We should of course be who we are, but we cannot begin to do this without being where [and when] we are.
~ Mark S. Barrows
Archives for 2007
Worship: Eugene Peterson Quote
August 2, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Authentic worship means being present to the living God who penetrates the whole of human life.
Living the Life of Love
July 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment
When I think about people who embody God’s love, my mind immediately goes to Pete Ross. Pete was a wonderful woman who was a member of our West Texas congregation during the time I raised my kids. Pete had a joyous, peaceful demeanor that was absolutely infective. It was impossible to be around her and not have your spirit lifted. Her blue eyes shone brightly straight into your heart filling you with acceptance and love. Her delight in seeing you was genuine and affirming.
What a force she has been in my life!
In our world, we expect that a person must be ‘theologically well educated’ in order to achieve wisdom and insight into living the life of faith. Pete was ‘theologically well educated’ all right, but her education came not at one of the church’s fine seminaries, no, her education came directly from the school of life and was achieved through her unfailing openness to God and God’s love for her in the midst the stuff of life.
[Read more…]
Henri Nouwen Quote – To whom do we belong?
May 17, 2007 By Leave a Comment
To whom do we belong? This is the core question of the spiritual life. Do we belong to the world, its worries, its people and its endless chain of urgencies and emergencies, or do we belong to God and God’s people? This question is not too difficult to answer. Our milieu – the persons and events we talk and agonize about, rejoice in and give thanks for – reveals to whom most of us belong. The tragedy is that for most of us this milieu is far from the Divine milieu.
Phyllis Tickle on Prayer
May 10, 2007 By Leave a Comment
I think prayer is a place. Prayer and the physical world are in many ways two parallel existences, two parallel spaces, one geographic and one not.
Sabbath Keeping 7
April 29, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Jesus invites you to rest:
Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matt 11:28
How will you respond?
Sabbath Keeping 6
April 29, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Days Pass, Years Vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles. (Jewish Sabbath Prayer)
Sabbath is a time of glorious reorientation! The Divine order and rhythm of our lives is reestablished. The scales on our eyes of faith fall off and our vision is restored. We are enabled to embrace infinity and all of the wonder and mystery it entails. The smallness of our world is replaced through our glimpsing of Infinity in all of its glory.
We no longer walk sightless among miracles!
Sabbath Keeping 5
April 29, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Abide in me as I abide in you (John 15:4a)
We are now getting to the crux of the situation. Sabbath is about learning to abide with God and the first part of the verse from John enjoins us to ‘abide in Christ’. But the good news for us is spelled out in the second part of the sentence – ‘as I abide in you’. What a wonderful reminder for us. You see God is ever present abiding in us, even when we are unaware of it!
Marcus Borg expresses it this way: “God is in relationship with us:
spirituality is about becoming aware of a relationship that already exists.”
And Carl Jung: “Bidden or not God is present.”
So if God is ever present, how do we often times end up feeling disconnected and far removed from the Divine presence?
Let’s think about Jacob. He has just conspired with his mother to trick his father Isaac into bestowing the blessing that rightly should be given to the first born son, Esau, to him instead. The ruse is discovered in short order creating quite a bit of family turmoil – to say the least! It is quickly decided that this would be a good time to ship Jacob off to his uncle’s place in Haran for a while – until things settle down a bit on the home front. Jacob sets off on his journey and stops to rest for the night at a certain place.
In the midst of all of this self-created turmoil necessitating his quick trip out of town, how aware do you think Jacob is of God’s presence? In fact, consciously or unconsciously Jacob may even be hoping that God isn’t present and aware of the goings on?
Well, a funny thing happens when Jacob stops and rests for the night, he has a wonderful dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. He awakes from his dream and exclaims, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!”
Well, duh! As revealing as Jacob’s epiphany is, God has been abiding with Jacob all along. It was Jacob’s awareness of this abiding presence that was blunted. I think it would be fair to say that Jacob was operating from a distracted state of being. It is easy to see how all of the family turmoil could blunt Jacob’s awareness of God’s presence. God hadn’t moved, but Jacob certainly had!
You see God abides every where, every when – the problem is that our awareness of God’s presence in the wheres and the whens of our lives, becomes blunted by the stuff of life itself. We face family concerns and issues. We face other multifaceted demands on our time and attention. We find our lives out of sync with the rhythms of the natural world. We are judged by what we do or who we know rather than by the simple fact that ‘we are’.
And somehow, unsurprisingly, in the midst of all of this, like Jacob, our awareness of God’s abiding presence and abiding love for us becomes blunted. We lose our connection to the source of our being, and no longer abide in the Divine presence. We begin to float along on the surface of our lives. We shift fully into our autopilot doing mode, even in our faith journey.
The Sabbath is a slice of time set aside for abiding in God’s presence. Through this practice of abiding we find that our awareness of God abiding presence and abiding love in our lives is heightened. Those obstacles that stand in the way of our experience of the Divine presence slowly fall away and the Divine order and rhythm of our lives is re-established.
And like Jacob we suddenly realize, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!
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