Here at the Catch, we believe one of our primary purposes as followers of Jesus Christ is to make visible that which is invisible.

It starts with Jesus. Is there any better way to explain His mission in life except to reveal the invisible God to us? How many times did He say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9)? He was constantly berating the religious leaders of the day for thinking they knew God without recognizing Him. If they truly knew God they would have recognized that He came from God.

Why do we study Jesus? Why do we hang on His every word? Because He is the visible expression of our invisible God. He is God in human form. He is God in a way we can understand. What a brilliant idea: to create people like you (in your image) and then become one of them so you can reveal to them who you are. Only God could have thought of that! Only God could have pulled it off.

But then – get this – He asks us to be like His Father, too. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And ever since, you’ve had people trying to do this and failing. Why? Because they can’t. So you’re telling me Jesus told us to do something He knew we couldn’t do? Precisely. Now what kind of donkey talk is that?

Jesus told us to do what we couldn’t do because it would make something else visible: our sin, our frailty, our human limitations and our need for His grace.

Take our present circumstances as a case in point. Try as I may to come out smelling like a rose in all this, I can’t. I’m a financial screw-up. I say I’m going to do things, I have great intentions, but when it comes down to it, I don’t follow through and then I shroud all that in denial until something bad happens that I can’t avoid. I told the man I would pay him back by a certain time and I didn’t. Now he is acting out my judgment and he has the law behind him. Though it is unreasonable and unbiblical the way he is doing it, he has every right in a court of law to do what he is doing. That law has made visible my sin, and he is showing me no mercy.

But this is where God and you come in. You folks, on the other hand, are stepping in and deciding you are going to be agents of God’s grace to me. You are saying, “Wait a minute, we love John and Marti and we don’t want to see them kicked out of their house. We know John’s a screw-up, but God has also touched us through his life and we do not want judgment in a court of law to be the only story here. We’re telling another story through all this. We’re a family and we do not want to see a part of us displaced. We believe this man is wrong; he is not listening to the Holy Spirit; this is not the story for the Fischer family right now. Besides there’s enough of us here to step in and settle this man’s judgment, just as Christ has settled ours. Let’s face it, if it weren’t for Jesus, we’d all be eventually dead on a cross somewhere.”

And that’s quite a statement you’re making.

So my sin, something I’d much rather keep invisible, has been made visible, but look what else has happened: God’s grace is being made visible right now through you. And Marti and I are overwhelmed.