DAY 12: "In The Margins" by Drew Love

DAY TWELVE: "In the Margins" by Drew Love

“Margins are those clear spaces along the edge of this page that keep the words from spilling off. Every book has them. You might jot notes in the margins, but for the most part they go unnoticed. They don’t represent the book, and they don’t define its message. They’re simply there.

Society – our world, our culture – has margins just like this page does. They’re places occupied by people who go unnoticed, misfits who seldom figure in when the mainline world defines and esteems itself. But they’re there.” – From Rick McKinley’s Jesus in the Margins

I have to admit that I have spent most of my life focused on the middle of the page and not in the margins. Here is what you find in the middle – wealth, power, pride, comfort, pleasure, popularity… The list goes on but you get the picture. If you really think about it we spend so much of our time and energy preparing for this “middle of the page”. For the most part our society, culture, and education prepares and points us to the “middle”. So it should be no shock that at the point in our faith when “we get it” or the “light bulb comes on” that we then spend the remainder of our life unlearning and undoing all this stuff we have been so focused on.

I have been a follower of Christ since my late teens, but it hasn’t been until the last 7-8 yrs of my walk with Him that I have been able to begin to have a vision and heart for these “margins of life”. As John Piper says, “I was wasting my life – slipping by in life without a passion for God, spending my life on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin.” My transformation didn’t happen overnight and it isn’t over with. It is a continual process and journey I am on with Him. Earlier I spoke about what the “middle” looked like. Contrast it with the “margins” – fear, doubt, uncertainty, being uncomfortable….. The water is much deeper in the margins and it can get messy. But if we examine Jesus’ ministry, this is where he spent his time and efforts.

To this day, I am still not comfortable in the margins. But I also don’t think that I will ever be comfortable because then I would not need faith.

I think God’s ultimate plan for us is that we see everything as one page, no margins, and no middle - just one big canvas. He is the painter and we are brushes.

On my first visit to Trace Crossing, I saw a church that understood and has a vision for the margins of life. A church that isn’t afraid to get in the deep waters of life, that wants to roll up its sleeves and be about our Father’s business.

My prayer for Trace Crossing:

Oh God, give us the vision, strength and courage for the margins of life. May we be transformed by your love and grace. Help us to remember who we are and why we were created.