Christianity doesn’t make sense. Now, I know that’s a pretty controversial thing to say in a magazine intended to draw you closer to Jesus, but for most of us it’s true… so I guess we should be honest about it.

Just have a think. Our lives are about what we do. In good ways and bad ways, the things we do mean we are good enough or not good enough. Our lives are about us - and us, determining by our actions, what we’ll study, who we will be, who our friends will be, who will love us and what we’ll dedicate our lives to. It’s all about us. Simple to get your noggin round, right? If I act right, study hard and do the right thing, people will love me and life will, for the most part, work itself out. That’s the age old wisdom that we all live by and can’t ever escape from. It just makes plain sense. It’s like 2+2 = 4. Logical and simple.

And this is exactly why Jesus doesn’t make any sense at all. He reveals a God who doesn’t act like that, think like that or have any expectations like that. Jesus reveals that it’s not about you, but about him. What you have done and will do doesn’t matter. It’s what he has done and continues to do that matters. And what is that? Well, it’s love for love’s sake. It’s grace. It’s saying that no matter how much you try or how badly you fail you won’t ever gain more of his love – or be refused it either.

Now that really doesn’t make sense. None of us will ever get our heads round it. We will always be thankful at just a glimpse of God’s grace and love but we’ll never get all of it. More often than not we’ll retreat back to our old view of the world where we think that surely God can’t love us if we do that, or that if only we read our Bible’s more, were better at praying or just loved our neighbours with all we had, then we’d be closer to God.

But because of Jesus that just isn’t true. God knows that if we try to earn his love, we’ll be burnt out before we even get close to Mother Theresa’s accomplishments. He also knows we totally ruin ourselves if we think that the stuff we’ve done makes us dirty or not good enough for him. When we make it about us and what we do we run the danger of totally missing out on relationship with him.

I want it to make sense. At times I get it, love it and cherish it. Then there are the times where I focus again on what I’ve done. But it’s only by God’s love and grace that we can know him. That is it. We’ll spend a lifetime trying to make sense of it, but, let’s say it one more time just so it sticks for a few more seconds; God loves us no matter what, we can’t do anything to make him love us more or less. He just loves us.

Making sense yet?

We hope so. We also hope you’ll have a gander at some of the other articles we’ve got this month. There’s some stuff from Mike P on seeing beyond the crowds, the whole series of teaching from our Equal conference (yep, good hey?), a look at what churches in Bristol are doing to show love to their community, some stuff on identity and a look a weakness too! Have a look and see.

Oh, and of course, at the end of this month we’ll be up in lovely Stafford for Soul Survivor Week A. We’d love to see you, so if you’re coming along make sure you say hello!