We Begin Again

I need to take up journaling again. Studies done, there will be time for reflection on the day’s events – and time to write these reflections down.

I am beginning to read a book by Jan Richardson, In the Sanctuary of Women. In the introduction she tells the story of prayer books being found during the renovation of an ancient convent. She speaks of the image of a woman with a book of prayer in hand, of this being a way for these medieval women to participate in the Word and pass the Word on to others. I like that image. I do pray that my study of the Word will allow me to participate in the work of God in the world, passing onto others the good news that God actually wants to be involved in our daily lives.

The author goes on to state that prayer was “intertwined” with the “daily life (of these women) and with significant events such as giving birth and entering into death. She believes that “We have struggled to know our lives as sacred texts, to perceive the ways that God has written God’s own story within us, to understand how the Word still seeks to take flesh in and through us.” Perhaps in returning to my blog as journal, I may share some of the text of my life’s journey so that others can see ways in which the Word is taking flesh in me.

Most of my life I consider rather routine and mundane till others point out the amazing places this journey of participating in the Word has taken me. God still continues to allow me breath to continue the journey and as I begin to enter into a new phase of that journey and the challenges that will come, I know I will need all the strength God will give me. By sharing this part of my journey, may you also develop eyes to see God in the places you go.

Looking up words

Every now an then I have to look up a word I am attempting to use, so I google it.  This time my search for curmudgeonly led me to the most wonderful blog.  If you are a mom, you will feel a kinship with her especially if your children, behaving just like children, sometimes draw looks of disapproval from proper folks without the joy of companionship. 

I would recommend this blog for a little cheer you up.  Enjoy.  Curmudgeonry.

A Pretty Good Shepherd

Kim at Connexions offers a story – and a pretty interesting one – that is timely at Advent.

How like this shepherd we are.  More like this one than we are like the Good Shepherd.

Food for thought. Enjoy.

Wisdom

From Proverbs 8 (ESV)

²² "The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work,
   the first of his acts of old.
²³Ages ago I was set up,
   at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
²⁴When there were no depths I was brought forth,
   when there were no springs abounding with water.
²⁵Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth,
²⁶before he had made the earth with its fields,
   or the first of the dust of the world.
²⁷When he established the heavens, I was there;
   when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
²⁸when he made firm the skies above,
   when he established the fountains of the deep,
²⁹when he assigned to the sea its limit,
   so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
³⁰then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
   rejoicing before him always,
³¹ rejoicing in his inhabited world
   and delighting in the children of man.

And from John 1:1-5

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

It is hard to entertain new names for God.  And yet Wisdom is not exactly a new name.  My theology prof recommended reading these two passages together as a devotional reading.  So I did and as I read, I also read with the hope behind the words of Proverbs 8: 17  “I love those who love me,  and those who seek me diligently find me.”

Canada Day till now.

I am so glad that Canada Day showed up in the middle of the week this year! We had decided a long time ago to close the office on Friday giving us all a nice long weekend in the middle of summer.

I haven’t had time to relax like I have this weekend for a long time. I decided sort of at the last minute to drive out to Alberta to see the Friesen’s in The Field. Best decision I could have made. Good friends, good times and long stretches of quiet.

And see – I planted Lauralea’s garden.  I think there is more gravel than top soil.  We’ll see what grows.

It’s never too late? Hope the tomato plants survive. They were still looking a bit droopy this afternoon.

I also watched the cross raising.

Good use for an old fire truck. You could tell they are farmers though – no safety harnesses.

Mostly I read and rested.

My soul may have actually caught up with the rest of me. The winter months have had so much time devoted to studying. I’ve crammed lots of things into my brain but my soul sort of went a bit dry I think. I am feeling a bit like I can go back home now and give the last two weeks of work my best, finish organizing the travel in Europe and pack my bags for the Big Trip.

New Testament reading for today

The upside down nature of our faith; the foolishness that calls for sacrifice not power.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31(NLT)

¹⁸ The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. ¹⁹ As the Scriptures say,

   “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
      and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”

²⁰ So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. ²¹ Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. ²² It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. ²³ So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.

²⁴ But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

²⁶ Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. ²⁷ Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. ²⁸ God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. ²⁹ As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

³⁰ God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. ³¹ Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”

Thoughts on Creation arising out of my studies

Marc, in a recent post, mentions the whole controversy of evolution /creation. I’m really not up to arguing the validity of creation methods. In fact I think the controversy has diminished our understanding of the first few chapters of the Bible. As Christians, we hardly use these chapters for teaching because we are afraid to get into the various controversies regarding God’s methods of creation.

Recently my seminary studies have included this part of the Bible – the interpretation of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, which Genesis introduces. One of my assignments involved comparing the Creation accounts in Genesis with the Babylonian and Egyptian creation stories. I’ve known for a long time that other creation stories existed but I have never read or studied them so the assignment to dig into them was interesting. (They are challenging reading though since the stories I read are translations of some old, old records.) You can find some of them here and here.

One of the authors of a text we are using likened the familiarity with these stories, which would have been passed down orally in the history of the ancient people of the near east, to the way in which most young people would be familiar with the accounts of evolution today.

Acedia

I have a book that is presently my before bedtime reading; Acedia and Me by Kathleen Norris. Great book, especially as I see that it is an affliction (or sin) that besets me too. Last night what I read was profound. I usually don’t read stuff out loud to Leo but this was good. Acedia is often called laziness or sloth but as the author understands it, it is much more than what those words mean to me. She describes the concept of sin as something given to us to encourage us to believe that we are made in the image of God and to act accordingly. (p.114) Then she quotes the words of preacher Fred Craddock which “define the sin of sloth so clearly that it stings like a slap in the face.”

What we casually dismiss as mere laziness, he says, is “the ability to look at a starving child…with a swollen stomach and say, “Well, it’s not my kid”…Or to see an old man sitting alone among the pigeons in the park and say, “Well…that’s not my dad.”  It is that capacity of the human spirit to look out upon the world and everything God made and say, I don’t care.

She goes on to describe some of the injustices that do happen in North America by people hardened to other’s suffering.  And then continues with this profound insight:

But even as such outrages are exposed, we are beset by a curious silence: the more that societies ills surface in such evil ways, the less able we are, it seems, to detect any evil within ourselves, let alone work effectively together to fix what is wrong.  The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre finds that while our “present age is perhaps no more evil than a number of preceding periods…it is evil in one special way at least, namely the extent to which we have obliterated …[our] consciousness of evil.” … Acedia, which is known to foster excessive self-justification, as well as a casual yet implacable judgmentalism toward others, readily lends itself to this process.  (114-115)

I had never thought of Acedia in these terms before; never thought of it as that kind of profound indifference and callousness that sets in and keeps us from keeps us from acting as people changed by Jesus.

Thoughts

This morning I read in Mark 14 the story of the woman who poured expensive perfume over the head of Jesus while he was a guest at Simon’s house for dinner. So often when I re-read a story like this one, I come away from it with a fresh perspective on it.

The woman who came to that dinner – uninvited and subsequently soundly criticized for her action – came to worship the one who had given her something of more value than all the money she spent on that perfume. The story and the criticism she received reminded me that we all need ways in which to express our deepest feelings in worship of Jesus. Jesus recognized her action as worship and told his frugal followers (concerned for the waste) that her act of anointing was in preparation for his death. Of course they didn’t understand that his death was close at hand. And of course they had never seen anyone worship God in this way, spontaneously with an action coming from her heart, perhaps from her recent experience of love being poured out onto her hurts and sorrows as only God can. It wasn’t that the disciples and other followers were unused to expressions of worship, but worship had its prescribed forms that were to be followed and this just wasn’t the norm. This was lavish and messy and maybe embarrassing sensual.

I have been suffering from the effects of change lately. I think. The effects of living in changing times are not always glaringly obvious but I think that is what I am experiencing as we settle into anew rhythm of church life that comes with new staff. Things we used to do have no great significance to the newcomers but suddenly the change takes on new significance for me. There are things I miss; their absence makes me suddenly homesick for the old ways. Old habits suddenly take on meaning way beyond what they are worth. New patterns of worship are waiting for me to explore if I can embrace them; if I’m not too afraid to recognize that they too are ways of worship.

New ways of worship. They are going to happen. They need to happen. A new generation needs to find its own expression of faith and worship. Maybe it will look more like expensive perfume being poured out extravagantly to bless God in ways I never would have dared.

And then again, it could be that I am a bit like that woman, and the stuff I am longing for is the experience, sensual as it is, of pouring out my love to God in ways that others don’t always understand.

A short paragraph in Mark; the story of a woman that will be remembered – as Jesus promised. The words are stirring some kind of soul work in me.

I am a new creation…

This book by NT Wright that is causing me to think is exciting.  I suppose it is exciting to become aware of old ideas presented in new ways that in turn open up new horizons of thought.  God is always so much greater than – well greater than I thought him to be just yesterday.  And so each day of life brings new possibilities; new chances to think in new ways.

Surprised by Hope is about the resurrection.  It’s about the promise of new life and new creation that we have in Christ.  So here are a few quotes that seem significant to me so far:

The challenge is in fact the challenge of new creation.  To put it at its most basic: the resurrection of Jesus offers itself, to the student of history or science no less than the Christian or the theologian, not as an odd event within the world as it is but as the utterly characteristic, prototypical, and foundational event within the world as it has begun to be.  It is not an absurd event within the old world but the symbol and starting point of the new world.  The claim advanced in Christianity is of that magnitude:  Jesus of Nazareth ushers in not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation.  p67

and then a page later:

…the question of Jesus’ resurrection, though it may in some senses burst the boundaries of history, also remains within them; that is precisely why it is so important, so disturbing, so life and death.  We could cope – the world could cope – with a Jesus who ultimately remains a wonderful idea inside his disciples’ minds and hearts.  The world cannot cope with a Jesus who comes out of the tomb, who inaugurates God’s new creation right in the middle of the old one.  p68

Good stuff. 

Reminds me of that chorus – “I am a new creation… here by the grace of God I stand.”