normal because when I’m not properly prepared, I use more words to say what I want to say. Hope you’re still with me. I believe this is the shape of reality. The story of redemption is the shape that in which God created the world. What’s the application? First of all, learn to see the hints of God’s glory everywhere. If you go out on the Fringe Festival, you’ll see all kinds of stories that that might um harm your Christian sensibilities. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend taking them all in, but I guarantee you that the majority of those stories have this shape in them. People can’t help themselves. The shape of reality is the shape of God’s grace. So start to recognize it everywhere you go, everywhere you look. Don’t just accidentally tell a story of redemption when you talk about your day. Do it on purpose. Get good at it. Don’t just accidentally, like I did on Friday, tell a story of of of redemption and hardship and renewal like I did when I told the story of my holidays. Do it on purpose. Make the things that come out of your m mouth match the shape of God’s grace. Your brain is trying to make sense of life by by taking all that information and make it into into a narrative that can make sense. Intentionally make that narrative match the shape of God’s grace. Notice it. Notice it all around you. Understand that the meaning in your day-to-day life is to reflect this pattern of God into the world. How do you take on a challenge? Do you do it in the shape of God’s grace or you do it in the shape of the tragedy that ends in the abyss? Do you believe that you can wash the mud off and see clearly no matter how muddy it’s gotten with sickness and mental health and and broken relationships? How muddy has it gotten? Do you believe that by the voice of Jesus, you can go to the pool and wash? You can go to the cross and be redeemed and you can tell a story of redemption. Many of you either yourself or family members are suffering sickness, illness, hardship. Can you learn to put that hardship into a story that matches the shape of grace? There is a purpose, a reason in Christ’s suffering. Therefore, you can fill up in this world what is still lacking in Christ’s suffering. Your story can be added to his story. Your life, even in suffering, can become art that helps you and others make sense of the world. Learn to enter this path voluntarily. It’s going to happen. If you’re one of the the lucky I was going to say lucky, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. If you’re one of the people that where where where you’re in that place of familiarity and nothing has jarred, it just seems like life is good every day and is going to continue being good every day. That’s not true. It’s going to get disrupted. Are you going to fight like the parents of the blind man and say, “No, we’re not going to talk about that. We’re going to try desperately to stay in this familiar place, not enter that adventure that leads to redemption. Learn to enter this path voluntarily. It’s much easier if you do it on purpose. You say, “Yes, this is going to be hard, but I know God will be with us, and I know the shape of the story God tells, and he’s going to tell that story in my life. a story of overcoming the hardship, learning the things that need to be learned and see clearly afterwards. Now, sometimes that seeing clearly comes God be glorified in the afterlife, but God heals everyone. Some now, some in the new resurrected body. We can tell this story. We can tell this story over and over again. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. May your life reflect it.