Bruised reeds and smouldering wicks

In Isaiah it is said of the promised Messiah that:

'The bruised reed he will not break,
And the smouldering wick he will not snuff out' (Isaiah 42:3)

I have found this verse both tremendously comforting at points in my Christian experience and and at others uncomfortably challenging.

Tremedously comforting, because I have been that broken staff and that smouldering wick.  I know there have been times when my Christian life has been in such a pitiful state that there was nothing more than a glimmer of faith left. When I came to God, I knew I deserved his condemnation for the way I had neglected my spiritual life, yet he did not reject me and snuff out what had once been but coaxed it back to life.

Our faith ought to be like a strong rope securing us to Christ yet so often it is like faulty yarn that varies from thick to thin and sometimes almost peters out altogether. Yet God is also holding on to us. If you feel your Christian life is only hanging by a thread, flee to Christ because he is gentle and merciful to hopelessly broken sticks and barely smouldering wicks.

The verse becomes uncomfortably challenging, however, when it shines its light on my own attitudes to members of my church family.  As people who have been shown so much patience ourselves, we ought to be particularly humble and understanding to our fellow believers, shouldn't we? Yet we can be so quick to criticise, condemn or dismiss those who are not living as they should be, or whose attendance has fallen off or who don't seem to be committed to the work of the church. We judge and condemn instead of trying to get alongside people to encourage them to better things. That is how the Messiah would react. He never gives up on people. If you want a further example of that mindset, think of Paul's dogged commitment to the church in Corinth - a bunch of spiritual lost causes if ever there was one! But Paul, who had seen that church come to life through his own toil and tears, was not going to give up on them while there was even the faintest glimmer of life there. And that is just how we also ought to view the spiritual welfare of our fellow Christians.

We too often view our progress in the Christian life as exclusively a process between us and God, yet the Christian race is unquestionably a team event not an individual pursuit. This key preoccupation of the New Testament writers seems to have been almost forgotten in our day, to our great detriment. Verses like  'Encourage one another all the more as you see the day approaching' (Heb 10:25) are not simply there to bring a nice fuzzy warm glow to our churches but because mutual concern and support are critical to completing our Christian race. 'Carry one another's burdens' Paul says in Galatians 6 'and so you will fulfill the law of Christ'. I.e. spurring each other on when the going gets tough and picking each other up when we fall, we will help each other to live the life Christ has called us to.

So when we consider those we know who are not living as they ought, rather than dismissing them or letting them drift away altogether from the faith, let's think how we can lovingly get alongside them, encourage them and influence them to better ways. But as James says, let's do so prayerfully and watchfully, so that we will not fall prey to the same temptation that trapped them. That way we will all cross the finishing line together, as a team and with no team members lost by the wayside.