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Archive for the ‘Random Thoughts’ Category

Twinkling of an Eye

Posted in Random Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on March 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

A lot of folks grab onto this set of scriptures in Corinthians and use to wax eloquently about the end times, the last trumpet and all that. But I’m much more intrigued by the mystery of change in the “twinkling of an eye.” The mystery is not when this will happen but the process and result.

I Corinthians 15:51-52a
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

A quick search on the Internet shows the “twinkling of an eye” is actually at the speed of light, compared to a blink (which is controlled and is generally between 300 and 400 milliseconds). But the twink is more like 1/6,000,000,000th of a second. This means, if you blink, you miss it. This means, in human terms, it’s instantaneous. This means it’s probably not of this dimension. You know what I mean? It’s “other time.”

Now, if that is not a mystery, I don’t know what is.

I wish Christians spent more time talking about the mysteries of their own religion. Instead, we are all grounded into habit and ritual and norms and the idea of mystery has become abnormal.

It’s in the mystery, in the things of twink, that anything is possible. Healings and love and transformations can happen that fast. God is outside of time. God lives in the twink.

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What Will People Think?

Posted in Random Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

It’s one of my struggles in the church as I go through this period of change in viewpoint. I’m in process. So I edit what I say around certain people who I assume will be offended. I don’t want a confrontation, or the backing away, or the widened eyes. And yet, how else does the “conversation” begin?

Galatians 2:12
Before certain men came from James, he [Peter] used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

Actually, the key problem may be my assumptions about the “other.” Isn’t it these presumptions that keep me quiet? How can I really know what others think unless we talk about it.

But then, I hear my inner voice remind me that I’m not quite sure where I’m going with all this new information about Emergents and Missional Churches and Hipster Christianity. There is so much excitement in these frameworks as believers become more inclusive, more committed to the needs of others, more relational. A part of me enjoys confronting the “sacred cows” of the institutional church but I also don’t want to “throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Peter got a taste of the “new way” when Cornelius [Acts 10] called Peter to his house just after the Lord had given Peter those three visions of the sheet coming down from heaven filled with foods that Jewish law had always prevented him from eating. He was shocked. And yet, when Cornelius’s men appeared, he understood the vision and he went to the house, entered and even ate there. But that was before the gentile explosion. It was one thing to “let in” a few gentiles here and there but Paul was starting to bring them in my hundred and thousands. Maybe it was all happening too fast. I don’t really know.

Perhaps we all suffer from these fears now. The new stuff sounds good, but what about the traditions and the old ways? Haven’t those ways always worked before? Hasn’t the church always survived?

I’m not so sure. Has the church survived or has it merely continued to splinter off into a variety of cells (denominations) because of disagreements and revelations. The proliferation of denominations got so bad at one point that people thought they could solve the problem by having “non-denominational” churches. But soon, even those groups splintered and they created churches by affiliation (Vineyard, Calvary Chapel, Community Churches) and then a single church would develop “campuses” with closed circuit video of the pastor. Big was better, Megabig was best.

But that trend is now being confronted with smaller is better and may tiny (like house churches) is best.

Who knows? What is the church? What is the Body of Christ?

There cannot be only one affiliation or denomination or cell group that has the inside track of what it means to be the Body of Christ. There is but one litmus test: Christ crucified and risen, accepted by the believer as the propitiation of sin. The rest is interpretation.

I think it’s time for me to stop worrying about what people will think and just talk to them. The conversation must trust that Christ is the glue that holds us all together. The conversation opens the doors to our hearts and minds. It doesn’t have to be about “changing” someone’s mind, just connecting.

I have written before about the “sacred other;” if we entered every conversation with this in mind, our differences of opinion would not separate us. We would be free to enjoy the many colors of Christ.

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Grace Called Me and Changed Me

Posted in Random Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It comes up a lot: grace. It is one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith and the least likely to be immediately understood. Grace is a power. Grace is a state of being. Grace is personal and specific. Grace is a gift. And Grace . . . is a change agent.

I Corinthians 15:9-10a
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect . . .

As a believer, I can look back and say that grace has changed me during these years of following after Christ. That would only make sense since it’s all about God’s grace.

But, what about the time before? Can I understand that the really hard times before I accepted Christ were also about grace? Can I understand that losing my father at age nine included grace? Can I accept a bi-polar mother, poverty, loneliness, and a failed first marriage still had the mark of grace?

That is certainly the message of Paul, the great persecutor of the early Christians, a “pharisee of pharisees” [Acts 23:6], he thought he knew it all. He was an insider. And from his perspective, the followers of Jesus were desecrating the law, blaspheming against God, and disrupting a tenuously achieved “order.” He took it as a personal mission to destroy or incarcerate all followers of Christ. He was a righteous champion for God.

In many ways, after his conversion, he was still the same man: a man of passion and conviction. He was relentless before and after meeting Christ on the road to Damascus.

But all the while . . . he was under the banner of grace. And although he would carry the guilt and shame for those years of persecution and would have to face the friends and relatives of those he had killed, he also recognized the call that was there throughout his journey.

I feel the same way really. In the Methodist church, they call it “prevenient grace,” that time when God was putting together all the pieces, manifesting in ways unknown, unrecognizable, and yet, still present. For all of the tough times in my life, I have to admit I was graced with many strengths as well.

I am more like a little terrier dog that will not let go. I have persistence and I have energy. I have hope and I have resilience. These are also gifts of grace that I needed as I slogged through those early years without understanding and with a veil still covering the eyes of my heart.

None of us can assume where someone else is on this journey. God forgive my judgment of others. Help me recognize the hand of grace on them, just like it was on me.

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A Jailer’s Compassion

Posted in Random Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Acts 16:33
At that hour of the night the jailer took them [Paul and Silas] and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his family were baptized.

When the jailer accepted the word of God that Paul and Silas shared with him, his eyes were opened and with those open eyes came compassion. Paul and Silas were no longer just prisoners but injured men who needed attending. Before that, the jailer had been complacent.

I wonder how often I have missed human need and suffering because of a callous heart. I drive the same streets every day. I walk the neighborhoods. I go to the same grocery store and eat at the same restaurants. Am I looking and not seeing?

Martin Buber spoke eloquently of man’s ability to look at “the other” without seeing in his book, I and Thou. Am I looking at other as “object” … as an “it,” or as a person … a true “thou.”

William Shakespeare captured this idea slightly differently (but effectively) in the Merchant of Venice through one of the speeches of Shylock: “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” [Act III, sc 1] Replace the word Jew with “the poor” and you get the idea.

The jailer could not do much. He couldn’t free Paul and Silas, he couldn’t change their circumstances, but he could give a small comfort: he could wash their wounds.

When I see poor and wretched souls, I become numb with the enormity of their deprivation. What can I possibly do? Perhaps it’s only the small act that needs doing in the moment…. washing wounds by listening, touching, asking, engaging, feeding, sharing. Perhaps I should stop worrying about what I cannot do and simply do what I can do.

I have heard it said that we can never “out give” the poor. Their need will always be greater that our ability to meet it. This sentiment reverberates in Jesus’s own words: “The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want…” [Mark 14:7a]

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On Faith 2

Posted in Fifty days with Jesus, Random Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on October 6, 2008| Leave a Comment »

    Today, as part of my daily devotion, I read Mark’s account of the crucifixion and these verses stuck out to me: “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.”

    And I was confounded… having for so many years thought there were only 3-4 women at the cross, but now I think there were many more women “disciples” than men. And the thing that kept them there was their FAITH! Their faith despite the circumstances… their faith despite the pain and disappointment… their faith despite the loss. This is my goal: steadfastness. [Special thanks to Chris Gollon for the use of his painting, Stations of the Cross VIII, Jesus speaks to the Women of Jerusalem, used by permission.]

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Blazin’

Posted in Lent, Random Thoughts, tagged , on March 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »

While working with the Seeking Him bible study group on revival and essentials to personal revival, I became acutely aware of the scripture I John 1:7

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[a] sin.”

I had the group talk about what it means to “walk in the light” – what does it look like. I realized that what I want is to be “blazin'” … the light shining on me, but even moreso, shining out of me. I want extreme light. And we’re back, of course, to my favorite images: fire! Pure… refining fire that filled in the temple in II Chronicles 7:1 … when “fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple.”

Lord, fill me … your earthly temple..

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Bitterness

Posted in Lent, Random Thoughts, tagged , on February 26, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Tonight I had an interesting experience as I participated in a Bible Study in a virtual environment called Second Life. The topic was bitterness and unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the “discussion” time as I was reminded of my days working for Elijah House and running workshops on inner healing. These never really took off at our church and I’m not sure why… is it because these issues of bitterness and unforgiveness run so deep?

Another thing I wanted to say in the session is that bitterness is not particularly swift. I think it more often creeps upon us. First, there might be anger or disappointment, but then, the effects of a situation begin to repeat in our minds. Instead of casting these thoughts and feelings on the throne of our God, we nurture them and they grow. Before too long, we have created a bitter root. It is not easy to heal a bitter root. It is not easy to pull the root out. In fact, sometimes we become so accustomed to bitterness, that is feels normal. Not only that, but some bitterness has lived in our hearts and minds for long, long time–we don’t remember it. Only God can truly reveal these deep bitter root judgments. And once revealed, it is important to begin the process of confession and forgiveness. For truly, bitter root judgments are sin.

The last thing is that most people continue to lose sight of the role of forgiveness. It does not erase what a person has done. It merely cuts the cord that binds us to the situation or the person. Forgiveness is a choice not a feeling. We can consciously choose to forgive even if we don’t “feel it.” God will do the rest.

This type of forgiveness is quite difficult in the face of abuse or pain. It is not for us to treat these situations lightly. I believe God calls the heart when it is ready. Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.” It is God’s grace that allows us to forgive … and also God’s grace that protects us. But we must cover ourselves in His cloak of grace.

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