In yesterday’s post (which can be found here, if you are so inclined) I talked about a seminary graduation project I still have nightmares about today. That project was known as CREDO. 

Credo (or “I believe” in Latin) was a graduation requirement at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. It was a requirement that torpedoed several promising pastors before they even got out of the gate. The aspiring Saint Paul graduate was tasked with writing a 20-page summation of every conceivable dimension of his or her Christian faith… and then had to defend that summation in front of a faculty committee.

The best piece of advice I received from my credo advisor, I said yesterday, was to collect my thoughts around a central theme and then branch off from there. The theme I chose was CONNECTION.

Since then, as I have lived and worked, I began to see a new theme emerge. It is a theme that would have – I believe – navigated me safely through the credo tempest but could also have served as a shining North Star along the bumpy and often perilous road of ministry. 

That theme is: REDEMPTION. Especially the way I define the word.

Dictionary.com defines redemption as: “1. An act of redeeming (Duh!) or atoning for a fault or mistake, or the state of being redeemed. 2. Deliverance; rescue. 3. (Theology) deliverance from sin; salvation.”

All of which are well and good. Especially the theological one. But when I use the word “redemption,” I mean something more along the lines of, “Taking something that had been discarded and considered worthless and repurposing it into something seen as highly treasured.” 

If I was sitting in my home office right now instead of being at this Air BnB in Oregon, I would take a picture of the plate that hangs on my wall and use it as an illustration of what I’m talking about. 

At first blush, you would look at that plate and say, “My… what a beautiful plate that is!” Your appreciation would deepen immeasurably when I told you the plate’s backstory. The person I bought it from acquired it on a trip to South Africa. They said it was made by a person in one of the impoverished townships out of hundreds of discarded plastic bread wrappers. Each wrapper had been carefully washed out, cut into strips, and then woven into a colorful plastic plate, suitable for display as art.

(Oh my gosh! Would you look at this! The wild and wonderful internet came up with this image of a coaster when I Googled, “upcycled bread wrappers”! How cool is THAT!)

That whole process is what I mean when I say “redemption.” 

That’s because most of the time I see my life story as a living parallel to that bread wrapper plate. At my lowest point… the point when Jesus took over my heart and soul… I saw myself as used up and tossed out. 

Just like one of those bread wrappers. 

All three legs of the three-legged stool of my identity – my identity as father, husband, and businessman – had shattered into a million pieces. I felt like I was at the bottom of a deep well with no ladder, no rope, and no one in earshot to call out to. 

No one, that is, except Jesus. 

That was the point when I discovered the reality of Psalm 34:18… the one that says, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” (NRSVU) That was when I had the personal experience of REDEMPTION. 

Since then, I have bumped into scores of fellow “upcycled bread wrapper plates” like me. There is the ex-convict, ex-heroin addict who just celebrated his 26^th “re-birth” day and now tells his personal redemption story to rooms full of addicted, thrown away people. There is the pastor who thought he had thrown away his marriage, family, and career yet who has been restored to wholeness and health. There was the angry, cynical young man who met Jesus in his final days and died at peace with the world…

… and on and on. 

Redemption is resurrection. Redemption is bringing life out of death. Redemption is what God did in the Creation story… bringing life and beauty out of chaos. Redemption is about seeing the possible where everyone else sees a dead end and impossibility. It is about feeding 5,000+ people with five loaves of bread and two fish.

Yes… I think “redemption” would also have worked as a credo theme. 

What about you? What would YOUR credo theme be if someone asked you?

Abundant blessings;