cairns

Why is snow white? Ice can look blue, green, or I suppose even some other colors. But, snow is white.

My silly thought on the Grace of Creation is that we need the extra light it reflects in the dark of winter. Amazing how the dark of winter gives way to blazing brightness. Freezing cold outside, but the brightness and the squirrel sitting in the sun on the tree outside my window lift the gravity of winter darkness from my soul!

peace

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I guess I am still steamed about a sermon series by a man I respected claiming that we are still under the law of tithes and that all tithes must go to the church you attend. Sorry buckaroo, that ain’t what it says. From the founding of Israel through the founding of the Church, God used His share to care for those without.  And, it says you could give it to them directly.

(I don’t see that He set up a requirement for drug (or wine) tests before people were fed either!)

[Course it also says that in the year of Jubilee everything was given back so that nobody became the owner or servant class forever-- and there is no record that it was ever actually observed.  That really complicates things!  But, it is closer to what I believe: God gives us everything; everything we have is His; and He tells us how to rightly use our gifts, whether we realize it or not.]

Rant over.
peace,
Greg

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Just finished this amazing book by Marcus Borg — amazing because it denies all the things I was raised to believe were literally true factual statements and at the same time affirms all the larger truths about God I have come to treasure along the way.  By escaping the silliness of arguing over whether specific hard to believe events actually happened as historical facts, he goes straight to the level of eternal Truth in the same accounts.  The subtitle of “Taking the Bible seriously but not literally” is exactly what the author does.  And, he goes all the way from Genesis through Revelation in one amazingly clear, logical, and inspiring analysis of how the Bible reveals the potential for relationship between us and God as well as with each other.

If the phoniness of supposed literalists (who always seem to take the commands or criticisms of others far more literally than anything that affects their own lives) has gotten old, I suggest taking time to read this one.  I have no idea how much I agree with (that will take time, contemplation, prayer, and reading the Bible itself), but in this one volume there is more about the God I know than I found in all the dogmas I was raised on.

peace,

Greg

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If you think you understand the story of the prodigal, try reading it while waiting on a single child to return home. You will begin to understand the deep love of the Father who is actually the center of the story.  Then multiply by the total number of humans who have ever lived.  How fast and far can a father run?

I see God starting in Genesis and not finishing until ‘every knee is bent and every tongue confesses’ — until every child is home and talking with Dad.  Now that is a marathon.

More and more this is the only theology I know for sure.  Jesus is the prodigal who spreads heaven’s wealth among us ragamuffins.  He is also the older brother who does his family duty and comes looking for us prodigals, teaching us to help each other home.  And He is One with the Father who comes running down the road to grab us and take us into the party.

If you do not know Him, look around to see who is passing out the gifts, turn toward home and see who is already running toward you, or just stumble along with me.

peace

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I rearranged the seats in my classroom the other day and a little girl who studies Buddhism ended up in the seat that had belonged to a boy named Christian. Later in the day, she didn’t feel like she was doing as well as she wanted and called me over to her desk to say, “I think I’ve caught Christian disease!” I started to walk away and had to go back and quietly tell her that was about the funniest sentence I had heard all day, especially coming from a student of Buddhism! She grinned ear to ear and said, “I know.” We both had a really good laugh. Moments matter. Thanks AW!

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My eighteen year old just left.  As far as I can tell she may be quitting school too.  Her reasons make no sense.  I am undone…..nothing left to say……no place to go…….no desire to talk……..EVSC was allowed to destroy my life’s work…….so there is my family, no wait that’s a joke too………You give all you have, and they just berate you for having nothing left……Some very powerful force has been attacking me and my family for the past two years and it is beyond my comprehension (and anything those nearby who claim to understand such things understand either!)……It would be very easy for my wife and I to just give up, on everything…we need prayers for those who are sitting in the abyss crying out like Christ on the cross, “Why have you forsaken me?”

12+ hours later:  Her proclamations of God telling her to defy us and go her own way keep reminding me of how often the “voice of God” tells exactly what we already wanted to hear.  Not what the Bible records.  I find a lot more responses there of, “You must be kidding, God!”  But, we all do it.  I am guilty.  I know pastors and “super” Christians who do it constantly.

What really hurts is combining it with, “I really love you and don’t want to hurt you.”  In John 14 and 15 Jesus very clearly states repeatedly that loving Him is not a matter of some emotional response, but of obedience.  To say you love somebody and refuse to heed their authority, counsel, dreams, or thoughts — a very broad definition of disobedience ( to completely disregard the view and counsel of the one who loves you) I know — is not what Jesus called love.

And, it all brings me back to grace.  If it hurts this bad to be rejected and betrayed as an earthly father, what must it be for a Father who is Creator and Sustainer, who doesn’t just have good intentions but actually knows and offers only the best?  What must it be like to have it multiplied by the population of the planet?  How easily we sing Amazing Grace.  I only begin to understand how amazing is grace that ignores our betrayal, ignorance, intentional blindness to Truth, willful demands for independence from the very source of Life.

To be constantly and repeatedly (not just in a magic once for all blame it on the garden fall, but everyday and time after time) rejected by us in our ignorant confidence that we know it all, and then to pursue us so hard it kills Him??  Grace!  It is a word of power and mystery far beyond our easy use of the word.  I need some, to be able to keep giving it.  I need to see the next rock, the next positive step in this chaos.

peace

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I’m hard-pressed to find anywhere in Scripture where Jesus commanded people to worship him.  His life was simply an invitation of grace.  I heard one theologian say that one thing we can learn from Jesus is that the gospel spreads best not through force but through fascination.  That’s Jesus.  He doesn’t force; He fascinates us with love.  Good leaders live in ways that woo people into their vision.  Force, coercion, manipulation, aggression…these are weapons of the weak.  These are the devices of empires.  These were the tools of Caesar.

We can learn from Jesus.  As evangelicals, we want people to know the love of Jesus.  But that doesn’t just happen by saying a magic prayer.  It only happens by saying, “Come and see.  Come and follow.  Come and feel.  Come and experience the goodness of God.

p. 105 Follow me to freedom

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Back in the day — during the long hot summers, days of rage, Vietnam, and US turmoil — Joan Baez recorded “Be Not Too Hard.”  Its lyrics of “Be not too hard for life is short and nothing is given to man.  Be not too hard for he must manage as best he can.  Be not too hard for soon he’ll die, often no wiser than he began,” were often used by the Spirit to calm my radical responses and help me be less harsh with those on the “other side.”  It isn’t bad theology in ancient terms; see Genesis 3 and Ecclesiastes.

But, last night the old spiritual “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” — see Colossians 2:20 and Romans 8:38&39 — kept coming back in response.  The resurrection Gospel proclaims that all things have been placed back in the loving and safe hands of Christ.  And Christ goes even further in John 14:11-13 by placing what is His in our hands proclaiming that we will do (and this is beyond every trite explanation I have ever heard) “even greater things.”

So, my mind and soul were stirred with the thought that “be not too hard” has become, “I will do whatever you ask in my name.”  And “soon he’ll die often no wiser than he began,” has become, “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

And I went to sleep with Hankey and Fischer’s old lyrics ringing in my soul, “I love to tell the story, twill be my theme in glory, to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.”

Different campuses of the Church can have their peculiarities of dogma, ritual, tradition, and format.  It’s OK as long as we remember to “be not too hard” with one another.

But more importantly, I do not believe there has ever been a time when the world was more in need of followers of the Way who daily proclaim with their lives, to those near and far, loved and “other,” the old old news that we are all loved by God so much He died to reclaim us and share our lives.

Well that’s what God and I talked about last night instead of sleeping.

peace

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The Solstice has come again, the western New Year has arrived. So, I would like to hear; how has the light come to you in new ways? Or, how have you become a light in new ways — big or small. Remember in the darkest times, a very small light changes everything!
peace

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