This section lists all blog posts, regardless of topic.
Burned AliveSeptember 28, 2013
Ironic: That the idea of being plunged into flame evokes images of hell, but it’s also an image used for us here and now, as we submit ourselves to God’s holy flame. As we continually examine our lives and our hearts and find spiritual cancers growing, we can yield those to God, exposing them to the refiner’s fire. As we do, it is as if part of our being is actually being consumed by flame and destroyed. What a fascinating concept. Violent yet beautiful imagery.
EyesSeptember 26, 2013
I was recently reminded of the power of human eyes. When we look into human eyes, we are not simply looking into a lump of flesh, we are looking into a spiritual being.
When God created the world, he left his signature in various places. One, is in nature as a whole. As so many have found, being inside buildings can stifle our receptivity to feeling the presence of God. But when we’re out in nature, and we see its beauty, we can’t help but notice God. Another place we see God is in prayer. When we still our minds from the distractions of this world and listen, we can feel the presence of God. And finally, as mentioned, when we look into the eyes of another human being, someone made in the image of God, it should not be surprising that it can be a spiritual experience.
It is good to be reminded of that. God is making himself known through our eyes. We can literally shine out from our eyes -- not just light entering our eyes, but divine presence radiating out from our eyes. When we smile at someone and share our presence with them, I think it can awaken them spiritually. It is as if we have shared a tiny piece of God. So let us not just share the gospel in word and deed, but share it through our eyes.
Openness and ObedienceSeptember 26, 2013
I’m learning more about the concepts of openness and obedience these days. Someone recently cautioned me about the dangers of taking on too many of the world’s problems. Isn’t that a recipe for being crushed by the weight of the world? Aren’t there so many problems that this would result in you giving and giving until you’ve been picked clean? Yourself in poverty?
Along these lines, I have been increasingly sensing that no, of course God doesn’t want to harm us. Far from it. We need not take on the weight of the world, in the sense of it being our responsibility, because that’s God job. If we’re carrying the weight of the world like a burden, that’s probably not God’s will. We should release it back to God. Instead, what God asks from us is pretty “simple”. God wants us to be open, and obedient.
Openness comes from a willingness to hear. It’s so easy for us to plug our ears and turn away. It absolutely takes energy and focus to remain open to what God might be saying to us. We live in a world of many shiny distractions that consume our attention… food, entertainment, sex, money, success, etc.
The other thing God asks of us is obedience. Once we feel like we understand what God is asking of us, we need to obey.
This cycle of listening and obeying is where it’s at. If we’re willing to do that, then we don’t need to be crushed by the weight of the world, because God is holding all things together. All we’re doing is saying “Use me Lord” and delighting in the work that we are given to do.
There are two other facets of this that I want to touch on: lament, and sin.
Compassion and Lament: Even though we are not responsible to carry the weight of the world, I do feel that God wants us to be connected to and share the suffering of others. This seems like a contradiction, but I don’t think it is. It’s simply that sometimes when we listen to God, we are told to come along side hurting people and to feel their pain. To listen to them. To cry with them. To share with them. These tears are not us being crushed by the weight of the world. They are us being used by and transformed by God. And before we know it, we can smile and laugh, because we are not being weighed down in a chronic way.
Sin: Not a popular word these days, but one of the most profound effects of sin is to close us off from God. We can go right back to the garden of Eden to see what affect sin had on Adam and Eve’s relationship with God: They went and hid. In hiding from God, we shut off our listening, and we cower in fear. This isn’t rocket science, but it’s good to be reminded that sin, while it can have fairly direct negative consequences, also shuts down our openness and listening, which are key to God using us for good.
Something else that comes to mind in terms of our openness or closed off-ness to God is that we have different voices in our heads. Different natures. We have our human flesh, which can be so animalistic. Dog eat dog. Me first. Pleasure. Greed. We also have our divine selves. We are made in the image of God, we have a spirit, a conscience. When we are closed off to God, our flesh is able to exert more control over us, and we succumb to selfishness, greed. We fall in line with the animal kingdom where we live for ourselves and our own survival, even if at the expense of others. On the flip side, when we are open to the divine, when we are in “open and listening” mode, God’s spirit can take root in us, and we become increasingly capable of “loving others as self” even “loving our enemies”. And this is so much what the Kingdom of God is about: Communities of people who are poised -- open and listening -- loving others as self -- not fighting evil with evil.
My closing thought that dovetails with openness and obedience is “enough”. Most commonly we talk about “enough” in the sense that we don’t want to always be striving for “more”. A cousin of never having enough is being trapped by a worldview that only sees death and destruction, and a sense that there will never be enough. We know this is wrong, because we serve a God of overflowing abundance. If we are willing to be open and obedient, then we will find that there is not only enough, but more than we could ever imagine. Conversely, if we live by our flesh, we will constantly be depressed about our need for more. Our openness and obedience to God is enough. God will do the rest. In that, I have faith.
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