I was driving into Seattle last week and I had a vision of the world.  I don’t get many of these and I am really excited to share this vision with you.  It was the kind of vision where, a shutter went through my body, the hair on my arms stood up and for just a moment it was as if the thin veil of reality was pulled back and I could see things for what they really were. I want to preface this by saying, it’s not as weird as it sounds, but that would probably be a lie – it is as weird as it sounds. And this is what I saw:

All of life was separated into only two buckets -
under the Law or the Gospel.

I saw before me – red breasted robins singing, not as I wanted to believe they do, simply in order to praise our Maker, but in order to show dominance over other male Robins and attract female Robins to them so that they might dominate them and continue their own gene pool. Their singing was pure evolutionary survivalism.

I saw before me – the Church of God, not as I wanted to believe us to be – gathering for worship, offering prayers, and serving the poor simply in order to give praise to our Maker, but in order to feel good about ourselves, to better ourselves and cultivate our own righteousness. Our singing was pure evolutionary survivalism.

I saw even the sunset before me, not displaying the amazing magenta hues and golden tones splashed across the evening sky in order to give praise to our Maker, but instead created by the steady stream of cars, which I was in, that made a haze of toxins for the sun’s light to illumine as it passed over the horizon – A product of our evolutionary survivalism.

This vision intruded upon me in just a flash of images, one piling upon the other, piling upon the other… until the weight of it was crushing.
All of our goodness and badness,
all of our hating and loving,
all of our surviving and striving,
all of our criticism and praise,
all of our warring and diplomacy,
all of our everything was under the Law…

From the steady stream of cars driving to work
to gazelles being eaten by a pride of lions,
from microbial diseases and cellular regeneration
to the collapse of a star sucking a galaxy into itself…
All of everything in life was in ignorant slavery to this Law…
And it was a natural order that could not be stopped.

The beauty of the singing bird, the devotion of the Church, the majesty of the sunset were merely the way we chose to paint the Universe in order to stomach the cold, harsh, inescapable reality that everything survives at the expense of the other.  The peeling away of this veil was for me, like when a small boy goes with his mom to a grocery store, he reaches up to take her hand and realizes that the hand he has grasped is not his mother’s, but some stranger’s hand.  The world was strange to me, and not the warm and welcoming place I had believed it to be.

All of life was divided into two – either Law or Gospel…
And all I could see was under the Law and it was surging with logic and power and it crushed with the weight and momentum of billions of years.

But then, in the midst of this vast universe under the Law there appeared a tiny Speck.  And it appeared to be unremarkable, and insignificant, and nonsense, and impotent.  And this little, tiny Speck was the Gospel and it was submerged into this carnivorous ocean.   When everything in the universe saw this tiny, impotent, nonsensical Gospel they wanted to eat it.  The lions, the microbes, the collapsing star, the prayers of the Church, the Red-Breasted Robins, the streaming cars, the toxic haze, and the instincts within me all turned their drive for survival against this speck of Gospel.  But this tiny speck of Gospel, swished between the teeth of the predatory bites.

Their was a calm, and together the universe had a thought, we thought: “Perhaps this speck of Gospel might help me survive if I don’t destroy it?”  The universe watched as the Gospel speck went about saying to other specks, “Don’t be afraid.” “Follow me.” “You are blessed.”, but saying to the big predators, “If you want to be at the top of the food chain, you must be at the bottom.” and “You will eat me, but in three days I will resurrect.”

Now it was clear to the predators that this speck was of no use to their survival and was actually becoming something of an annoyance, if not a small threat.  Teeth were all around the tiny Gospel Speck closing in tighter and tighter.  This time it would not swish away.  Some of the specks that had followed the tiny Gospel Speck slipped silently into the dark of the ocean, but other specks, seeing that this tiny Gospel Speck may be of no use to them, and actually might endanger them joined the surge of biting, biting, biting… until there was nothing. It wasn’t much of a meal; the Gospel Speck was so tiny, but everyone had eaten.  There had been enough for everyone.  And it was right… it didn’t stay dead.

This is the tiny Gospel speck:  That God loves the world.
And here’s how:  Jesus, the innocent one, dies for you with arms wide open on the cross with these words on his lips, “God forgives you.”  This outrageous scandal ought to condemn us under any circumstance, but God has turned it into our salvation. This is the tiny Gospel speck that wont stay dead.

And when I saw it, something happened… I thought my mind was going to explode, my body tingled all over, and I thought “If I’m not careful I could crash my car.”  I saw every image that I saw before: The lions, the microbes, the collapsing star, the prayers of the Church, the Red-Breasted Robins, the streaming cars, the toxic haze, and the instincts within me… all those images driven by pure evolutionary survivalism came back to my mind’s eye in reverse.  They still wanted to eat each other, that hadn’t changed, but all of that swirling energy no longer crushed me, but instead it drove me towards this tiny Gospel Speck that gives endless grace and was drawing all of this vast universe towards it.  And the Law and everything under it no longer functioned to condemn me, but instead it existed to drive me towards the grace of Jesus, and that tiny Gospel Speck is what drives me into this present moment to proclaim a tiny Gospel.

And when your hear the Gospel

you will notice that it is always addressed to the undeserving, to sinners both those who are being eaten and those who are doing the eating.

When you hear the Gospel you will hear the words “for you”, because it comes intimately into your personal space.

When you trust the Gospel over your own drive for survival you know that the Spirit of God is the one who has done it within you.

When you hear the Gospel (beyond your belief!) you trust God’s faithfulness in spite of the injustice of the universe.