IN THE MIDST OF THE DARKNESS THERE NEEDS TO BE LIGHT

It seems like the conditions of the world will never change.  I watch the news to stay informed and get distressed about how violent and mean people are to one another.  Everyone is blaming everyone else and no one is listening to each other.  Even if weapons are not involved, tongues lash out.  It seems like everyone has their finger on a trigger, ready to shoot, with a bullet or a word that will harm or destroy whoever crosses us. “Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”.

It distresses me even more that as peaceful as I am, I know that those seeds of violence and aggression are in me.  Most of the time they are dormant because I try not to nourish them so they will not grow; but every once in awhile they do and the fruit of that growth comes out in an angry word or thought, comes out in judgment of a deed or a motive, or comes out in a prejudice or discrimination.  I don’t like it when those things show themselves because I know that’s not who I want to be.   Thankfully I am aware of these unwanted traits and have learned to recognize them and repent of them quickly.  I have been a reactor and have worked hard at being a responder.  I have come a long way, but perfection is still a goal I am moving towards.  The conditions of the world today are not a good environment to stay in for very long.  There are so many legitimate wrongs to be righted but how does that happen in the midst of all the battles being fought, both with bullets and words?

Jesus was born into a world that had a hostile environment; a lot of wrongs to be righted.  God’s people were expecting him to do just that; condemn and correct the political system, and the religious system.  But he didn’t do that.  He spoke of another kingdom and a different way to live; he healed people who were sick; he transformed hearts, minds, and souls of people to a different world of love and peace.  He was not of this world and he enlightened those who receives and believed in him that they weren’t either.  The same is true today.  In the midst of the darkness those who know and love him are to be light and salt; being above and beyond the battling forces and revealing a third and different way.

It starts with me, planting and nurturing the good seeds that yield love and peace not hosting or feeding the bad seeds that yield hate and violence.  

GOD NEVER GIVES UP

God is to be the center and focus of my life.  Anything else, no matter how good it may be, will become an idol, a golden calf.  Church, Bible, even ministry always had the danger of becoming such an idol.  They are good things, and they are things God calls me to be a part of; but always secondary to God Himself. 

I am call to reflect God as one created in His image; I am called to be light and salt to this world while I am here; I am called to be in this world but not of the world while I am here.  Those things have manifested in many different ways over the years.  They were and can be challenges that need to be met head on at times.  The world can be a very tempting place, and I have fallen more than once.  God is always faithful to help pick me up and get me back on track.  But that seems to be what God has done since the beginning of time, down throughout history.  He is redemptive and restorative towards all of His creation faithfully and continually.  God never give up.

I am the one who gives up, throws in the towel, and refuses the love that wants to redeem and restore my blunders.  If I don’t yield to Him I will put myself in jeopardy. Continually rejecting God’s grace will put me into enemy land where the enemy of God waits with open arms to destroy and devour me.  I know this land through examples in the Bible.  In the beginning of time God warns Cain, “If you do well, will you not be accepted?  And if you don’t do well, sin is crouching at the door.  Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7).  Jesus warns Peter of Satan’s desire in Luke 22:31.

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed that your faith may not fail.”  Judas was not living well; he was a thief and robbed from the money bag.  When the time came he conspired to have Jesus arrested, for money.  He put himself in enemy territory and, “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27).

Cain did not do well and was banished from God’s Presence forever.  Judas felt bad in the end for his deed but had lost his faith in Jesus as redeemer, and hung himself.  Peter denied Jesus and felt bad about it, but he kept his faith, and Jesus comes to him, and redeems and restores their relationship.

I believe that if Judas’ faith had not been worn weak through wrong doing, he would have known that Jesus would have come to him just as he did Peter.

He would have redeem, restored, and reconciled their relationship.  Jesus never gives up; only we do.

When the concepts and consequences of sin, of not living well, are removed from the minds of people, God’s enemy is standing at the door waiting with open arms, to have God’s creations sifted like wheat and destroyed.  It is not a good shepherd that leads his sheep into enemy land, and eventually into the hands of the enemy himself.  The good shepherd leads his sheep in the ways of God.  The good shepherd seeks those who are lost and brings them to green pastures, still waters, and the path of righteousness.  The good shepherd leads his flock to the Truly Good Shepherd Jesus, where they can be redeemed, restored, and reconciled in their relationship with their Creator God.  His sheep will be and do well.

Query:  What kind of a servant am I to those whom God has put in my life

             that I might help care for?  What kind of servant am I to those

             who are lost and need to find their way to their True Shepherd?

THE PARADOX OF KNOWING GOD

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts

Neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

So are my ways higher than yours ways

And my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8, 9

“Beware when your religion tells you exactly what to expect of God.”

It is not only religion; I must beware of myself first.  The Christian life is a paradox.  I can know God on a very intimate and personal level; yet He remains a mystery on all levels.  I can easily get a little cozy and cocky about the closeness I share with the Trinity and come to believe I know all about everything; I don’t, and I get myself into a mess when I think and act as if I do.

Peter exemplifies this for me.  After Peter confesses Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, he then rebukes Jesus as he was telling his disciples about his mission in Jerusalem.  On the Mount of Transfiguration he starts arranging the event until God Himself intervenes and tells him to listen to His Son.  After the Last Supper Peter boldly confesses his loyalty above all the other disciples, only to be told by Jesus that he would deny even knowing him three times; which he did. 

One of the most sobering events for me to read is Luke 22:61.  After Peter’s third denial the rooster crowed.  “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.  And Peter remembered…and he went out and wept bitterly.”  I can identify with Peter’s coziness and cockiness all too well.  I too have known the moment when my pride was revealed and I was caught, convicted, and found myself guilty.  It never feels good.  But it has always worked out for my betterment.  The more it happens, the deeper the lesson becomes.  The deeper the lesson becomes the more aware I am of the temptation and I keep my heart humble and my mouth silent.

My intimate relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit is not a cause to boast.  It is a gift of grace to be received and enjoyed in utmost humility and joy.

HOW CAN I NOT LOVE & OBEY?

“Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Deuteronomy 6: 4,5

The Christian life is not an easy walk.  It involves obedience, sacrifice, and suffering.  These elements can only be fulfilled out of love; there’s no other way these things make sense.  I can’t do anything right without the Source of love within me.  God is love and loves me.  When that is the focal point of my heart, mind, and soul, I must love Him in return.  Out of that love will flow obedience.  It will not be a duty; it will be a delight.  Sacrifice will be a willing service and suffering will be absorbed by the love.

God doesn’t demand love from me like a military commander demands loyalty from his troops.  It was three months before God revealed His plan to make the slaves of Egypt His treasured possession; three months before He revealed the covenant He would make with them that would require commandments, laws, and principles as a framework for that covenant.  Military methods include Boot Camp, where the will of the individual is beaten into submission by hard work so the loyalty will be to the Service of the Commanders.  These Israelites entered into the desert but rather than beat their wills into submission, God performed miraculous signs and provided for their every need.  He listened to their grumbling, complaining, and demands cared for them as they were making their transformation from slaves to free people; God’s treasured possession. 

Eventually God gathered them together in the wilderness of the Sinai and began to make His covenant with them as His people.  He reminds them of how He destroyed the Egyptians to free them, and then cared for them and brought them to Himself and was going to continue to care for them, making them a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

All throughout the history of these people God continually has to bring to mind what He did for them and how they had made a covenant with them.  All throughout the history of these people they forgot what God did for them and continually used their freedom to do what they wanted to do.  It continues throughout history, right up to today, this forgetting and forsaking the love that God so graciously pours out on His people, His creation.

I am learning to appreciate the liturgical seasons in the Christian life.  Lent is a time to remember and reflect on Jesus’ life and death.  It causes me to remember how faithful God has been to me, in freeing me, providing for me, and being in a covenant relationship with me.  I cannot help but respond to that overwhelming love by being more loving and obedient to Him.

God is Love.  Love is defined in I Corinthians 13: 4-8. 

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s Law.  The Law is defined in Psalm 19:7-11.

How can I help but love and obey?

My Life's Prayer

Make my life a house of worship

Make my life a living prayer

Let nothing I do be untouched by the Spirit

Dwell in me and I in You.

May my thoughts always please You

May my lips always praise Your name

May my words always honor Your Presence

May my works always reveal Your ways.

Create in me a clean and pure heart

Create in me a broken and contrite heart

Create in me a true and honest heart

Create in me a loving and hospitable heart.

Keep me simple and subtle in Your Presence

Keep me sincere and servant like in Your Presence

Keep me safe and secure in Your Presence

Keep me single and solely in Your Presence.

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, IT IS

When all is said and done it’s all said and done; and yet we keep on saying and doing over and over again.  There is an energy to life, a flow, and a rhythm.  When that energy is allowed to flow unhindered it takes life along with it.  God created a natural flow and rhythm to all creation.  To everything there is a season, a movement, a birth, growth, death rhythm.  Left alone and unMANipulated it is a fully functioning, beautifully natural world.  Disrupted and controlled it becomes dysfunctional to its original intention. 

God gave us humans the responsibility of caring for His finished handiwork, not revising His creation.  We have ruined what was given to us to care for, to attend to, to live with, and enjoy.  We recreated a world in our own image.

We say we want diversity but we work hard at standardizing and making everything and everyone the same.  We have a pride in making ourselves into a global community, being aware and concerned about the plight of people in far away places in every corner of the world; but often we don’t even know the plight of people who live right next door to us, or in our neighborhood community.  We say everyone is special and have done away with the “special needs” identities by mainstreaming them, leaving those who truly have needs to fend for themselves.  We say everything is sacred and manufacture gods in our own image, leaving nothing or no one higher to look up to for guidance or help.  We have revised life as God created it and will end up doing what God promised He would never do again; destroy it.  (Genesis 9:21, 22)

While people are down here on earth doing our revisions of God and of Life, doing what we think is right, God is still God, still in control.  God is true to His nature and is patiently watching and waiting; giving everyone the opportunity to come to the end of ourselves, put away our foolish ways, giving everyone the opportunity to receive His grace freely and His love abundantly.  But there will come an end and He will speak and act.

“He who sits in the heavens laughs; 

He will speak to them in His wrath,

And terrify them in His fury, saying, 

“As for me, I have set my King

On Zion, my holy hill.”  (Psalm 2:4-6)

In God’s Story He is the victor; in God’s Story there is a beginning and there is an end, the Alpha and Omega; in God’s Story there will be a new heaven and a new earth, not because of a revision by man but because it is God’s Story and has been from the beginning.

There is a cry for peace and justice in the world today.  At some point in time God true peace and justice will come; not as portrayed in man’s revised story but as it was in the beginning and shall be in the end of God’s Original Story; unrevised, unedited, and unadulterated.  In the beginning was the Word, and that Word will stand and will accomplish all that God purposed it to accomplish.  (Isaiah 46:8-11) 

When all is said and done, it’s all said and done.

Until that day the gates of the New Jerusalem are open; until that day God draws people out of love, not fear; until that day the Spirit says, “Come”.

MY PERSONAL SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY

There is a sense of community built into the human heart. There are various manifestations of community all around us; family, neighborhoods, churches, clubs, teams, hippy communes, intentional communities gathered around shared interests, and so on.  It is a commonly accepted idea that “no man is an island” and human beings are not meant to be alone in this life; so we pursue and manufacture communities to be a part of.  I have had experiences with many kinds of communities, good experiences and bad experiences.  At this point in my life I live alone by choice and for now it works well for me.

One of the problems I have experienced in communities, especially religious communities is that the very act of organizing into a community will leave some people on the outside.  There are barriers erected to protect the people and the principles of the community, often casting a shadow upon those who are outside those barriers.  I have had the experience of not being invited inside, even though I was willing and wanting to live by the rules of their created community.  I have had the experience of being expelled and excommunicated from the community for questioning the rules they were adding on after the initial rules were agreed to.  Not being accepted and being thrown out for questioning were devastating, discouraging, and disappointing.  After awhile I simply gave up and went out on my own; but not for long.

God led me back to the time when I made a decision to walk with Him.  At that point in time I simply read the Bible and sat listening to Him.  I was very alone when He revealed Himself to me, the time I now claim as my ‘born again’ experience.  For awhile it was just me and God, walking through the Bible, the Spirit teaching me and reminding me of things I had heard for many years in my youth, stories about the people of God long ago and stories about Jesus and the things he lived and taught.  After many months I started exploring, looking for other people who had this same experience.  One by one I found them; some in churches I would visit, some in small groups such as Young Life, some friends I had, and some I would randomly bump into along the way.

The first little community I became a part of was a home Bible Study Fellowship that met at the McLaren’s house.  We met one night a week and gathered to sing, share Scriptures, prayers, and fellowship with one another.  We went on Retreats and simply enjoyed one another’s company; the group was open to all who wanted to come.  This Fellowship fulfilled my need for community for many years and I am still in contact with some of these people even after nearly forty years have passed by. The second little community I became apart of was a weekly evening of praise, worship, and teaching called TAG, that met in a rented church in DC. 

Both of these groups were “free range” and invited all to come and be apart of what was happening.  For some reason both of these groups felt the need to organize and become churches in the manner of churches that had been going on for centuries.  But for me the sweet organic move of the Spirit I found in both of them became organized and manipulated; things became more inclusive and rules were made that excluded people from being apart of the ministry within the group or, in the second, even the group itself. It was the second group that I became a ‘member’ of that eventually became more cultish and I was excommunicated from.  I tried to find a replacement to meet my need for community, but failed.  That is when God led me back to Himself, provided a safe place for healing and restoration, and that is where I remained to this day.  There are things I miss about community but not enough to give up what I have now.  Many folks would say I am out of line with the Scriptures by not being a member of an institutional church.  If that is true I keep waiting for God to affirm that; so far He hasn’t. He assures me I am a part of the Spiritual Church that He administers, and that is enough for me right now.

Right now God meets my need of community in two ways.  The one crucial way is His revelation of His communion with me and my relationship to the Community of the Trinity that has existed since before time.  He speaks to me the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples the last time he was with them before he was crucified.  “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love her, and we will come to her and make our dwelling with her” (John 14:23). “The Spirit of Truth will remain with you, and will be in you, teaching you everything and remind you of all I told you” (John 14:17).

The second way is He brings people along the path I am walking and into my life, to meet with me and talk with me, soul to soul and spirit to spirit.  I recognize these folks and they recognize me from a realm beyond walls and labels.  “Where two or three are gathered, I am in their midst”.

I am in community; a Community of God and a community of His saints, past and present.  This is a community that invites all to “Come”; a community that welcomes questions and answers those questions with only Truth; a community that is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, an end that is eternal.  “Let the Spirit say Come; let the hearer say Come.  Let the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receives the gift of life-giving water” (Revelation 22:17).

THE CHOICE IS MINE AND I SAY YES

“Whoever has my commandments and observes them is one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father.  I will love her and reveal myself to her…Whoever loves me and keeps my word, My Father will love her.  We will come and make our dwelling with her.”

John 14:21, 23

A simple formula for being in God’s Presence is loving and obeying God by loving and obeying Jesus.  Jesus’ words are the fulfillment of the Law of God and the Prophets.  Nothing has changed since the beginning of time.  God’s words are Life and those who love God and obey God will dwell in His Presence.

That state of being is available to all.  It is a choice put before all.  God desires all to make the choice of Life in Him.  It is the choice of being born again of the Spirit.  It is the choice to follow the wants and desires of the flesh or follow the Spirit.  Following the Spirit will require a crucifixion of the flesh and will result in eternal life with God.  The choice is mine to make. 

There is a scene in the movie Philomena where she asks the journalist working with her on her story if he believes in God.  He answers by saying that is a complicated question and would take some time to discuss all the issues around it.  Then after a bit of silence he asks her if she believes in God.  Immediately she simply says “yes”.  I smile every time I see that scene because it rings so true.  Human beings try to make belief in God so complicated; books upon books and sermons upon sermons have been written and spoken about it over the years.  But the Truth is really as simple as Philomena’s immediate and short response; “Yes”.

A simple formula for being in God’s Presence is loving and obeying God by loving and obeying Jesus.  The choice is mine to make.  I choose Yes.