release: a short story

The old man’s breath came slowly, raspy. The stranger entered the room and closed the door quietly. Aware of very little the rich smell of sawdust and sweat didn’t seem to register.

The stranger sat down and held the old man’s hand.

Slender bones wrapped in thin transparent skin enveloped by a meaty grip covered in calouses and cuts. The only sound in the room was the incessant beep of the monitors. His breathing whistled through teeth yellowed from age and too much coffee. Breath, life, spirit passing in and out of the body laid out on the bed.

Life being passed between dry, cracked lips out of habit.

The stranger stood up and crossed to the window. The snow seemed to fall to the cadence of the old man’s breath. He filled up a basin with warm water and picked up a sponge. Slowly and deliberately he washed the old man’s tired, worn out body. He gently laid the old man’s head back on the pillow and went to empty the basin. A smile spread across the old man’s face. His chest rose and fell for the last time.

As the carpenter left the room, the old man went with him.

God’s chisel

There are things in our lives which we know are not really a part of God’s plan for us, but we hold onto them really tightly. The Bible tells us we are God’s masterpiece, and when we ask God to make us into an incredible original work we sometimes do not really want him to get rid of the things we need to lose.

Check out this skit from the skit guys (you may have to turn the sound up a bit).

Things are not easy when we ask to follow God, they may even get more difficult, but we know that God doesn’t make junk.

May you experience the freedom that comes from a God who works amazing things for, in, and through you.

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autumn in the rain

Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr

Dismal dreary days lead to a dismal dreary heart. A life that finds hope hard, strength weak, and rest difficult.

Autumn in the rain.

The trees shed their coverings and stand naked against the steel gray sky. Rain and wind lash at the windows and threaten to make hearts as cold as the bare feet on this hardwood floor.

Disillusionment occurs when real life doesn’t live up to our expectations. — Sarah Cunningham in Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation

Maybe this happens when people do not live up to our expectations. Disappointment just does not really fit the feeling. Sure that is there. There is a sadness and heartbreak, a feeling of being let down. More, though, is this feeling that they have let themselves down. A feeling that they are not being true to who they claim to be, to who God is calling them to be. A frustration that there is freedom available if they could only open their eyes.

Disillusionment has this sense of removing the rose coloured glasses through which we see the world. A freeing from false belief or appearance. To be disillusioned is to be able to see through the masks that others wear. A freedom to see things as they really are.

Recently, I was sitting in church and it hit me.

Is this really it? Are we being the church God had in mind? Is this what God had in mind when he stood with his disciples in the final moments of his life on earth and told them to go into all parts of the world and declare his authority over all creation? Is this what he envisioned when declaring that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church of Jesus Christ?

I think not. I think that we have allowed consumerism, pragmatism, and individualism to deeply implicate our vision of Church; we can no longer see clearly what God intended for us to experience as the people of God. — JR Kerr on the Q blog

Is it possible that our focus on the existing entity to which we belong, the physical congregation which gathers at a given place a given number of times every week, is hindering our vision of what we could be in Christ? Is it possible that God is calling us to sacrifice our own comfort in order to follow where he is leading? Is it possible that he is calling us to pick up a cross (an instrument of torture and death) to follow him?

Autumn in the rain.

There is hope even in this, because it is only through our own death that we receive his life.

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the end and the beginning

The last few days have been a bit strange. A member of my church is in the very last stage of life with only days, if not hours to live. He has been struggling with Parkinsons for 20 some odd years. As hard as the struggle has been, and as much as they wish him relief from it, it is still really hard to say goodbye.

All they can do now is wait.

At the same time there have been a couple of babies born. Two little girls to two different families. Little bundles of life and joy that express so much promise.

Old age, and new birth.

The end and the beginning.

At least in our eyes. It is so hard to understand eternity. How is it possible that we, who are time bound beings living in a place that has a defined sequence of events because of the forward motion of time can even begin to comprehend the existence of a place where there is no time.

No beginning.

No end.

Or rather, one single being that encompases the whole. The beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega.

God is from A to Z.

Rob Bell mentions an old Hebrew legend on one of his Nooma videos, I cannot remember the one off hand, about the name of God. The name which God gave to Moses out of the burning bush in Exodus 3. This four letter word which we are not really certain how to pronounce because the Israelites deemed it so holy they were unwilling to voice it out loud. Four letters (read right to left):

yod

heh

vav

heh

Some of the ancient Rabbis would say that the name of God is really just the sound of breathing.

You began your life when you could say the name of God, and you died when you could no longer say the name of God.

yod

heh

vav

heh

The name of God is the sound of breathing. Life encompased from beginning to end in a constant stream of voicing the name of God.

yod

heh

vav

heh

questions

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” — Nancy Willard

There are some who would like to say that we should never ask questions of God. There are some who would like to say that we should simply take everything the Bible says as it says it, that we should not question and wrestle with it. Asking questions, some say, is a sign of non-faith.

Rubbish.

If you do not doubt sometimes, then you are not thinking.

Someone said to me recently, “If only God would tell us all the answers.” To tell you the truth, I do not want God to give me all the answers because then I would not have the joy of wrestling with the questions; the joy of struggling as a community to come to terms with them.

Peter Rollins likes to tell an old parable about two Rabbis who have been arguing about a certain passage in the Torah. They’ve been arguing for twenty years and sometimes they change their minds, and sometimes they disagree, but they’ve never been able to find unity. Finally God gets so annoyed by listening to these guys constantly talking about this passage that he says to the angels, “I’m going to go down and tell them what this verse means.” So God comes down, parts the clouds, says to the Rabbis, “I’ve listened to you argue for twenty years. I’ll tell you what is means.” In a rare moment of unity the two Rabbis turn around to God and say, “What right have you got to tell us what it means. You go back to heaven and let us argue about it.”

This parable highlights the fact that it is not finding the ultimate “meaning” of a the passage that is important, but the constant struggle with it. There are things that God has quite clearly revealed to us in the scriptures, but even those things we only come to learn through wrestling with the scripture in community with others.

Sometimes it is more important to voice our questions than to get answers to them.