Engaging the Mystery

So yesterday I spoke about peter walking on the water and how he engaged the mystery of the ghostly Christ who spoke to him. Engaging the mystery is a very important part of our walk with Christ and our understanding of who He is. Our mindset is totally set against it. It is the ultimate act of anti-modernity. Basically, to live inside of the mystery of God every day is to accept that everyday you will be witness to or part of a supernatural act of God. Now I don't believe that anything God does is 'super' natural, not in the sense that it is outside of nature; God created everything, anything He adds or takes away is completely natural. But, for our science and proof laden minds, the ability to see things that we can't explain away, and expect them to happen, is very difficult.

Does God speak to you? Do you hear the Voice? You understand what that sounds like?

Do you believe in coincidence or divine appointment? I had a bumper sticker once that said that a coincidence was when God worked a miracle and decided to remain anonymous. Do you believe it or do you ignore coincidences and 'chance' meetings?

Can God lead you in every day life? Does He?

Engage the mystery. Walk into a world where every storm is a picture and every tree a story. Walk into a world where every rainbow is a promise and every person is a romance. Walk into a world of mystery and sudden revelation where Jesus is beside you every day, not as an ethic or an ideal but as a living breathing person.

The Sacramental Life

I had some thoughts from Sunday that didn't make it into the gathering time so I wanted to share them here. We talked about the word 'sacrament' and what it meant; it's history and current usage in the church, especially the Catholic church. We talked about the need to perform 'maintenance' on our salvation to keep it running correctly and how rituals could 'confer grace,' not saving grace: even confession of Jesus Christ as Lord is a means to the end of Salvation, saving Grace comes from God and His love only, always. But common grace, everyday lifestyle kind of grace, sanctified grace, we receive every day. This is the grace commonly conferred through sacrament, except for confession of Christ, as stated earlier.

We talked about action as our sacrament, not an original idea; I read it in a book called The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. And we used Romans 12:1 to talk about ourselves as sacraments. That's the thought I would like to talk about. If we are sacraments for each other then our job would involve helping our brothers maintain their walk and salvation and conferring grace to one another. Okay, what does that mean?

Well, I believe that helping our brothers in their walk is mainly a prayer thing. Stop right now, who have you prayed for today? Is there someone, a brother or sister in Jesus, who is involved in some kind of sin issue? Of course there is! Have you prayed for them? Not confronted, not complained about, prayed for? We are supposed to encourage on another. The positive spin keeps us from becoming self-righteous. Justice, the harsher brother of Grace, is to be dispensed by God and God alone. In any case, if you haven't spent as much time praying for your brother as you have thinking on their sin, you have no right or foundation from which to judge. We must encourage one another and pray for one another as we love each other with the love of Christ.

How do I confer grace? This one is easy. No one actually deserves grace, that would change the definition of it. So any random act or word of kindness, blessing, encouragement, love etc. (basically all the best parts of the Bible!) would be conferring grace. This part is fun, you should try it. Just randomly disperse grace to the people around you today. You may have to work harder for some than for others :) but I promise it will bless you.

Pictures

I've been spending some time catching up with old friends lately. Technology has made things so much easier in the area of relationships, especially the long term, long distance ones. When you don't talk to someone in a while and then you suddenly think, "Are they dead?" It's just a lot easier to email than to phone, no awkward silences, no disappointment in not recognizing the voice on the line, lot's of monologue and background; plus it's just easier to let someone choose to reply or not reply than risk them hanging up on you, not all my old friendships ended amiably! Anyhoo, one old friend wanted to see pix of the people in my life. Now I love pictures, they have an eternal quality that I find beautiful. They freeze a moment and any time you look at them you can go back there. They contain the stuff of story within their frames, human stories, real stories, love stories. Every baby picture is a story of hope and remembered passion. Every wedding picture is a story of risk and adventure, danger and feats of derring-do. Every vacation picture is an epic.

The sad thing is, we often do not experience these things as real stories while we are living them, while they are happening. Gimli son of Gloin said, "memory is not what the heart craves," but truthfully, all he should have done was lived in the moment. Memory recalls, but live it while you can. Every moment is a gift of God and you have a chance at making it eternal. don't waste it.

The Truth of Us

I spent a long time last night working in our Art Booth at First Thursday. First Thursday is this Austin, market/ street festival thing that happens on South Congress every first Thursday of the month. Our faith community, The Well, has a booth. We sell art that was created by our members or family of our members. We also get to meet people, really interesting people. people with dogs, birds, skunks; people on stilts, people in cow costumes, people dressed as super heroes, people who are totally hip, people who think they are but should invest in a mirror, all kinds of wonderfully diverse people. I like it a lot. Jack the Artist played his guitar and sang and I talked to some of my friends and met some new ones.

In the course of the evening I had a conversation with a sweet friend of mine who has had a difficult time. We were talking about gifts, or what the world would call talents. I believe that all of us are gifted at something. That is, that God has given us something that if we learn to use it, we can do anything, it is our path to success. The trick is to find the one or two things (that's relative) at which you can be great.

We spend most of our lives, if we are a seeker, peeling off the layers of who we aren't, who we've pretended to be and who other people have told us that we are. If we have faith in Jesus, we believe that He holds our true identity in His hands. In any case, we search for truth, not just the Truth, meaning objective truth, but the truth of who we are. When we learn what our main gifts are, or gift is, then we can concentrate on that gift. My friend Cass the Jazz Singer called it 'committing to excellence' in an email she sent me the other day. So we commit ourselves to excellence in the areas in which we can touch the sublime.

The West, particularly America, is awash in mediocrity. We've lost our passions and our creativity. Sad, without passion and creativity, we are completely disconnected with the personality of God.In any case, what if we could live in the understanding that everyone, including ourselves, is gifted at something? We would respect ourselves, we would respect others, and we would be that much closer to God.

God bless you, live in strength.

Okay, Here we go. Blog Numero Uno! I taught this morning on Jesus turning the water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana (John 2). He created, according to the Book, between 120 and 180 GALLONS of wine. That's a lot of vino, baby. Hook me up with some cheese, sweet candlelight, my lady and some mood music and I'm good to go! Interesting, isn't it? How many people actually understand that the first miracle of Christ was to keep a party going? It might do wonders for our spirituality to just understand that He started it all with a party! I don't know about you but there are times when my life just stinks and if I didn't believe that Jesus came to 'turn my crying to dancing' like it says in Psalm 30, I wouldn't be able to go on.

I saw a news report on another car bomb attack in Iraq, at a funeral this time. More dead. I'm tired of this war as I'm sure everyone is. I'm ready for our men and women to come home.

My good friend Marci here at The Well, (that's our faith community) produced a cool info sheet this week and titled it The Leak. The title had us rolling in laughter for a while today. It was great so, if you're reading this, thanks Mars!

I attended Eeyore's Birthday celebration in Austin yesterday and was reminded why I love the city so much. People were everywhere, in costumes, playing music, hanging out, dancing, laughing. It was a great celebration of Spring on a beautiful day.

I think that's all for now.

May God bless you.
May He raise you up and let you fly on His breath.
May He light your world with candles of hope and love.
Peace.