Neat lines and curved corners

Dan Harper February 21, 2026 1 1

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2 Corinthians 5:20b–6:10 (NIV-UK)

20b We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

(6) 1 As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2 For he says,

‘In the time of my favour I heard you,
    and in the day of salvation I helped you.’

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.

3 We put no stumbling-block in anyone’s path, so that our ministry will not be discredited. 4 Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; 5 in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; 6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; 7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; 8 through glory and dishonour, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; 9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; 10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Did you know that the shortest distance between two points in physics is not always a straight line? In curved space-time, the kind described by Einstein’s General Relativity, the shortest distance between two points is actually a (geodesic) curve, which is mindboggling.

In our reading today Paul’s words suggest that this counter-intuitive law of physics can mirror the best route through a life of faith, although not exactly in those words.

A life of faith, like life itself, doesn’t move in neat lines. Paul names the places where curves and corners, the tensions we hold, can throw us off what feels like the correct path: hardship and hope, sorrow and joy, loss and abundance, dying and yet alive. With this understanding, to curve and corner through life isn’t a failure, but the actual point of being alive.

To be followers of Christ on this wonderful rock that is tumbling through space doesn’t mean standing above the mess and heartbreak. It means walking the curves and contours, trusting that God’s reconciling work follows a deeper logic than appearances suggest. And what looks like deviation from the planned route may well be faithfulness in a curved world.

Grace, like gravity, shapes the path whether we notice it or not. We move forward not by forcing straight lines, but by learning to travel the truest route through the bends, held, accompanied, and quietly sustained by God all the way.

Prayer:
 

Dear God,

Help us cling to you when the path is straight, and help us cling to you when the path twists and turns before us, leaving us lost and bewildered.

Amen.