He Makes The Rain Fall on the Just and the Unjust

Before I launch into my latest musings I will say I just finished a book from 1938 by Brenda Ueland called "If You Want to Write".  Anyone who knows me well knows that I want to write, do art, re purpose things, take pictures, travel, and many more great things.  When you have that many interests it is really hard to do anything well.  I want to try to write more often and not be thinking "I don't have time to do a good enough job now."  I wish I was motivated enough to want to polish my writing but I'm just not.  So here's to hoping to write more.

Here are my musings on Matthew 5:43-48

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers,^[a] what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

It is irrelevant what the word "perfect" means in this passage.  We know from it that God is perfect and we are told to be like Him.

And what is it that sets Him apart from us and makes Him perfect?  He makes rain fall on ALL and sun shine on ALL people whether they deserve it or not.

I objected at first.  How can He help that?  It's not like rain could just fall on good people, right?

Maybe that is part of the point - if we could be so God-like, so perfect, we would just greet ALL in the streets, we would love ALL, we would do good to ALL.  It wouldn't cross our minds to ask/consider goodness or evilness.  We would just BE.  We would BE who we were meant to BE.

Understanding Spiritual Formation

I continue to marvel at how God forms me spiritually.  My beliefs are constantly being challenged by reading, relationships and circumstances.  Over the years I've hardened then softened then hardened again.  Many thoughts and ideas morph.  But when a light bulb moment comes, well, I cannot remember ever changing on one of those.  

Because God gives me TRUTH in pictures that is how I speak this truth.  I am so confident about it, at least for my own life, that I have no shred of interest in defending it.  It just is.

One of the first pictures I remember is "God's truth will rise to the top."  Decades later I believe this more than ever.  Why is this so important to me?  I need not defend what I believe because it is not my truth, it is God's.  I may or may not believe the true Truth about this or that issue.  I am a work in progress and I promise you I am doing the best I can.  I want to know what is true and I believe that God's truth will rise because the Holy Spirit will lead me into all truth.  Why argue and defend ideas as if the truth is MY truth.  I want to listen to others because maybe what they are saying is the cream, after all.

Have you ever been perplexed about something that the majority of people around you seem to understand?  This doesn't happen to me often but when it does I can get pretty vocal.  Take the A.C.T.S. model for prayer.  Specifically the "A".  About fifteen years ago I was involved in some pretty large prayer gatherings.  We would start out with the "A" Adoration.  We would drone on.  "You are lovely."  "You are holy."  "Your power sustains the universe."  I did not understand it at all.  We were praying to God and yet we were telling the God who knows everything snippets of information about Himself.  About a decade later I had an epiphany about the whole process.  We are saying these things to REMIND OURSELVES of God's great attributes.  In a way it still feels a bit hokey to me.....we are praying to God not each other, correct?  But at least now it makes more sense to me.  Is this what others understood all along?

My latest piecing of events and my thoughts together has to do with the Lord's Supper.  It is a pretty solemn event that I've never really understood apart from New Testament incidents of it taking place. I just have never been able to conjure up great enough feelings to go with the retelling of Jesus' last few hours before his death.  Lately a small group has been discussing the resurrection of Jesus.  It's pretty scary to listen to people ask hard questions, make unfamiliar statements and all the while remember that the cream of God's truth is still truth even if we miss it right now.

During my musings about our discussions I came to another really big idea that is going to help me understand why I participate in the Lord's Supper.  Our culture is unfriendly to Christian thought.  The lines are getting so fuzzy about right and wrong.  We are so hammered by unchristian thoughts that it seems to me the Church is becoming diluted by the age we live in.  The farther we get in history the further we get from the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  For myself, my spirituality and my face is toward God and God alone.  Yes, of course I know that the reason I have a relationship with God is because of the work of Christ on my behalf.  BUT I live in the now of my relationship with God.  My ephipany of late has been that the reason Jesus told us to "do this in remembrance" of Him is because we were going to lose track of the fact that it is because of Him we have this new life.

Maybe my "aha" moments are "duh" to you.  That is OK because probably many of yours are not light bulb moments to me.  The point is the Holy Spirit is moving, leading and teaching us into the path of Life.  

The Positives (?) of Being Bi-Polar

Mental Illness.  I'm going to admit to having a lot of bias when it comes to this subject.  My family of origin has 6 siblings.  All but one have varying degrees of mental disorders, problems, illnesses.  Call it what you want, just please don't call it "positive".

Lest you think I jest, my most mentally ill sibling told me 2 days ago that sometimes he is glad that he is mentally ill.  Today I got a status update from a bi-polar group that asked its' members to list the positives of being bi-polar.

HELLO!!!!!  Even if you can stay up for 72 straight hours and paint pictures, is that REALLY a positive when you think of all the negatives of being bi-polar?  Do we really want to entertain this kind of logic?  Take your meds, go to groups, and be as healthy as you can be.

Think about it! Having the flu has a few perks.  You can stay in bed and watch T.V., you don't have to go to work, and sometimes people will make food for you.  BUT REALLY, do we ever actually want the flu?  NO!  So let's not act like there is a positive aspect to it.

Is there anything about any people any more that can be considered negative?  How PC do we have to be?  Geez!

END OF RANT!  Remember, my family history before you take me to task about this.  I am way to close to the forest to see the trees.

The Word of God

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

What is the word of God?  When I think of the word of God I think of The Bible.  Not that words of God cannot come from people, etc.  It's just that if someone brings you a word from God you should make sure it doesn't go against clearly revealed words from God in the Bible. 

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.  Acts 17:11

Last weekend during our devotions Joelle picked the story of Noah to read out of the Bible Story book you see above.  In the story, after all the animals and Noah's family have entered the ark, God closes the door.  I was pretty sure that even in a Bible God does actually close the door.  Joelle had brought her Bible so I told her I thought we should look it up.  I explained to her that not everything written in a story book, even a story book of Bible stories, can necessarily be counted on to be true.  So we looked it up.

The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.  Genesis 7:16

This week I have been reading Matthew 5:13-16

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

I have been reading it in various translations.  Today I ended with The Message by Eugene Peterson.  I actually like Eugene Peterson.  I have read some of his books.  I even like The Message as a commentary on The Bible.  But I sure do not believe it is a translation.

“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. “Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

 Thus ends my morning thoughts on the power of scripture, searching the scriptures to see if things are true, what constitutes scripture, and teaching kids to question what they read.  Simple approach from a simple person.
 

Friendly Fire

I recently started a group on Facebook of people who wanted to read and respond to the Sermon on the Mount over the next four to five months.  The idea sprang from Hollie's interest in memorizing and while I don't want to memorize right now, I wanted to support her desire.  Hence a group who can respond to the Sermon on the Mount in whatever way they feel led.

I began my reading on April 15th.  An incident with a  friend took place a week earlier.  It was still percolating in my mind while I began my reading of  Matthew 5:1-12.  The more I thought about it the more I knew that what I had experienced a week earlier had felt like persecution (verses 11-12).  Once I remembered that the people who had killed the prophets in the OT and the people most wanting Jesus dead were not the heathen of the land but the religious leaders, the more I knew I was on to something.

Here is the snapshot of the incident.  I was discussing with this friend some views that some other friends were now entertaining and I summarized it with the statement "it all comes down to the authority of the scripture", to which she responded something like "you don't believe in the authority of the scripture."  I was so taken aback by this I don't remember what I said, if anything.  I knew what she meant and because I know how well she knows me, it stung.  Really badly.

Some of you reading may remember the crisis of faith I had in the fall of 2004.  I was challenged by a group of very smart unbelievers on the truth of the scriptures.  It was a very dark time.  If what they were saying was true then who I was and how I had lived (including my parenting) was all being called into question.  If the Bible was not true then maybe all was in vain and I had led my kids down a false path.  A paragraph can not do justice to the paralyzing effect this had on me.  One quarter century of a life of study and mentoring on the life of Jesus being called into question!  After a month I came to the conclusion that they could not prove the Bible was false and I could not prove it was true.  It came down to faith.  I chose the path of putting my confidence in the Bible and moved on.

The reason my friend told me that I did not hold to the authority of scripture is because I have some unorthodox beliefs.  This does not mean I don't hold to the authority of scripture.  It means I do not see Biblical evidence to hold to the creeds which have become the litmus test for orthodoxy. There is no point in trying to tell her that she reads the Bible through the creeds.  For people who have "gone to church" most of their lives, this is just the way things are.  It's like the mind is set to default to reading the Bible through the lens of  the creeds. You don't even realize you are doing it and because 90% or more of Christians do it, you don't have to even challenge yourself to consider the possibility that could be the case.  The burden of proof somehow becomes the responsibility of the minority.

Another reason why this friend brings this up is because she believes she must defend the faith.  I do not believe I need to defend anything especially to another follower of Jesus.  What is important is that Christ is preached.  It did not even bother Paul what the motive was.  Check this passage out: 

¹² Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, ¹³ so that my ^[i]imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole ^[j]praetorian guard and to everyone else, ¹⁴ and that most of the ^[k]brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my ^[l]imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. ¹⁵ Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even ^[m]from envy and strife, but some also ^[n]from good will; ¹⁶ the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel; ¹⁷ the former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition ^[o]rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my ^[p]imprisonment. ¹⁸ What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.

Philippians 1:12-18

For me, holding to the authority of the scriptures means that I will bow the knee to what the Bible says regardless of my own personal views.  If the King says it, wants it, etc. I am the servant and I bow to that authority.  It's not what I think that counts.

What does holding to the authority of the scripture mean to you?  Is it important?  For me it is absolutely essential to my life as a disciple of Jesus.

 

My last post had to do with connected events that led me to a conclusion.  This post has to do with the connectedness of the things I am reading and how those connections inform my life and relationships.  

Over this past month I have been reading the first four chapters in the Gospel of Luke, Mindful Jewish Living, A Generous Presence, My Grandfather's Blessings, Tattoos on the Heart, Crucial Confrontations and The Element.  All of these works have been mingling in my brain as I have been going about my days. What follows is the way I believe God has been impressing me with words to address the four things I've been wrestling with:

1.  How can I be more mindful in situations and see what God wants me to see as opposed to feeling turned off, irritated or annoyed?

Have I been able to be more mindful at work?  No.  Epic fail.  I know how I am supposed to respond.  I know I am supposed to be trying to see the divine spark in everyone instead of the story in my mind becoming what I see.  (Mindful Jewish Living).  I was also impacted by a chapter in the Tattoos on the Heart book.  The author, a Catholic priest, walks the reader through his days of being in community with gang members.  Time and again these hardened people would "crack" or soften to God.  I would like to be a part of this process in my community but I am never going to get there with my human feelings about the people I come in contact with.  I need some God-sized feelings.

2. How can I have a relationship a better relationship with Dawn?

Over the past month I have come to realize just how hard it is to know that I have failed my child and continue to fail her.  It was difficult to realize how my parents failed me.  In an epiphany moment in my early 30's I realized my father was never going to be the father I wanted and it was OK because I realized he was doing the best he could with the cards he had been dealt.  Over the years I have been able to come to that with my mom but it was harder because her influence in my adult life had more negative moments.  Eventually I got there.   I don't know how to "get there" with Dawn.   I'm pretty sure I need to go back to counseling.  While reading My Grandfathers Blessings I realized that because my expectations for this relationship and my relationships with my grandchildren have not been met I need to get to a point of acceptance and that is not going to happen without grieving the loss.  I am not having the relationship with Dawn or with her kids that I wanted and hoped for.  That is a big loss to me especially given the fact that I had intended this to be a very big part of my life.  If I can move on then maybe I can just pray about my concerns instead of  trying to get Dawn to see things the way I see them.  If I can do this then maybe I can give Dawn the gift of acceptance that she deserves.  In Tattoos on the Heart the priest asked a gang member how he thought God viewed him.  He thought long and hard.  "God...thinks...I'm...firme." (could not be one bit better)  I want to feel this about my children and my grandchildren.

3. How can I best help my sister as she is going through another life transition?

It's great to have some healthy relationships in life and one of my best relationships is with my sister Patti.  She has really been struggling and I have tried listen well, which is part of being mindful or present. (Mindful Jewish Living and A Generous Presence)  When she has said things that are only partial truths I have been able to give her a better perspective by showing her where she has not been failing.  Usually I can give myself the same gift of perspective and whole truth but with Dawn and the grand kids, she often has to remind me of the support and love I have given over the years.  I loved a section in A Generous Presence that talks about the coach as a light bearer.   First they shine a light at the edge's of the clients life by asking questions that help bring clarity.  Second they illuminate the path.  I believe I have done this for Patti in word and deed.  And she for me. 

4. How can I support Hollie's desire to memorize scripture?

Hollie and I had a plan to memorize scripture together.  I had the BIG idea to memorize The Sermon on the Mount.  Both of us struggled with doing this and eventually I just told her I didn't want to do it, that I had been reading the Bible for forty years and it just wasn't a priority to continue to memorize scripture.  It was very important at one point in my spiritual development but I just didn't want to invest time in it any more.    What do I happen to be reading in Luke right after we had this conversation?   Chapter 4 about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.  How does Jesus, the Son of God combat the devil?  He uses scripture.  BAM!  Jesus had the presence of mind after 40 days of not eating to quote the truth to the devil.  How often am I confronted with similar temptations when the evil one finds an opportune time to attack me.  Perhaps part of my inability to respond to my patrons with the light of Christ is because I am not memorizing and meditating on scripture.  OK Hollie, I've changed my mind.  Let's come up with a new plan.

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I would like to thank God for the books he puts on my radar, how my brain processes the books and how the Spirit brings my life circumstances into contact with what I've read.  The result is a desire to grow or change areas of my own life and if I'm really blessed the opportunity to bring light to the paths of others so they can do the same.  What could take this process to an even higher level would be to read the books with others and discuss how we are being impacted.  

Running My Own Unique Race-Part 4

I didn't know this was going to be a special week.  I didn't know this was going to be a turning point in the last five months of my life.  I hesitate to tell you all the things that happened this week because it may sound like bragging.  This week was so full of confirmation, not a typical week but a week that represents the last 14 or so years of living on the West Side.  I give God all the glory for what happened and how he has used me during this time.

1.  The week started with a word of encouragement from Jackie during a small group meeting.  She asked about Arts Camp and I told her about a mom and her son who are coming over soon to do mosaics.  She thought it was great that I was being open to God.

2.  That comment so lifted me up that a day or two later when I was walking to get some free bread from TOW, instead of just saying "hi" to two neighbors I had never spoken to, I asked them if they wanted some bread, too.  They said yes and I was able to tell them I had heard about the free bread on Facebook via S.W.A.N.  A networking moment.

3.  While at TOW I told Cecibel I was taking extra bread for neighbors.  In our conversation she reminded me how we met (at the library) and how I ended up at her house (passing out tomatoes given to me by close friends who farm).  She was very kind in her remembrances.

4.  While walking home from work I ignored while texting a person who I thought was trying to panhandle me.  Actually I said no without hardly looking up.  Turns out he was blind and wanting directions.  So I walked him home and we had the most wonderful talk.  More in person if you are curious. 

5.  Because I had to detour off of Gold I wound up on the corner of National and Fulton.  Who should be there but Pat and Kelly.   She and Pat and I made a plan to get together for mosaics and lunch.

6. Kelly went on and on about a Y membership I was able to acquire for her for free.

7.  I met Sandra (the noisiest of the noisy neighbors I complain about) at the library.  I was able to give her some great service and now she is waving to me when I go to and fro. 

8.  Finished up a flyer for a Create Night.  

9.  Found out a friend was depressed and offered to come over and walk her dog with her. 

10.  Went over to visit a friend who has macular degeneration. 

11.  While helping a person on a computer at work I realized I knew her from about a decade ago. She remembered me and said I helped her after her first hand surgery.

12.  Shout out on a video from an atheist friend about being winsome (my word) in talking with her.

All these things felt like a message from God.  It's OK that I don't walk the streets getting to know my neighbors.  It is OK that I don't want to go to Family Feast or Picnics in the park.  I am being used.  All I need to do is be me and don't worry about how I'm feeling about what I'm not doing.  These things count as love even if I don't feel loving or want to do what others feel called to do.

It goes back to what Jackie said she and Luke have been talking about.  Do we need to look for people to "neighbor" or be open to what the Spirit is doing in our lives?  I think God gave me the answer for me in this wonderful week of events.  

I've been thinking about writing a vision and mission statement for over a decade and I was easily able to pen them after reflecting on this week.  Another gift from God.

Vision Statement:
Help People Become Whole

Mission Statement:
I will fulfill this vision by keeping the eyes of my eyes open to what God is placing before me, by stepping into the lives of people as guided by the Holy Spirit, and by welcoming others to share in my life.