The Safest Place on Earth – Chapter Four

Larry Crabb’s book ‘The Safest Place on Earth’ seems to be a welcome relief from the self-centred gospel prevalent in so many of today’s current literary releases. In fact, I’ve read nothing else that comes so close to my experience and current thoughts. There are things that Crabb touches on here that stand and defy everything taught about the Church. This book is not about having your best life. It’s about having the best life that God plans for you. It’s not about being driven by a purpose. It’s about the struggles and the wrestling that goes with the ordained divine destiny on your life. You won’t feel warm and fuzzy after reading this book – in fact you may even feel more confused and disappointed. Where so much emphasis on leadership, managerial and advertising skills are placed on pastors it’s refreshing to see a text that deals with the formation of true spiritual communities amongst people whom Christ calls the Church.Chapter 4 – It Takes an Armando

This chapter starts with a story of a young disabled boy Armando. Though he has severe mental and physical disabilities, when he is picked up and held his body quivers with joy and excitement and his eyes say, “I love you.” Crabb sets this young boy as someone who can ’shatter our defenses, to expose our brokenness, and to touch our souls with love.” The same types of characteristics that we need to embrace in the formation of spiritual community.

Quotes to Note from Chapter Four

- Only a spiritual community can cut through our commitment to safety from people and allow us to enjoy safety with people.

- A spiritual community consists of people hwo have the integrity to come clean.

- [In a spiritual community] integrity is the first step. We must admit who we are at our worst. The response of the community comes next. If the response is anything less than unconditional love, our brokenness becomes fragmentation.

- Only when the perfume jar is broken in the presence of accepting community is the fragrence released.

- Everything in our spiritual community is reversed from the worlds order. It is our weakness, not our competence that moves others; our sorrows not our blessings that break down the barriers of fear and shame that keep us apart; our admitted failures, not our paraded successes, that bind us together in hope.

- We protect our wounds with all fierceness of a lioness watching over her cubs. And because it is nearly impossible to see who we are as seperate from these wounds, we think we are protecting ourselves when in fact we are preserving our wounds.

- Our longings to be loved at our worst, to enter into a safe relationship of intimacy with Jesus, are far more central to who we are than our failures and fears.

- We identify ourselves more by what’s wrong with us than by what God has made right.

- If we face ourselves fully, we will be broken by what we see, by the selfhishness and fear and rage and lust that covers our spiritual beauty like tarnish on silver. Something brilliant and intact gleams through the stain of our brokeness.

- The passion to protect ourselves, to keep our wounds out of sight where no one can make them worse, is the strongest passion in our hearts. And it will remain so until we experience a certain kind of relationship, until we meet the crucified and resurrected Christ, and experience a person like Christ, someone broken yet beautiful.