Failures? Not in my Eyes

Has anyone written a book called ‘Christian Failures’?

I mean, I love reading about people who fail, first time, second time, third time and more. . people who come home from the mission field with no fruit at all or spend fifteen years making one disciple.

Why? I like reading about humans like me, people who battled, doubted, sunk and rose again (figuratively  speaking), felt like giving up, did give up, let others down, forgave others, forgave themselves ... God’s work is often built on our mistakes, our failures, our repentance - and His grace.

Failure is probably the wrong word. ‘Failure’ is God’s training ground; it is often the time when actually we are bearing fruit, maybe not in terms of outward success but in terms of patience, faith, love, repentance etc.

When I visit Oxford I love to walk down Broad Street and, if there’s not too much traffic, stand on that humble black stone cross which lies unobtrusively amongst the cobbles on the road. Why? One of my heroes stood there – Cranmer, one time Archbishop of Canterbury (1489 – 1556).

 True, he wrote some of the finest prayers ever written in the English language as well as having the wisdom to collect and translate from former traditions but he failed the first round BIG TIME in a time of persecution in  Queen Mary 1's reign, denying the very things he had so believed in and written about. He was double-minded, cowardly, weak. His vacillations did not save him and see him now, the faggots are piled up, the fire is lit and he is about to be burned, on the wasteland outside the city walls as it was then.

But, the story goes on, written by an anonymous bystander that 'he stretched out his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good space, before the fire came to any other part of his body; where his hand was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying with a  loud voice, 'This hand hath offended.'   

His offending hand placed in the flames first, the hand that had written the denial of what he had believed in - before his body was consumed. I like this sort of thing. Something is answered deep inside my humanity; I am comforted and moved; I find hope.

Book of failures? Not in my eyes. Good for you, Cranmer!