Jesus - Safe, Tender, Extreme

by Adrian Plass

• ISBN13: 9780310257844
• ISBN10: 0310257840
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-02-10
• Publisher: Harpercollins Christian Pub

Summary

Evocative reflections on three facets in our relationship with Jesus. People long for reality in their walk with Christ. To know him better, we must understand the different sides of his complex nature. Popular British author Adrian Plass draws on biblical stories and personal experience-as well as his keen understanding of people's needs-as he explores the Safe Jesus, the Tender Jesus, and the Extreme Jesus. God has told us that he holds us in the palm of his hands, where no one and nothing can harm the most important part of us. But from biblical times to the present day, Christians encounter accidents and disasters. What does it really mean to experience the Safe Jesus? Jesus tells his disciples that they must love one another. Yet time and again we try to find achievement and success through our own efforts and individual gifts, only to end in failure. Instead, we need to know the Tender Jesus who becomes visible when we join with each other in the body of Christ. Jesus only did what he saw his father doing. Each of his actions and encounters were fueled, informed, and instructed by the dynamic, creative, unpredictable Spirit of God. Failing to be obedient in this way is what truly constitutes sin. When we are open to the genuine leading of the Spirit, we will experience the Extreme Jesus. In Jesus - Safe, Tender, Extreme, Adrian Plass is "simply a man with a broom, sweeping away the rubbish that prevents others from passing further in and further up, by talking about what Jesus does and doesn't do in my life."

Table of Contents

Foreword by John Ortberg	9	(2)
Introduction	11	(8)
PART ONE: SAFE JESUS
Thoughts and Reflections on the Safe Jesus
Chapter 1. Safe in the Love of Jesus, Safe in the Body of Christ	19	(14)
Chapter 2. Freedom, Safety, and the Value of Truth	33	(24)
Chapter 3. Telling the Truth, Part Two	57	(20)
My Encounters with the Safe Jesus
Sleep Paralysis	77	(2)
A Twenty-Pound Note	79	(4)
Travelling Mercies	83	(2)
Restoring the Balance	85	(4)
Behind the Blank Stares	89	(4)
Home or Fortress?	93	(10)
PART TWO: TENDER JESUS
Thoughts and Reflections on the Tender Jesus
Chapter 4. Turning the World Upside Down	103	(22)
Chapter 5. The God Who Defaults to Compassion	125	(38)
My Encounters with the Tender Jesus
Another Place	163	(4)
What Do You Think of What I Do?	167	(2)
Jesus in Tears	169	(2)
The Deep, Dark Place	171	(4)
Closed Wounds	175	(8)
PART THREE: EXTREME JESUS
Thoughts and Reflections on the Extreme Jesus
Chapter 6. At the Extreme Edge with Jesus	183	(20)
Chapter 7. Falling Through to Solid Ground	203	(12)
Chapter 8. Stepping Out with Jesus	215	(20)
My Encounters with the Extreme Jesus
Appropriate Steps	235	(4)
What Am I Saying?	239	(4)
Lost Opportunity	243	(2)
Hard to Conceives	245	(2)
Paying for the Damage	247	(6)
The Power and the Glory	253	(4)
Epilogue: Revelation	257	(6)
Appendix: Prayers for the Journey	263

Excerpts

Jesus – Safe, Tender, ExtremeCopyright © 2006 by Adrian PlassRequests for information should be addressed to:Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataPlass, Adrian.Jesus – safe, tender, extreme / Adrian Plass.p. cm.ISBN-10: 0-310-25784-0ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25784-41. Jesus Christ – Person and offices. 2. Spirituality – Anecdotes. 3. Plass,Adrian. I. Title.BT203.P53 2006232 — dc222005016640Adrian Plass asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical,photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews,without the prior permission of the publisher.This edition printed on acid-free paper.Interior design by Beth ShagenePrinted in the United States of America05 06 07 08 09 10 11 • 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1Safe in the Love of Jesus,Safe in the Body of ChristAt this very moment, as I write, in the room at the end ofthe hall across from my study, someone is dying.Kathleen Rosa Ormerod is my wife’s mother and my goodfriend. She is eighty-eight years old and has terminal cancer.Three weeks ago, one week before Christmas, we made thedecision that Kathleen should leave the hospital and spendher remaining days, weeks, or months in our house. She isconfi ned to bed, and what a bed it is, one of those specialelectric ones that you feel might even perform a backwardsomersault if you pressed its multitudinous buttons in thecorrect permutation. This superbed stands in the room thatuntil now has functioned as our dining room.We want this to be a place for her to live in, not just theequivalent of a hospital ward. Fortunately, it is an ideal roomfor the purpose, bright, cosy, and enfolding, yet with a senseof being connected to the rest of the world. The windows andthe glass doors are responsible for creating this effect. Thereare three windows, two large ones opening out towards thearea at the front of the house, and another smaller one facingthe backyard. In addition, there are two glass-panelled doors,the one directly in front of her giving a view of the hall and thestairs, and the other, diagonally to her right, looking throughto the kitchen, which is where everything of any real importancehas always happened in our home – talking, eating, sittingaround, all those crucial things. She is effectively right atthe centre of our family activity. She can see people arrivingand leaving and moving from room to room and working inthe kitchen and passing up and down the stairs. Her room isablaze with fl owers, sent and delivered to the house by friendsand family who know how much Bridget’s mum has alwaysloved growing things. Stoic though she is, it is a matter ofgreat sadness to Kathleen that it will not be possible for herto see the fl owers growing in the garden of her own house thisspringtime. It breaks my heart for her. How sad it must be tofeel that you have probably seen your last springtime.However, if you have no choice but to die and you cannotleave your bed, this is not the worst corner of the worldin which to fi nd yourself. That is Kathleen’s continuallyexpressed point of view, and I agree with her. She deserves thiscomfort and consideration. She is a toiler of the old school, aperson who has given to others all through her life. A hardworking,consistently obedient servant of the Lord for morethan eight decades, she has merited every good and helpfulthing that can be made available to her.We all pay a price though. For Kathleen there is the frustrationin this last phase of her life of constantly having totake from others. On the day when she fi rst arrived at ourhouse after leaving the hospital, she said she wanted to askme something.“Adrian,” she said, “I want you to be absolutely truthfulwith me. Is my being here going to disrupt your familycelebrations or get in the way of your day-to-day living? Behonest with me.”“Good gracious, no,” I replied. “We always like to havesomeone sleeping in a hospital bed in our dining room over theChristmas period. We’d fi nd anything else very odd indeed.”Safe in the Love of Jesus, Safe in the Body of Christ 21Kathleen laughed a great deal at this, but it was also a stepon the road to acceptance of the fact that the independenceshe values so much is not possible now. It is not her way totake without giving in return. Now she has no choice.For my wife some things are painfully diffi cult to watch.Bridget sat beside her demented father as he died only monthsago, and since then she has hardly had the time or space togrieve his passing. Kathleen was never a bulky person. Nowshe is very thin – horribly, frighteningly thin. Both of us fi ndit very hard to look at her outstretched fl eshless arm, to seethe way the skin goes sliding down that brittle stick of bonelike silk gliding along a polished wooden curtain pole. It isthe cancer that does it. It would make no difference howmuch she ate. Like some ravening fungoid monster, the hungrykiller inside takes a huge part of all the goodness andnutrition that goes into her body, feeding itself and growinglarger and more blindly, grossly dominant by the day. Wefi nd it strange to look at her, so slight, so fragile, and so inoffensive,and to know that this ugly thing is murdering her byinches.At the end of the day, assisted by medication, she sleepslike a dead person, skin china white, her mouth hanging openon her chest, her head tilted to one side. Recently, exchangingnotes, my wife and I discovered that after she has settledfor the night, we are both in the habit of peering fearfully inthrough the glass panels of the door that connects her room tothe hall, studying her with round-eyed, fearful concentration,hoping to detect in the rise and fall of the emaciated chestbeneath her nightdress that she is still with us. Hard thoughit is to admit, there are times, especially when she has had adepressingly diffi cult, uncomfortable day, when we half hopethat her shallow breathing will stop. We wonder if God mightallow her to slip quietly away to join her beloved George,in a place where, for him, there is no more panic-strickenconfusion and, for her, no more commodes and catheters andbedsores and all the other varieties of personal humiliationthat polite and private people so dislike.At night we take Kathleen’s breathing to bed with us.Bridget has bought one of those baby monitors so that hermother can call her in the night if she needs help urgently. Thetransmitter is downstairs beside Kathleen, and the receiveris in our bedroom. I found this very strange at fi rst, and Ishall never become accustomed to it. It is as though anotherperson’s soul is trapped in the little white plastic contraptionwith the glowing red light that stands on a shelf in the cornerof our bedroom. Every night now, after I have switched offmy bedside lamp, there are, unnervingly, two sets of humansounds in the blackness apart from my own, and the overlappingrhythms of two clocks ticking, one of them on our wall,and the other standing on the little table next to Kathleen asshe sleeps. The ticking of her little square clock continues likethe beating of a healthy heart, but there are moments when thesound of Kathleen’s breathing seems to be arrested altogether.When this happens Bridget will sometimes sit bolt uprightin bed, straining her ears to detect the slightest evidence of abreath being taken.

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Excerpted from Jesus - Safe, Tender, Extreme by Adrian Plass
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