A woman weeping on the sidewalk taught me something about God.
If you haven’t read the previous post
, how we came across a desolate, helpless stranger in the Seoul airport and what happened, you should go there first. This is part two.
Like I said at the end of that post, I learned something about God that day.
I’d known God for a long time. By the immeasurable grace of Christ, I heard the gospel as a young child and responded in repentance and faith. Very early I learned that God is the cosmic rescuer and we’re the rescued. Yes! Hallelujah! Thank you, Father.
But one day I read Ephesians 1 where Paul obsesses about God getting blessed as He rescues sinners. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,” (Ephesians 1:3 ESV).
I didn’t understand what he was talking about. What benefit does God get from salvaging poor helpless humans? The answer eluded me until that day in the Seoul airport. Here’s how that went down.
My shuttle pulls away from the terminal. Through the rear window I watch that little knot of happy humans recede in the distance. Their cup is full. Obviously. No surprise there.
I watch until I can’t see them any more. But I’m feeling them. Something is happening in my chest, and it lasted all day, and then some. A deep joy, an unbroken thrill at the sense of privilege was rising in my heart. And even before the shuttle got back to Valerie and June, I realized, This must be how God feels. This is what Ephesians is talking about!
The rescuer gets the bigger blessing
I replayed that experience over and over all day as we travelled on into Russia. I related it to anyone who would listen. And the incident unlocked a biblical truth that had eluded me for years. It’s more blessed to rescue than to be rescued.
We’ve received much from God. Ephesians 1:3-14 lists multiple benefits God has granted us in Christ: election, predestination, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, and more. And as the writer lists these blessings, he interrupts himself three times with an intriguing phrase: “to the praise of the glory of His grace” (v 6); “to the praise of His glory (v 12); “to the praise of His glory” (v 14).
For years I skimmed over those brief benedictions without understanding them. What’s the existential link between my rescue and God’s blessing?
Blessed be God!
In fact, Paul begins that section with the phrase I quoted above: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Really? Blessed be God? Aren’t I the one who gets blessed? Aren’t I the lost sinner who finds a forever home in Christ? Aren’t I richly, abundantly favored in Christ? Yes, yes and yes. That’s exactly what Paul says. But he begins with “blessed be God.”
Okay, Paul, whatever you say. But seems like it would be more accurate to say, “Blessed be Gary Brumbelow who has received every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.”
All this came clear to me in the Seoul airport, September 2000, when a lost family got richly blessed, and the rescuer got blessed even more.
I wasn’t suffering that day. It wasn’t me lost and alone. That would be her, the stranger from Russia weeping on the sidewalk. She was “separated … alienated … having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). She was sick with fear and grief, suffocating in despair. But a half hour after we met, she had been rescued … and I had been profoundly blessed.
This blessing happened at two levels. First, I felt a great inner joy, an irrepressible buoyancy. I was floating a foot off the ground for several hours.
Blessed be some American strangers
But I believe another level of blessing–that is, of praise—was also developing.
About our cosmic rescue Paul testifies, “blessed be God.” And I’m pretty sure the Russian stranger was testifying “blessed be those Americans.” That family presumably arrived in their new home in Korea where they found new neighbors, met new colleagues, made new friends—and also called back home—and to many of these they gave glory to some American strangers. We received glory. Their unlikely rescue resulted in the praise of the glory of some American strangers.
That’s a tiny parallel to what we read about God receiving glory for his rescue of humans. There are also some very big differences between the two.
But that explanation involves a cat story, and I’m already stretching my reader’s patience. Next post.
Their troubles began at the taxi stand. A single car could not accommodate them and their luggage. So her husband put her and the baby and half the luggage in a taxi and said, “I’ll be right behind you in the next taxi.”
Valerie and June agreed to stay with the baggage and be on the lookout for anyone who appeared like he was looking for someone. I went back in and begged a piece of paper, a marker and some tape. The woman wrote her name on the paper and we taped it to the handlebars of the stroller.
both. The significance of that was not immediately obvious. But in a moment, it washed over both of us with perfect clarity and sudden joy. Because at the very tip of that island, right where the lanes parted, a man was standing, scanning all the traffic very intensely. She gasped, and I knew we had our man.