Grayscale

 

Trees will clap their hands.

Belonging, Abram, and Jesus as Theology

Here are the top three themes of my thought life this week.

1. Belonging

We are not abandoned, we are not forsaken, and we are not orphans.  The orphan mentality is dangerous and pervasive.  Jesus invites us unto and into Him.  This a message we can’t forfeit in a culture of pain.  The sons and daughters of today need to know that God is not a father of bastards, we are legitimate children of God.

2. Abram

Before Abraham we had Abram.  Abram was the man sent out, the man about to learn how to walk in faith, and the man who become Abraham.  Abraham is the father of a nation, but before he could father a nation he had to take a long walk.  Abram shows me that it’s ok to not know and that faith grows in the not knowing.

3. Jesus as Theology

In fact Jesus is perfect Theology.  Alan and Debra Hirsch say it like this in their book Untamed ”…Jesus gets defining rights in relation to life, discipleship, theology, and everything in between.  Not only is He (Jesus) the mediator between God and humanity, he is the prism through which we can and must understand God.”  So does Jesus fit in with your favorite Dogma?   Does your pet Doctrine include Jesus?  Are you prepared to view God in context with the life, character and nature of Jesus?

Tonight

Aotearoa

Breathe, A Magic Act

Memphis walks out and slaps me with a heavy hand,

and I wasn’t expecting it half the time either.

You where there, dancing in my head,

a breath that made me play again, for awhile.

Jacksonville crept in and jeopardized the frustration,

months of the owl talking, over and over again.

You where there, ransoming my imagination,

a breath that allowed me to walk straight again, forever.

Loganville made it self known and surprised the situation,

time to pick up the leftovers and put them away.

You where there, calling me by my name again,

a breath that required new shoes, for now.

Matthew 14:22-34

Jesus Walks on the Water

²² Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. ²³ After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, ²⁴and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

²⁵ Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. ²⁶ When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

²⁷ But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

²⁸ “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

²⁹ “Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. ³⁰ But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

³¹ Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

³² And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. ³³ Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

³⁴ When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret. ³⁵ And when the men of that place recognized Jesus, they sent word to all the surrounding country. People brought all their sick to him ³⁶ and begged him to let the sick just touch the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.

Matthew 14:22-34 (NIV)

A new direction

So, after maintaining the wordsarelonely blog for seven years I’ve finally come to a decision about what direction I want to take the blog.  This change is because most of my attempts at blogging have centered around writing down thoughts.  This has grown cumbersome because I find it more enjoyable to hold an actual conversation with people and I’m too lazy to edit my writing most of the time.  but…I still really like the idea of communication and communication arts.  So with that said, I’ve decided to devote the blog words are lonely to two primary interests…byzantine icons and the holy scripture, actually it will be the marriage of byzantine art to the holy scripture.  I’ll do my best to list accurate information around the art and provide all the appropriate link backs to original source of art work so anyone interested in finding out more can explore the wonder of byzantine icons.  This should be relatively painless, it requires little editing on my part.  It can’t get any easier than cut and paste!  I’ll probably include some saints over the time and maybe throw in some poems from the poets if one makes it way into my head.

 

Thanks to anyone who has read this over the years, my blog statistics suggest that it is not very many, I hope you enjoy the coming marriage of two of my loves and that you will find it worthwhile to tell someone about it.

 

The name of the site wordsarelonely may actually be accurate as well…coming soon is wordsarelonely.com

Who is going to wash Rob Bell’s feet?

So here is an emergent trend you don’t hear a lot about, washing each others feet.  John 13:1-20

I’m left with a question this morning that goes like this: If Rob Bell is the forerunner of the Liberal Emergent church, where is the practical response of the reformed emergent church in regards to Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins?  I’ve read lots of book reviews, thanks for writing them everyone, it affirms the Book Club notion of the emerging church, but what really begs the question is that while we have heard testimony from Piper, Taylor, DeYoung, Driscol and others, we have not seen anyone showing up at Mars Hill Church in Grandville, MI with a washbasen in tow and doing likewise as Christ, washing the dirt away from a brother.  Is this not the simplicity of the Gospel and discipleship, to do like Christ and not just defend Christ’s words?  Please excuse my question, it is not a critical judgement on Piper, DeYoung, Driscol or anyother person who has responded so fervently to Bell’s new book.  My question comes from my observation that the reformed emergent leaders have become rather “bookish” in action, at least publicly, and we see little of the coming and going of the christian faith to meet those in need.  It seems that one of the greatest examples of the Apostolic Fathers is that they not only wrote such encouraging letters, but they actually followed up on the churches they ministered too in word.  In seems that now it is no longer necessary to visit a troubled church and minister in body to that church, but it is satisfactory to write admonishing words to those troubled pastors with troublessome theology.  This does not seem to be what discipleship is all about and it doesn’t seem to be what it’s like to be the hands, heart and feet of Jesus to our brothers and sisters in the faith.  If I follow this leading from the reformed emergent crowd, I’m just as good to write my pagan neighbor an admonishing letter for being pagan, no other response is neccessary on my part.  I truely hope and believe this is not the desire of these men, just the constraints of modern culture by making poor use of the internet as an effective tool for communication.  Let’s get out of our offices and in to the streets, at least Martin Luther burned the books he hated publicly, not just writing about his hate behind his desk.

The Meek, Bad-Theology, Self Confidence and Book Clubs

Informal thoughts over the last few days ~ I’m adopting a quip approach here, don’t get confused, it’s not twitter.

1.  Thanks to a Tall Skinny Kiwi I’m now aware that most churches are really becoming just a glorified book club, so maybe Oprah finally got us to talk about our thoughts on God in such a nonchalant manor.

2.  Apparently if all you got is Bad-Theology than you might as well stick with it, cause it’s all you got and at least you got something.  What’s the saying?  “If you got it, you should flaunt it!”  Maybe Rob Bell is just a good reminder for all of us not to be afraid of our Bad Theology, because this bad theology might get us moving in the right direction anyway, or at least bring out the bad theology in everyone else.

3.  So maybe self confidence is to blame.  The self confidence of our generation may be because too many people have told us we are good at we really suck at, but at least we can suck at it well and thus be proud of it.  This probably has a lot to do with our Bad Theology, it’s all the over eager youth pastor’s telling us as youth that it’s ok to think differently than 2000 years of church history.

4.  So the meek will inherit the earth, at least Jesus says that, I don’t think it’s a Conan thing.  That’s all of us with our 19 kids and counting, while the liberals practice safe sex well enough to forget that procreation actually creates something, albeit we are a pretty fatherless generation learning to be fathers again.  I guess that’s where the meekness comes in.

5.  We are all still wearing glasses and our worldview is still dominating our outlook.  We don’t pray thy kingdom come thy will be done anymore, (the Greek version is even worse) we pray according to the shift of culture, that unfortunately shifts us all too much, shifts our internal thoughts, our home life, our work life, our relationships…  Oh, yeah, we want to blame Facebook for it, we should want too, it’s the most damned kingdom shifter of them all.  All the while we still just see Facebook with our glasses on.  Someone said to me recently they only wear glasses because they need to see, I guess we are those of the little faith, afraid to take our cultural glasses off unless we become blind.