The Outsider

 Jesus turned to his host.  "When you put on a luncheon or dinner, don't invite your friends, brothers, relatives and rich neighbors.  For they will invite you back and that will be your only reward.  Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.  Then at the resurrection of the righteous, God will reward you for inviting those who could not repay you."

A man sitting at the table with Jesus exclaimed, "What a blessing it will be to attend the breaking of bread in the Kingdom of God!"

[The famous Great Feast parable follows - including the surprised of who it will include.]

Jesus told this parable:  A man prepared a great feast and sent out many invitations.  When the banquet was ready, he sent his servant to tell the guests, "Come the banquet is ready." But all the guests began making excuses.  One said, "I have just bought a field and must inspect it.  Please, excuse me."  Another said, "I have just bought five pairs of oxen and I want to try them out.  Please, excuse me."  And another, "I now have a wife, so I cannot come."

The servant returned and told his master what they had all said.  His master was furious and said, "Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame."  Even after the servant did this, he reported, "There is still room for more."  

So, his master said, "Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full.  For none of whom I first invited will get even the smallest taste of my banquet."  Luke 14:12 -25

I have often heard this preached as a warning to the wealthy, the hosts.  Here we find that the original guests allowed other demands to take precedence over meeting the conditions of saying "yes" to an invitation.  In this shame and honor culture, such events were highly significant...and turning down such an offer was quite offensive to a host.  Yet, the first guests let economic opportunities, relationships and bad planning interfere with their first commitment.

What is the quirk of human nature that causes us 

to miss out on the greatest invitations?

Yet, I find myself in the crowd of those not usually invited to such galas.  The usual avenues to feeling like I am welcome, too, in religious circles feel awkward to me.  I feel like I am outside of the invitation circle.  I think all have felt like an outsider at some point, but God is intent on going to great effort to include us in his blessing banquet.

The servant, who is put in charge of the second wave of invitations, knows all the haunts to find people who really need the bread.  This host even uses references of homelessness I understand:  behind the hedges, along the roads.  I've been lost down the backroads, hiding behind the boundaries, too.

The host, God, wants a full house.  He has a table of plenty.  He is using his servants to lure the needy to the table.  Take your role.  Be part of the call or heed the call.  Make the table full!!

The Obvious and the Invisible

 Your way ran through the sea; your path cut through great

 waters, yet no one can spot your footprints.  This is how you

 lead your people:  obviously and invisibly.  Psalm 77:19

So many are searching. Christians often live in a continual awareness of seeking the leading of God. He gives us his Word—solid, trustworthy, life‑giving—yet the movement of his Spirit within us can still leave us wondering. How do I know the “voice” I hear isn’t simply my own? How do I distinguish God’s way from the world’s way, beyond the obvious sins we know to avoid? What should my career be? Who should walk with me in life? Where does ministry fit in a world overflowing with need?

This metaphor from the Psalms steadies me. A path through 

the sea? Footprints in the ocean? I’ve seen something like that

in real life.

I come from an area where there are many gravel pits, the digs

 of the mounds of fill and silt dropped by the glaciers during the

last ice age.  Before conservation laws came into effect, gravel

Was often dug right up to the riverbanks, swallowing sections 

of the river into the widening pit and leaving behind a lake 

where land once stood. It looked as if the river had vanished.

But I learned something: if you stand in just the right place, at just the right time, you can see the river’s path running straight through that man‑made lake. Invisible from most angles, but unmistakable when you know where to look.

That’s the key—knowing when and where to place myself so I 

can catch God’s truth. That becomes the work: searching for 

that vantage point, positioning myself with intention, waiting for

the moment when the hidden becomes clear. Just like an 

eagle who must put themselves in the right place to soar and 

catch the wind, so must I.  And when I do—when I wait, 

observe, and ready myself—God’s leading becomes 

astonishingly obvious. The revelation comes, and with it, the 

action that follows.

Prayer:

Lord, teach me where to stand.

Quiet my striving so I can see the path you cut through the waters.

Help me trust your leading even when your footprints are hidden.

Make me ready for the revelation—and the obedience—that follows.

Amen.

 

Emmanuel - God with Us

 Look! The virgin will conceive a child!  She will give birth to a son and he will be called Immanuel, which means "God with us."  Matthew 1:23

"With" in the Greek is "meta," which simply translated means "among."  It has other intonations, though, that includes participation, proximity, association and union.  It signifies a personal union of the human and divine, symbolizing a symbiotic presence of the divine with humanity.

Do you remember the definition of symbiosis from biology class?  Symbiosis is the interaction between two different organisms, denoting a mutually beneficial relationship.  This really usurps ideas about "it's all God" I have heard.  God intends a give-and-take.

This raises a huge amount of questions.

How does this mutually beneficial relationship develop?  How are God and I impacting each other? God benefits from being in relationship with me?  

I think about the very definitive description of "God is love."  With him, love is not a one-way street.  Love is God's way of being with someone.  To return the gesture (symbiotically), how do I "be" with God?  How do I place myself into God's desires?

So, how about this comparison (and expand it for yourself):

God "with" me                                Me "with" God

Presence - availability                    Seek out his Presence

Offer of the Holy Spirit                Be aware of the movement of                                                                       the Holy Spirit

Purpose                                           Seek out his purposes

Triune-nature:  community             Seeking community of others

I'm not trying to fit the eternal and expansive God in me, but rather find my place in Him, his presence.  I am not going to confine God to a "God-shaped-hole" in me, but rather find, live and grow into the space in God's presence and creation that he has for me.

God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth...so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each of us:  for in Him we live and move and have our being..."  Acts 17:  26-28b.

I love the metaphor of water: submerged, I find I am in the water and it is in me.

Lord, submerge me in you, your ways, your presence, your movement. Let me bear no resistance to the full presence of You!  Carry me and sustain me.  Amen

Psalm 74

 Psalm 74

A lament during the exile to Babylon

What is our exile?

It feels as if the democracy “experiment” has failed.  It is crumbling from within.  Its one success was that it spawned an ideal of self-governance and liberty around the world, but now it fails to protect itself.

Though it did not hail from religious beginnings, it was from the faith of men wanting self-rule.  A flawed beginning held together by a construct/a mythology that slowly spread, sporadically and imperfectly, to all people within the boundaries that freedom mattered.  That mythology did not hold, though, because forces of old – greed and power – used an inherent hierarchy to reinvent a system of control over the masses. Freedom and equity (whether of power, sustenance, health, opportunity…) would no longer exist, if it ever did.  

Maybe the Republic was just a false front.

Did we invest too much in the man-made structure of democracy?  Is that our torture now?  Did we make freedom and self-governance a sanctuary that only served those who thought to sequester the power, pretending it was for all? 

We claimed our identity around the altar of democracy.  Did the Republic even define our “religion”?  Self-governance took you, O God, out of your rightful place among us.  We valued freedom and happiness as first pursuits when You should have been our first pursuit – then you would have defined and given freedom and happiness in a more encompassing way.

Is this what the Republic has done?

·       Was it a lion that claimed the inner sanctum (of being and import) in each of us for itself?

·       Did the Republic rip to shreds culture groups’ and people groups’ purpose and protection? (Ask the American Indian, African slave and the immigrant.)

·       Did the democracy “scorch” all the places where God can meet His people?  (In the name of advancement and financial growth, did earth pay the price for settlement and expansion?)

And now the experiment of democracy crumbles.  Will it soon go up in flames with only ash and smoke remaining?

The deconstruction of the American Republic might be God’s effort to reorder the culture and bring people back to the right place of salvation on the land, with God in the lead.  What power is needed to finish off bad governance, misdirected ideology?  We are watching inherent evil do it for us.

Power belongs to God.  Can’t you see it in the cycle of life on the earth?  Even the cycle of the universe – day and night – belongs to God. 

Don’t forget that the enemy has taunted You and we, as a company of fools, have snubbed you, O Lord.  Bring back our focus and renew our spirits such that we turn again to You.  Don’t forget us and Your true intention for all. Put us again in a position to give You praise!

Lord, rise up and defend your cause.  Reveal and remove our foolish pursuits. 

#34

 

I dare not say what I might write

if just left to pen and light.

I dare not think of what I’d do

if bereft of love and thought of you.

I’m overtaxed with sight and sound

And filled with dread of greater wrongs.

 

So, I move my attention

         give attention

         pay attention

pay the price by moving my thoughts into the debit column of your offering.

 

It’s in your hands now

and with head bowed,

divested of being in the center,

I lay at the edge

no longer in torment.

Life's Questions

 Shouldn't we expect far greater glory under the new way, now that the Holy Spirit is giving life? If the old way [under the law], which brings condemnation, was once glorious, how much more glorious is the new way, which makes us right with God!  In fact, that first glory was not glorious at all compared with the overwhelming glory of the new way.  2 Corinthians 3: 8-10

Life's questions - determining the answers for who we are and what we should do - often revolve around the wrong theme. What if life's questions revolved around God?  (not the church and its rites and rituals nor us and our misplaced affections)

What was God's purpose for creation?

What was God's purpose for me?

What does God intend for this day?

How do I get involved with those intentions, both externally in the world and internally in me?

What does God want me to become?

How can I move towards that "becoming"?

How can I "be" in him, for him, of him?

God's good intentions are for this "new way," a "good" way thas new definitions:

     1) communities of belonging for all

     2) personal experience of belonging with God and his people

 Life's big questions usually revolved around me.  NO.  Time to ask the questions of life with God in mind.  That would be glorious!

Meditate

 I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles.  Psalm 145:5

We have long pursued the "knowing" of God.  To connect with the reality of the divine is quite the pursuit.  Oh, we know the facts that we read in the Bible.  We might have an experience of him in our lives, but can we hold that experience and let it flower into a deeper life with him?

I believe that proper meditation of God - his splendor and miracles for each of us - deserves to be multiplied.  It's an effort that the church has attempted to guide for a long time.  The stained glass of the buildings, the religious icons artfully presented, even the movies that we make today attempt to provide a bridge to realizing God's presence.

Yet, there is a difference between those man-made presentations and the actual presence of God.  Think about the difference between seeing a picture of a mountain or standing at its base.  Compare a video of pounding waves with swimming in them.  Note the difference between a picture of your team's football stadium or laying on the 50-yard line of the field.  

I remember the holy presence of laying at the foot of El Capitan.  It is breath-taking and focusing.  There is nothing like the lap of the tide at your feet or the terror of being caught in a riptide.  I have joined in with the crowd at the entrance of my team onto the football field.  No distant picture or video compares...and barely holds the emotions of the original act.  No replica will do.

Even God's word - clear, illuminating and truth-telling - is no substitute for the indwelling of the presence of God through his Holy Spirit.  The printed word comes alive only when the voice and movement bears its truth in our lives.  Meditation can provide that movement as we take a printed or spoken truth and remember how its truth is portrayed in us.

Gratitude is an easy meditative example.  Think of a delightful meal or drink you had this week.  How does that provision remind you of God?  What person presented love and care for you today.  How do you see God in that gift?  To take the time to re-live those moments is to truly meditate.  

The Psalm says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."  Our senses, given by God, can supply us the conduit for meditation.  We know best with our senses.  Thus, meditation moves us from the printed Word - though good - into our heart where Christ dwells.