A Quiet Tuesday

"Another Tuesday morning...

The usual, morning staff morning, prayer, reviewing new bulletin designs and so on and so forth. By now it's almost 11:30 and very little constructive work got done. Then again, what can you expect, after all, I have three and a half work days left here. All I could ever have asked for in a summer has been fulfilled. Any ministry experience I could ever need has been offered and has been treasured and pondered. Not to mention that at this point of the year we are at that standstill, the calm before the storm, the days between the end of summer and the beginning of the fall semester of the local schools. For a brief period our church is quiet. The halls are silent. Tom is off in Columbia for the day with his family, Lynda is with hers. Cliff is in his office as is Tricia. The only noises from my office? John's carpet cleaner is in the sanctuary and The Doors are playing off my computer speakers (I Can't See Your Face in My Mind to be exact off their "Strange Days" album...great song). Weird. So busy for so long, a summer of activity upon activity and then...

silence.

The music stops. Album over. Better find something to listen to...something more upbeat, acoustic, folksy...the Good Old War, that's what I want...yeah. "I'm going to Coney Island to have myself a dog, and reminisce how i still hate it here. It's all these people with their Cotton Candy eyes, it's so sweet now put the train in gear." Funny, I don't hate it here...I love it here in fact, I enjoy it to the very utmost. I love the people, their sincerity and honesty. It is too easy to talk with "Cotton Candy" eyes, offering sweets instead of substance, fluff instead of stuff, a muffled "fine" rather than a heavy sigh. I love the beach; the many late afternoon runs to the beach, walking across the silky yet sturdy sand during low tide while splashing along the shore during the high tide..."

Sorry, I was just interrupted. A church member looking for John, he commented on how he enjoyed my sermon Sunday, how comfortable I seemed and how it should reach to a younger generation. This summer Hana and I have talked often on the horrid task of accepting compliments, it's hard to say the least. After all, all we as Christians can desire it to be merely vessels...we call this humility. Yet, are we sufficiently accepting God's grace and glory when we constantly, without thought, divert positive re-enforcement and thanks from those around us towards Him without mention of ourselves? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Blake Jurgens deserves endless praise and worship...but aren't the Blake Jurgens, the Hana Smiths, the Nick Baas and Brandon Haans, the Nate Doors and the John Debraskys, the AJs, Jennas, and all those others, aren't they, body and soul, created to glorify their creator though their freedom to worship thru their abilities and talents? That's hard, to affirm God's grace while accepting the praise of our humanity; a much harder task to maintain God's work, our humility as vessels, and our autonomy as His creation. Does our conformity to Christ allow emphasis on our gifts and our role in His redemptive purposes? Can a child accept thanks for His father's work? Maybe our feeble scribbles and scratches are worth more than we realize, and just maybe, perhaps, our work in this world is more than just acting as a mere puppet, but rather a child, watching his or her ma or pa, picking up bit by bit the trade they passed onto them.

Back to typing. I like that here. Easy-going, patient, agendas and calenders are suggestion or emphasised suggestion, but never a solid, concrete barrier or restriction. It's Christ-like. After all, Jesus NEVER emphasised that his schedule was too busy to love, to full to heal, to complicated and exhausting to teach. Though he was always on His way to Jerusalem, He always watched the side of the road, searching for those who needed His love for no other reason than He loved them first. What if we, as Christians, put away our agenda and conceptions of our lives for just a few seconds and allowed ourselves to envision to roadsides, the leper colonies, the empty and distraught places and the driest of deserts. Is it too much to ask that Christianity be a religion based on relationship-spontaneity? That we, as Christians, throw aside our schedules and pick up our hearts out of our bags as we pull off our bluetooth headsets and turn our phones to vibrate. Is it possible that we have been sucked into the world and in the midst of worrying about adapting to a sick and depraved culture, worrying about music with naughty words and bad movies, political images and all that such, that we have become like the world in the sense that we are little more than consumers consuming rather than reformers always reforming? That we are, in the midst of the morning commute, the afternoon business meetings, and our social conformity, that we have become exactly what Christ warned us not to become, even as we, with near-unnecessary fervor, protest abortion, perverted sexuality, and other 'hot topics'?

I spilled melted butter on my pants this morning; slid right off my bagel. Drat. I tried warm water and no difference. The Lemon Pledge looked promising...and it was. The stains are gone. How simple it is to wash stains away when you use the right tools.

Is Christianity washing away the stains of Christ? Do we go through life not noticing that the very stains that set us free from bondage to sin are now the very stains we are trying to wash away? Humanity is wounded, imperfect, fallen. It is there, in those empty rotting wounds that Christ fits the best, He fills such space and will further when we close our eyes the final time. Why then are we trying to cover these wounds up with bandage and attempt limping through life screaming out in our pain "I'm fine, I swear!" Can it be true that to be most Christ-like is to be most-broken and ravaged with sin? Can being in conformity with Christ mean such freedom? We all want to be free; free from discrimination, free from laws and decrees, and often we say we want freedom from sin. We want freedom, or so we think...yet, when Christ offers such deep freedom we deny it. We never truly want such freedom, we do not care to be open with our deepest wounds and sin, and in that quick moment of isolation and individuality we instantly hide ourselves from His light, and we shackle ourselves.

Christians want freedom. Any Christian who asks for such freedom needs to know that this freedom is the hardest freedom you will ever have. It will force you to admit your stumbles, it will push you towards choices you would never care to make, it kick you to be open even in the most uncomfortable situations. This freedom will force you to share your home with the inhospitable, to hug those you could care less to hug, to forgive over and over for the same mistakes, and to admit the gaping holes within our cavities and hidden places to complete strangers. Did not Jesus, in his freedom, seek not a political kingdom, nor a society of monks, or even an army of hardened soldiers and dry and cracking hearts. No, in His freedom he marched towards a cross and the scorn of humanity. He disappointed men! He took dreams and visions of a political and religious Messiah and dashed them and did what a rebel and revolutionary should never do; he let himself be killed a sinner's death. In His freedom he allowed himself to be chained to the sufferings of the world and in that act he most freely loved us. Our freedom in Christ is only fulfilled when we chain ourselves to such acts of love, giving ourselves and our wounds in order to assist His lost children, wandering and searching for a place to call home.

Ok, time for lunch. Hopefully a run later on. Thanks for stopping by"

God is love.
Therefore, we must be so too.

Pray.