In the early 2000’s I discovered Rich Mullins. I’m fully aware I was very late to the party but in a moment where I was asking deep questions about the nature of faith and what it really meant to walk in the way of Jesus beyond church on a Sunday, Rich was, to me, a giant neon sign. To be honest, I could take or leave a lot of his music, but reading about his life, his faith and how he talked about Jesus, I was moved to tears so many times.

Rich died, living in a small cabin on a Native American reserve where he had moved to teach music to the local children. Despite having been one of the top grossing Christian artists globally he left behind only a few boxes of possessions having spent years simply sharing his life with those he crossed paths with. At the height of his “success” he hired an accountant to steward all his earnings, to pay him the average American wage at the time and to hold the rest for use as the Lord seen fit.

One day he desperately wanted to take a class of school children on a trip and phoned to ask if they would possibly have enough in reserves to hire a bus. Rich was blissfully unaware he could have afforded to buy each kid their own bus. He was utterly untrapped by the game of material success. He ruined me, in the best possible way.

15 years ago when we launched Storehouse, somewhere in mind, even if I never spoke it aloud, I think I thought the ultimate goal was to see those currently facing poverty of one kind or another free to live the kind of life I was living. (You can see why I wouldn’t want to have said it out loud.) It seems to me, many of us have somehow equated a modern, Western, middle class life with the “good life” and decided all should have it. If Rich started to change my lens then, for me, the prophet Isaiah sealed the deal.

I had somehow taken on this idea that our job was simply to raise the valleys. That we were to find those in the depths of heartache and despair. At the end of themselves in addiction and isolation and we were to help raise them up. Help them see their God given significance and worth. Help them discover or relearn their unique gifts and talents and to see them flourish. That is all good and true but somehow I had added on “and bring them up to the top of the mountain where us good and put together people are living life as it was meant to be”. It’s very subtle but it’s also incredibly dangerous and, if I’m honest, it’s where I think we as the church (big and small C) are currently stumbling around in the dark.

The gospel, as Isaiah foretells it, is not get as many people as possible up the mountain, it’s raise the valleys and lower the mountains! It’s get off our high horses, burn our idols of comfort and convenience, lay down our “rights” and our “I earned this” and create a middle way, a level ground, where regardless of our stories and even our current realities we might truly be one. A new vantage point for all to view the world from, where the vista just happens to be breath-taking. From level ground, according to Isaiah, the view is nothing short of the glory of the Lord and the beautiful thing is all people get to see it together.

We, myself most definitely included, have much reflecting to do. We have some repenting to do, some climbing down and some readjusting. We have much laying down and a lifetime’s worth of sharing to do. We have a lot of “what ifs”, “oh buts” and “it’s for rainy days” to stop hiding behind and we have some humbling realisations to courageously face when we recognise that our comforts and our kid’s/grandkid’s future security create systems that deny many the opportunity to climb out of their valley today.

None of this is easy. None of it sits comfortably with me. Life would be a darn sight more convenient for those of us who have, without prophetic voices like Isaiah and Basil and Rich but then a good few of his time liked life just the way it was before Jesus showed up with a message equally unsettling. If we’ll do the hard work of not just trying to raise valleys but also lowering mountains. If we’ll do the slow, painful, sacrificial, heart work of creating level ground we might just catch a glimpse of something so very very worth it all.

Photo by Kazuki Tomoda on Unsplash