Absolute perfection!

So, today I went back to the University of Stellenbosch's business school for some more classes towards my SMDP. I enjoy being a student again.

However, I have been deeply challenged by a comment that a friend of mine, Alan Storey, made at a lecture I gave two weeks ago. I was speaking about the lack of membership statistics for Methodist Churches in SA when he asked why we needed them so much? He went on to say (as I've shared elsewhere on this blog) that sometimes we want figures so that we can try to 'manage' and 'control' things that are not realy measurable (for example how could I Church with more members be deemed more successful than a small community in which a marriage is healed, or a bereaved widow finds new meaning in life... Such things cannot be quantified).

I love what I am learning at the business school - it is an entirely new, and so quite exciting. But there have been elements of 'positivism', 'determinism', 'reductionism' to the course that have been quite unsettling. Business strives for a certain kind of perfection... I can't quite put my finger on it. But it is almost the kind of perfection that meets the approval of the masses - what is best for the majority must be right for all (increasing marketshare, surveying customer satisfaction, probing trends etc.)

However, in my life I have experienced a different kind of beauty and perfection. It is the perfection of uniqueness, of being special because you're not exactly the same as everyone else... I find this in my little mircale boy Liam. Liam was born 3 months premature and so has a few health and developmental concerns. I have given up answering honestly to the question ' how is Liam doing?' Even when he is ill, as he was this last week, he is as close to perfect as I could ever have hoped for! His little limp and his 'special' left hand that we encourage him to use as much as his 'normal' right hand are absolutely perfect - he may not be perfect in the business sense, or in comparisson to others of his age, but then neither am I! I have never quite fit the small space that society has shaped for me...

However, what I can say with all of my heart is that Liam is perfect, absolutely perfect! He is perfect in God's eyes, and he perfectly fills my WHOLE heart! There is no sense in that. It cannot be measured or adequitely compared. I cannot even explain it... All that I know is that I experience it to be true...

And, I continue to praise and thank God for God's goodness and grace. It is perfect grace for imperfect people like me.
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