If you haven't read my earlier post about Conventional Wisdom (10/26/09), this one won't make much sense.
This morning I was trimming the spent flower stalks off the many aloes around the yard. After our unusually rainy winter, there were a lot of them! Of course, I left one - right in the middle of plain view.
Later, after lunch, I glanced out across the yard. And there, on the very tip of the sole remaining dead aloe flower stalk, sat a lovely dragonfly.
Chalk one up to Unconventional Wisdom!
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Resurrection Day
I hope all of you had a blessed celebration of Resurrection Sunday!
We celebrated with another couple, at our home. We gathered outside in the beautiful Spring weather, and sat around the grill. First we placed the leg of lamb over the fire, giving thanks for the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. As the meat cooked, we relished the lovely, smoky fragrance. We passed around a copy of The Life of Christ in Stereo, taking turns reading aloud about Jesus' trial, execution, and resurrection. NOTE - if you do not have a copy of this book, find one and read it. It is a remarkable synthesis of the Gospels.
As we read, we stopped occasionally to comment on things that God brought to our attention through what we heard. We prayed when he led. Over the course of the next hour-and-a-half, while the meat roasted, we added vegetables to the grill, each variety in its turn, so that all would finish cooking at the same time. We also grilled flat circles of bread for our feast.
After finishing the powerful telling of Jesus' brilliant resurrection, we sang together until the food finished cooking. After everything was set out on a table, we each took a round of bread and broke it, giving thanks for Jesus' broken body, symbolizing his death, and also returning thanks for the seeds of grain that died to spring up in new life. We poured a glass of wine for each of us, contemplating the blood of his death, and the life that is in the blood. And then we shared our feast, enjoying each other's company and celebrating Jesus through remembering his last supper, and looking forward to his promise that he will one day drink "...of the fruit of the vine ... that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God."
At the end of our meal, we finished our wine with a toast to Jesus. Then we talked more about our God and where he is leading us, imagining where and how we might be celebrating a year from now. We worshiped our amazing God again in more songs, singing of his majesty, and looking forward to the day when our joy will be complete in his presence. We enjoyed a delicious dessert and talked more about God's working. We watched water slosh suddenly out of the swimming pool, splashing clear across the deck, as the tremors of an earthquake (centered in Baja California) passed through the neighborhood.
More than six hours passed in less time than it takes to get through a "service" of singing two fast songs, two slow songs, taking an offering, and then listening to someone expound a great deal about very little. And I feel tired and refreshed, just the way I should feel after a marvelous day spent with good friends and an awesome God.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Around the yard
Here are a few pictures from around the place:
Looking out the back door on a rainy day in March...
Daring to be different...
A little music among the flowers...
A friend drops in for a snack...
Bougainvillea, coral, and rocks...
Aloes, the pond, and a stringer of fish???
When I built the pond, I never expected to have to mow the waterfall...
Lily pad with a ghostly reflection of a ship's bell...
Friday, April 2, 2010
In a word...
I love words. I love to play games with them. One of my favorite amusements is to see how one word can morph into another, and then compare the meanings.
Like denomination, which, with only a couple of alterations, becomes demonic nation. What a fun study that is!
Or, consider how easily heaven becomes leaven, which, in the language of Scripture, is not a good thing at all. Of course, the optimists among us can point out that leaven converts to heaven just as readily.
And then there's legion. Easily transmuted to leg iron. From there, it's a small step to leghorn. And as anyone with a working knowledge of art and culture will remember, Foghorn is the most famous leghorn ever. But, beware - foghorn is not too far removed from frog porn, and no one wants that!
Sometimes it's fun to compare denominations with demonic nations, or to issue warnings (or encouragements!) about how easily heaven and leaven can change places. But it would be really stupid to accuse organizations using "legion" in their names of producing pornography. Amphibian or any other variety.
Yet sometimes I think we go nearly that far afield in the way we attempt to "interpret" what we read in the Bible. Because we see God's Word as a book, we believe that we can find His truth through literary exercise. We play with the words, the phrases, the contexts, until we can finally make ourselves comfortable with what it says.
Of course, we wouldn't phrase it that way. We would say we have arrived at the correct interpretation, or that we have heard the truth of a particular passage. But along the way, how many times have we decided that the front half of a verse is literal, and the remainder poetic and symbolic? How many words have we retranslated and redefined and rethought and reimagined and re..., re..., re... ... ... until we've re-everythinged the life out of them?
By what standard have we determined that some things are literal, others figurative; some are timeless, others locked to historical application; some are contextualized for this group, some for another, and others for everyone? Unfortunately, the standard we often (maybe always!) apply is the one that leads us to the place where the Bible says exactly what we want it to - nothing more, and nothing less.
As long as we view the Bible as a book, no matter how great a book we think (or claim to believe) it is, we will always promote the use of human tools to excavate heavenly truth. We assert by our actions, if not by our doctrine, that the human intellect is not fallen with the rest of the human constitution. That we only need beware the sinful flesh, and the wayward heart. But not the mind. How do we come to believe this? Well, we find it in Scripture ... or, rather, we cajole the words of a book into agreement with this belief.
But the truth is not a book - Truth is Jesus. The Bible isn't full of words, it breathes with the Word - again, Jesus. If we look between its covers to find stuff about God, we fall short of Scripture's potential to allow us to see God. The book can be the medium of Jesus' manifestation, bringing him to life in us. Or it can be a fossil-record of his passing, to which we apply scientific tools in order to deduce what he must have looked like, how he may have acted, what he might have eaten and drunk.
God may be old, but he ain't no fossil!
Like denomination, which, with only a couple of alterations, becomes demonic nation. What a fun study that is!
Or, consider how easily heaven becomes leaven, which, in the language of Scripture, is not a good thing at all. Of course, the optimists among us can point out that leaven converts to heaven just as readily.
And then there's legion. Easily transmuted to leg iron. From there, it's a small step to leghorn. And as anyone with a working knowledge of art and culture will remember, Foghorn is the most famous leghorn ever. But, beware - foghorn is not too far removed from frog porn, and no one wants that!
Sometimes it's fun to compare denominations with demonic nations, or to issue warnings (or encouragements!) about how easily heaven and leaven can change places. But it would be really stupid to accuse organizations using "legion" in their names of producing pornography. Amphibian or any other variety.
Yet sometimes I think we go nearly that far afield in the way we attempt to "interpret" what we read in the Bible. Because we see God's Word as a book, we believe that we can find His truth through literary exercise. We play with the words, the phrases, the contexts, until we can finally make ourselves comfortable with what it says.
Of course, we wouldn't phrase it that way. We would say we have arrived at the correct interpretation, or that we have heard the truth of a particular passage. But along the way, how many times have we decided that the front half of a verse is literal, and the remainder poetic and symbolic? How many words have we retranslated and redefined and rethought and reimagined and re..., re..., re... ... ... until we've re-everythinged the life out of them?
By what standard have we determined that some things are literal, others figurative; some are timeless, others locked to historical application; some are contextualized for this group, some for another, and others for everyone? Unfortunately, the standard we often (maybe always!) apply is the one that leads us to the place where the Bible says exactly what we want it to - nothing more, and nothing less.
As long as we view the Bible as a book, no matter how great a book we think (or claim to believe) it is, we will always promote the use of human tools to excavate heavenly truth. We assert by our actions, if not by our doctrine, that the human intellect is not fallen with the rest of the human constitution. That we only need beware the sinful flesh, and the wayward heart. But not the mind. How do we come to believe this? Well, we find it in Scripture ... or, rather, we cajole the words of a book into agreement with this belief.
But the truth is not a book - Truth is Jesus. The Bible isn't full of words, it breathes with the Word - again, Jesus. If we look between its covers to find stuff about God, we fall short of Scripture's potential to allow us to see God. The book can be the medium of Jesus' manifestation, bringing him to life in us. Or it can be a fossil-record of his passing, to which we apply scientific tools in order to deduce what he must have looked like, how he may have acted, what he might have eaten and drunk.
God may be old, but he ain't no fossil!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
