a convo...

I have been reading much

listening much

reflecting much

And trying to digest all that I see, feel, and sense.

I have decided that I want to start writing some reflections and invite you to chew a little bit with us.

On what you ask?

I would like to wrestle with who Jesus is...and His reality versus what we have made Him personally...and corporately.

Still there?

Here is my initial thought:

Creating new structures in the Church is not our primary calling. Creating new programs, new orders of service, new strategic plans, or even having new visions or dreams are not our primary calling.
Our first calling is to belong to Jesus as Savior, Lord, Lover and Friend...and to continually find our lives nourished, enflamed, envigoured and satisfied at the well of His life. It is there that the call to partner with Him as He redemptively, compassionately and intentionally calls a lost and broken world towards Himself becomes life giving instead of guilt laying. It is in this place that we dream dreams and have visions that are motivated by love and not our need for significance.

To understand this is to allow the Christian disciplines to become places of life and not law...for how do we fulfill the command to love, except that we learn it of Jesus, and how do we learn it of Him, except that we pray, and live under His word and love His world?

I find myself asking the question often, “Would I rather be with people or with Jesus?” And unfortunately I often leave the question unanswered because it is painfully obvious.

I have lived lots of my life surrounded by books and people whose thrust has to do with ‘doing’ something significant for God. When I reflect, busyness often put me in good company...but stole the opportunity to connect easily with others because of our busyness and our collective shallowness. Religious nattering, including my own, wore me to the bone.

As I feel through this today, I find myself yearning for a ‘gray hair’ who knows and loves God, who would show me the way...the thought of which fills my heart.
How often have I exhorted, often prophetically, people to take full advantage of a liminal moment in their life and listen, listen, listen.

But what have I spent so much of my life doing? Plugging my ears and barrelling ahead hoping that my house of cards doesn’t collapse before I do.

Today I find myself longing to live a life that calls others back to where we belong and yet forget. In His embrace. Without a task list. Just an overwhelming awareness of, as Brennan Manning puts it, the furious longing of God.

Let me leave you with a poem I found...

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered…

paradox… we wait and we long and this is good..
we strive and move.. this is also good..
if only we take the stillness with us as we go..

Thoughts?