Over-the-top Generosity

Amazon is slipping. It was three weeks delayed in delivering JC’s gifts for his parents.

My husband and I were not really bothered. Gifts that come late are gifts nevertheless; their value is never diminished. Both with heavy marketing background, we know that dates are simply merchandising hoopla.

But JC was livid.

He’d have wanted to give us these gifts on Christmas. I could hear him chewing off the ear of whoever was on the other line. His voice sounded like gunshots.

The package, which arrived on our doorstep only yesterday, was worth the long wait. Tony got two seasons of “Everybody Loves Raymond” (his favorite TV show, next to . . . uh, Desperate Housewives?).

Me? I got not just a book, but The Word on the Street!

“I couldn’t find it in any bookstore here,” JC explained.

The Word on the Street by Rob Lacey is a retelling of the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, although it has a qualifier on the cover –

“Purist alert: This is not THE BIBLE (capital B) . . . but it might just get you reaching for one.”

It is not meant to replace your Bible (mine is KJV); it simply brings to life, in today’s language, the gripping stories and the passionate voices found in God’s Word. I love reading it (with my KJV beside me) because it is theatre, song, e-mail, web page, storytelling, and reality show all in one.

JC scrawls on the first page, “Mommy, combining your two loves: the Word of God and the theatre.”

Turning to the chapter on love, 1 Corinthians 13, here’s what kept me smiling (verses 4-8):

What is love anyway? Not the tripe you’ve been force-fed! No, love gives people space and time; it does people good. It’s not jealous, loud-mouthed or big-headed. It’s not vulgar; it doesn’t look after No. 1. It’s not got a short fuse—it forgives and forgets. Love doesn’t smile when dark stuff goes on, but throws a party when the truth gets out. It protects more than a blockbuster hero; it trusts more than a toddler. It’s always positive; it always hangs in there. Love doesn’t let you down.

If the book is gripping, the story behind its creation is even more so. Lacey was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he started writing the book in the year 2000. All through the three years that it took him to finish it, he was in and out of hospitals, in between chemotherapy and surgery, pain and remission, anger and stupor.

He lived to see it chosen as the Book of the Year (2004) at the Christian Booksellers Convention Ltd. UK. After another two years, Lacey joined the One for whom He lived his life as a writer and a performer.

This book’s blurb says, “For those who’ve never read the Bible, and for those who’ve read it too much.”

I don’t know if I fall within the second category, having in my possession at least a dozen translations which I refer to often. But what Lacey says about grace keeps me thinking I have not read enough—can never read enough.

“Grace is too big a word to define: favour, forgiveness, salvation, regeneration, love of God – all these don’t quite make it. Hence my struggles to define it.”

Ditto.

The Word on the Street’s phrase to mean grace, "over-the-top-generosity,” is way over the top, but it doesn’t even come close to defining it fully, even in today’s street-smart super lingo.