july 22, 2007- the prodigal returns

It was while we were yet far off
Before we had hatched a plan
or mapped a route back to your heart.
Before we had sent a postcard
To warn you of our imminent return.
While we were yet far off
You could see our footprints
turning in the opposite direction.
You knew that our hearts were entirely captured
Before ever we recognized
A chink in our self-centered armor.
While we were yet far off
You had sent out the invitations
And blown up the balloons.
The presents were wrapped
and the chairs pushed back
to make room for the dancing.
As we rounded the corner
we could dimly see you,
craning your neck and leaping for joy.
We thought then
that a reconciliation might be possible;
While we were yet far off
you popped the cork
and added the final touches
to the party.

               -Tracy Wheeler

For God demonstrates His own love for us in this; while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom 5:8

july 14, 2007 - what would you say to someone who has become disillusioned with organized church or what they have seen of Christianity?

july 7, 2007 - you don't know what you need

"You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said. "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?" 

Mark 10:38

When I grew up in church our congregation met in a high school auditorium with blue-covered fold-down theater seats and a grand piano on an otherwise empty stage and only a few people in the room.   While we sang worship songs my mom would take me to the back and rock me to the music and later when I was older I would join hands with the other little girls and we would dance in circles while everybody sang. 

In those days God was in everything.  I prayed to Jesus as I learned my first words and listened to his voice on my Bible-on-cassette tapes and looked at his picture in my picture books. 

Once I asked my mom who chose the next song we sang in church and she told me that God did.  So I would watch, awed, as the overheads changed.  The giant shadow of a hand reached down out of the auditorium ceiling with fingers that spread over half the wall, the hand of God, coming down to pick the next song.

My brother growing up was like me – always looking for Jesus and God – we were so sure they were close – sure they'd show up anytime soon and anywhere. 

Johnny saw Jesus one day in the waiting room while my mom picked up our food stamps, he looked just like an illustration in the Children's Bible, with long hair and a beard, with a smooth and placid face.  Johnny saw him that day and looked up, hardly surprised but clearly excited,  anticipating what Jesus might do here in a crowded waiting room, “Hi, Jesus.” He whispered, looking up into the man's eyes.

When you begin with awe, you eventually loose it; your imagination builds whole worlds and then you discover, in chains of disappointment, that the world isn't as mystical as you imagined it.  God isn't as close as you thought he was. 

One day you notice that there is a person from your congregation changing the song in the overhead.  One day the man with the beard and the open linen shirt, who you recognized so well, turns out to be just a hippie picking up his food stamps too, and he's not here to multiply your bread and he's not going to heal anyone today. 

He laughs at your little brother, whose face is still covered with delight and fascination; he looks down half mocking, half incredulous, and says to your mother “Funny kid, Jesus Christ, funny kid.”

Prick by prick, all your awe bleeds out.  You loose the footing you learned to walk with.  You stop believing that the world is really like some cradle rocked by the hand of God, that he really is in every motion.  And if he is, isn't he a bit careless?  Doesn't he neglect some details?  Doesn't all his motion make you a bit seasick?

Who is this Jesus, really?  What does he want us to believe?  We grope a bit, at such a loss for how to get our awe back, after we've seen so much. 

Even the disciples, who had followed Jesus constantly, didn't know how to take him.  He was, even to them, a continually unfolding mystery, an orientation point that kept redefining itself.  He compelled them to follow, his presence drew them onward, but he turned each of their assumptions on its head, and they watched in awe, and they listened afraid.  “They were on the road going up to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking on ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were fearful.” 

They watched him speak with a rich young ruler, and he told the man that he could be perfect if he would leave every part of his life, and join them on that road.  For the life Christ had in mind for anyone who asked was like his own, a continual outpouring, replenished by an unseen spring of faith.  He told the man who asked him to sell everything and then he would be perfect.  And then he turned to his disciples, who had left everything, who had nothing but him and told them how he was going to die.

But they didn't listen, they hardly noticed, they were too busy arguing about who would be closest to him, they were arguing about who should have places of honor in His kingdom.  Perhaps they were leaning back on themselves a bit, feeling gratified as they knew that they had done more for Christ than the man who went away sad and returned to his possessions. 

But Christ looked at them like they'd gone mad.  “You don't know what you are asking,” he said.  “You don't know what you need.” 

And we don't know what to ask him, we don't know what to pray.  We ask him if we may share his glory, and he tells us we don't know what glory means.  Even after all our time in the presence of Jesus we still have no idea what we have gotten ourselves into.

Here we are, all pushed to the edge, all stretched thin, all out of wisdom, all without awe.  Dare we call to Christ to stir us up, and remind us of our ignorance?  Dare we call on him, to remind us of himself, to remind us of his call, to shake us up and tear away our illusions? 

No matter how much we've done for him, it is not enough, cannot be enough, even if we follow him up that Jerusalem road.  And no matter what we ask, we don't know what to ask, we don't know what we're doing.

The path back to awe centers around the person of Christ, whose mysterious call draws us with cords of love, but whose voice of conviction never ceases.  At the center of this great mystery is the cross, without which we are lost. 

The world gets stranger when we get catch glimpses of the person of Christ, when he grows out of our picture books, and strides up the Jerusalem road, speaking words we can scarcely grasp.  For he is as close as the hand that moved the overhead, he is as real as the man in the waiting room.  He is present in every motion of the world and he is calling us to himself.  Do we dare follow?  Does anyone?

But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?"

Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." 

Mark 10:24-27

hannah clarkin

may 30, 2007 - depression 

Jesus has been my way out of old days,

Out of aimlessness,

out of my lonely and busy mind,

it’s funny how having too many options can idle your time,

I had been taking my blessings for my stress,

Sick for times my scrapbooks still witness,

Wondering how I became such a rotten mess

But Jesus has saved me from those days,

Just one at a time

Five minutes, three hours

He’s been my reason for believing my good is not gone

It was really never there

His work is the plant from my dirt,

And the hope in my wandering,

Because of him I know I may never know a thing,

And with nothing known, I still know I can draw my shades back in the morning say thank you…

Thank you for another chance to love the questions

 and the dancing around answers so huge they put my depression to shame.

I guess all I am trying to say is that Jesus has brought my skin to fit,

And my meaninglessness into meaning again.

 todd mackey

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