Creating Space, not Just Fancy Caffeinated Beverages.

Sometimes, it is so good to be reminded --
that the job that I do every day --
the every-day routines that seem so mundane:
waking up before 6 --
washing lipstick off of mugs --
tamping down espresso --
making change --
it matters.

It's about more than getting people their caffeine
So that they de-zombify.
It's about more than getting a paycheck,
More than having a respectable job.

It's about creating a space
Where people feel safe
To walk in and answer honestly
When we ask: Hey, how're you doing?
It's about bringing people together
As they see each other over and over
So they start to see each other
And to ask questions.
What's your name?
What do you do?

It's about facilitating opportunities
For people to get to know each other
To let down their walls
To search.
To find.
To be found.

This belongs to my Father... so why would I be afraid?

The past two weeks all of my Bible studies have seemed to be of a piece -- which, I know, should not surprise me at all.  And I'm not surprised, exactly, but it's beautiful, and timely.

In Exodus with BCCC and HopePres, we've discussed/argued/wrestled with the idea of God's sovereignty.  How can you not, looking at the exodus and seeing His might -- and wondering about why He left them in slavery for 400 years?  It's all unfathomable to us when we try to answer the why questions... but it's taught so clearly.  We've talked about Job, too, about looking to Who, not why.

Then at CBS, we've been studying 1 John, where he hammers away (over and over and over...) at the dangerous lie of gnosticism, the insidious creeping of the Platonic notion that the spiritual is pure and the material is tainted, evil.

Last night, with my little group from HopePres, we sat around in Jake's living room, discussing creation, God's sovereignty and goodness, the eschaton, how gnosticism still rears its head in the popular escapist culture of Left Behind.

It's amazing, elegant, how the beginning plays the whole way through to the end.  How what we believe about the creation (Did God really make it?  Was it really good?  Is it still good?) informs how we live now, what we look forward to in the end times.

There were three things that our conversation last night made me think about.

The first is Paul's words to the Athenians, telling them that the unknown God they were worshipping is the Creator and Lord of everything.  That He doesn't need anything from them -- but rather He has ordained all of history, "allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place," creating humans in His image so that "they might feel their way toward Him and find Him."

Those words in turn always remind me of a quote from the movie adaptation of City of Joy.

Maybe the world is meant to break your heart.

And doesn't it, though?  Both with the grievous sorrows that our hearts can't stand up to and the bright joys that we can't bear?

Over all these thoughts, over all of the news stories of ebola and WMDs, of death and devastation, the words of the hymn This is My Father's World echo in my heart.  It is all His, and He is all good, and so I can trust that nothing in creation will be able to tear me out of His hand.  Come what may, I can live with confidence and joy.

Re-Creation: attempt at synthesis of recent illustrations

Remember the day, Love
when You molded man of earth
bent down and breathed Your life into him?

Remember the love that spun out
Flung flagrantly through creation
Wefted into the singing universe's fabric?

And yet history tears and twists
Under the cutting weight of the damning record:
Rebellious subjects, a whoring bride.

We fled from You to the muddiest pits
Forming images of ourselves to proclaim our glory
Defiling Your image and defying Your authority.

We clung to these idols, gave them our breath
Offered our lives to make them grow strong
Glutted them with our children's souls.

After such sin, what forgiveness?
Think now -- oh my God.
What hope of homecoming, of reconciliation?

And yet You bring all stories full circle
Bending low to become a second Adam
God incarnate, Logos in flesh.

Dying to ransom our forsworn souls
From the crushing maw of death
Overturning the enemy's schemes with divine irony.

Resurrecting as guarantee of our future
Rest on the seventh day, Light on the first
Breathing new life into our stone hearts.

Finally comes the call, a reiteration
Giving the mission to Your restored image-bearers
To carry Your glory into all creation.

For this, Triune God, I'll forever worship:
That You still look on all you have made
And joyfully claim that it is Yours and is good.

Aggravating the Sin of Discontentment

Two points from The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment that I've been thinking over recently.

The more palpable and remarkable the hand of God appears to bring about an affliction, the greater is the sin of murmuring and discontentment under an affliction.

So yeah -- when I can't understand why something is happening, because it makes no sense to me -- maybe then I should take a lesson from Job and close my mouth, trusting that of course God is working.

To be discontented though God has been exercising us for a long time under afflictions, yet still to remain discontented [is a great sin]... So when you are first a Christian and newly come into the work of Christ, perhaps you make a noise and cannot bear affliction, but are you an old Christian and yet will you be a murmuring Christian?  Oh, it is a shame for any who are old believers, who have been a long time in the school of Jesus Christ, to have murmuring and discontented spirits.

So I pray to be a better student.