Aweikinin 27/11/2014

From John 15:1-5

H,

The more I look at it and live it out the more I am convinced that it has little to do with what we do but everything to do with  how we do it. We do not get points for striving to do all the overt things of a so called ‘ministry’. It is not like we need to be heavily involved in the minutiae of God’s unfolding will. We are not as important to this as we think we are. He would be God if no one believed. He would lose nothing if the whole earth scorned Him. He who is everything is sufficient in Himself to sustain the majesty of the universe without our arrogant need to think we must do the works or the whole thing will fall apart. Faith without works is dead but works outside faith are pointless.

There is something else going on here. A famous line comes to mind; the bit about stones praising God if people do not as mentioned by Christ and we are told again and again how nature itself reveals His glory. I think that all of this regeneration going on has nothing to do with doing something for God but rather becoming someone in God or ‘like’ God. I think it is about eternal character not vigorous actions or moral compunctions. The other bits play their part but this is all aimed at giving us the sort of character and making us into the sort of beings that last forever.

A life built on this character will outlast the world and the coming “fire next time” and all the storms and tempests that every individual life will have until we land safely on the endless shore of God as a true son or daughter of that wholesome will. We are being made into patient, kind, loving, humble, joyful, peaceful, faithful, self controlled and fruitful beings that are the true light of the world and salt of the earth. It seems to me that God has no interest in business empires or political agendas or vain glory campaigns that suggest we are in the public relations department of heaven. He is not out to prove a point on any matter or to show that every idea has some ‘Christian’ substitute. He is into the individual hearts that return to Eden and gain that non separation of the original plan of man with God and God with man. He is making us in His image all over again. These other things will occur as a consequence of this return to first love but let us not think that this is what matters. It is life-eternal and all that character. That is the true and eternal solution to all the problems of us, in and out, today and toward forever and in our hearts and in the world.

Aweikinin 26/11/2014

From John 15:1-3

H,

I get your point about the joy. It was never meant to last in that sense. Here we get glimpses of it before we roll back into the ‘normal’ blend of tension, hunger and expectations heightened by our connection to God. It has always been a bitter-sweet irony that we are made more aware of our hunger when we follow the narrow path of truth then when we float along the broad way of consolations unfulfilling. The human body and even the mind can fool itself with constant winning and pretty faces and a serene life but that old teller, the human spirit, must always hope endlessly for more.

I think that this ‘hunger’ does not end because we make a decision to go straight and narrow. It begins to expand as if it knows that there is now more and much more to fill it. The conversion experience is just the start. The process from hungry soul to fulfilled being is fore-shadowed in the early joy but then there is all this pruning going on, a de-evolution if you will, and this will take a lifetime of setbacks, corrections, close shaves and maybe some self declared exiles.

The constant thing about our walk and dance is that we stay connected. Hope, faith and love are all around us. We have access through prayer, illumination through the word and companionship through the spirit in our hearts and the community of the church as living force. It is not just a feeling though we get the feeling of it, for that keeps us hoping, from time to time. When that feeling is missing we look up in faith that nothing has changed and when our strength has failed us and we cannot look up anymore then we recall His love that does not cease and let ourselves fall back into this first principle.

Aweikinin 24/11/2014

From John 15:1

H,

I have to confess: there is a buzz about this morning. I am up and about and exercising and finding the secret joy in life. Yes, me. I know the human nature of things will forbid me this thrill lasting the whole day. Perhaps heads will explode and hearts’ rupture if joy is to go through every fiber of our present being. Perhaps, it will not.

This contentment has only come from being with God. I do not mean this in merely a state of prayer or reading the bible, though that is somewhere in there, but in really looking up at the things that matter and down at the many things that do not. I cannot say that the problems I have, that you well know, have moved from that state of mountain-hood they were in yesterday. I have moved. I have been moved. I do not even know how or when it happened. The Buk says music gives him the sense that everything will be okay in the end. That is the sense I have today.

I wish I could bring out some prescription from this. I wish I could lay out a lesson. If there is one then it is merely to stay connected to the vine. I do not know what that means. It is something I am exploring. I am not a good candidate for these things but, hey, no one is. We are all equally in need of the divine touch of love. We are all equally able to receive it. We must all be called to connect with it in some way. Of course? On a day like today, it sure seems like it.

Aweikinin 21/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-24

H,

It has to be clear from all that has occurred that God is not what we wish Him to be or what we want to frequently use Him for. In the best pursuit of the much hallowed God-life there is always the bitter pill of almost constant disappointment. He is often fashionably late or in the wrong place. There are enough opiates to make it seem like we mean “God is good all the time”, but that is just what we say because we have been taught to be afraid of His pettiness and how that might mean He would not be “good” the next time. In reality (hehehe…the eponymous “let’s be real here”) there are many times when our prayers and hopes and dreams and crucial moments go unattended.

I know it may seem like I am indicting God. I am really laying the blame squarely on us. I think we are the ones in the wrong place at the right time and, this, most of the time. This kind of thinking has no novelty and it is frankly the cause of much misery in pursuit of God and then the making up of doctrine to guess where God will be and what God might do. It is not that we are wrong so we must find the right way. In the words of that poet, Bono, we must really “stop helping God across the street like a little old lady”. The bible tells us that we do not get answers because we ask the wrong questions. It does not then leave it to our over hyped imaginations. It tells us the questions. We are told how to pray.

We are lost in the most cosmic sense possible. It is not a self help religion. We are not trying to find ourselves. We are simply declaring ourselves willing to be found. We are in an act of surrender. It is the start and the end of the Christian adventure. It is “our father\in heaven\hallowed is your name/your kingdom come/your will be done…”

So, dear friend, what to do but realise the daily call to kneel and ask and be found in love? Nothing. This is not as bad as we think it will be. Being still in God is one of the most active things in ‘real’ life. Those who are still in God get the most done. They are imbued with that eternal weight and glory of knowing where they belong. The humdrum of the rat race is in slow motion to them. There is the speed of light and sound in almost every Godly step. If we let God in there is every promise of something bigger than all our ideas, hopes, aspirations, ambitions, competitions and need for affirmation. He puts the Zoe in life. An open heart in lieu of a restless body will lead us to the things we want the most but do not yet know.

Aweikinin: a song.

About union.

Talking like we used to do
It was always me and you
Shaping up and shipping out
Check me in and check me out

Do you like walking in the rain?
When you think of love, do you think of pain?
You can tell me what you see
I will choose what I believe

Hold on, darling
This body is yours,
This body is yours and mine
Well hold on, my darling
This mess was yours,
Now your mess is mine

Your mess is mine

See you in the marketplace
Walking 'round at 8am
Got 2 hours before my flight
Luck be on my side tonight

You're the reason that I feel so strong
The reason that I'm hanging on
You know you gave me all the time
Oh, did I give enough of mine?

Hold on, darling
This body is yours,
This body is yours and mine
Well hold on, my darling
This mess was yours,
Now your mess is mine

Bring me to your house
Tell me sorry for the mess
Hey, I don't mind
You're talking in your sleep
Out of time
Well, you still make sense to me
Your mess is mine

Your mess is mine
This body's yours and this body's mine
Your mess is mine

 

Music and lyric by James Keogh

Aweikinin: a poem.

About loving.

It ought to be fun
This river of ours
It has a smiley face and a steel built door
An open window and a curious soul
To learn, only to learn

Why so serious?
About the sound and the fury
This is just the fuzzy overbite
The tragic joke of pre formed eternal life
Nothing to scoff at
Nothing to die for either

Unless, of course, it is
For one
An
Other

We keep trying to clean up this mess
We should just lie down in the dirt
The cleaning band is on its way
We keep trying to make (up) love
Let’s just look up
They make it better, up above
Trying to make our steps a dance
We forget the beautiful, divine romance

Trying too hard is not a sin
If we stop right now

So:

Why so serious?
About the sound and the fury
This is just the fuzzy overbite
The tragic joke of pre formed eternal life
Nothing to scoff at
Nothing to die for either

Unless, of course, it is
For one
An
Other

We keep trying to clean up this mess
We should just lie down in the dirt
The cleaning band is on its way
We keep trying to make (up) love
Let’s just look up
They make it better, up above
Trying to make our steps a dance
We forget the beautiful, divine romance

Aweikinin 18/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-22

H,

I know I can be unreasonable in my anger. Of course it is nothing like that perfect scene where Jesu Christi went a little old testament on the peddlers at the market. I have always struggled with that idea of being angry but not sinning. How is exactly is that achieved? Sin over sinner? Present issue over marred history? Demonstrative grace over mad flailing at the object of true derision? Who knows?

The truth may be closer. It may a little more voodoo than mind over matter. We cannot hate people of course because whatever they descend to do it is never out of anything other than selfishness. It is not so much that they hate you. They just love themselves. In other words it is conceit to think that these moves against you are anti-you more than  pro-them. Their pleasure and your pain just happen to coincide at that particular tragic moment. Does this help? In a sense it seems less to believe this. We would rather be an integral enemy that just a whim of someone’s caprice. That, of course, is just conceit. It helps in remembering that your pleasure has been someone’s pain before. The little time you spent thinking about that other pain is the start of realizing you are not the hero of every story and may well be the villain in some.

This obsession with our own side of the story is anathema to growth. We must see these things as wrong and decide that sin and sin nature is the problem. In us and in others it is alive and well and is trying to kill us. It must not catch us by surprise. We are human and our capacity for evil is great but there is a spark lit in good that we reconnect with in God and all semblances of good. The eternal triumph of good over evil has begun with our decision in God. There can be no sympathy for the devil because now we have read all the books and the world based on his low ideals is tethering to the brink of extinction with only the veneer of civilization and the illusion of a better place for some, if they are smarter, faster, harder, and the rest can go off a cliff. We have seen the best rebellion has to offer.

We want more. We want an end to evil within and without. We want a new earth. We want God.

Aweikinin 17/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-20

H,

There is a point where we rebel against the wickedness in the world and in ourselves.  The latter reaction carries the danger of self loathing and the former the danger of self righteousness. Neither posture is the definitive picture God is sending to us. There is a colossal nature to the mind of God we can never fathom. We rail and rant for His justice but can we grasp the concept of not just making things right for now but for all time? It is hard to frame all the problems of evil in the world this way but it is a start.

You know how I get about people that hurt children. It haunts me to think of the evil man has done to even the most helpless of him-self. I cannot comprehend the darkness of soul that takes a person to this particular point of no return. Jesus famously noted, with the subtlest of high standards, the damnation that exists for those that hinder the joy and promise of children with evil acts. We live on a continent where war and famine and disease and the evils of man over man continue to wreck the most unspeakable havoc. It has been the same throughout history. It is not that this is a dark grace or that the so called black man is not capable of living in the light. This is the weight of the human soul caught off from source. It is crushing.

I have not yet noted my own personal demons. The quake and shake of my very insidious thoughts and though none of these thoughts have killed one or one million we cannot know the extent that the single soul can go if it does not look up to the light of goodness even if it is the inferior illumination of humanism and human rights or the superior enlightenment of first spiritual principles.

Still, all this is above me. I cannot see it. I cannot catch the head of the comet. I do not know why evil persists and those that chose it can rule over those that do not. Free will does not remove from my mind the deep need for intervention in the moments where innocence is ravaged. I only have faith as a sword here. A belief that God is good and has a plan and that no matter what is done to the body and no matter how the mind is abused there is a large part of the spirit that will always belong to Him and that the rest is restored when that spirit finally comes alive.

I only have faith as a sword.

Aweikinin 14/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-16

H,

It is hard to describe what it feels like to believe in God. It is not understood by one look at one part of the human psyche. It is not empty superstition. As you well know I take a liberal view to most things and so the ‘moral’ side of the thing would never appeal to me. I struggle with the very idea that God is so intimately concerned with our sex lives that we need books, concerts, sermons, wicked looks of judgement, seminars and self help (wrong words?) gurus to keep ourselves in line. I do not think any man has the right to tell another man how to live so the idea of the all-knowing pastor is a constant headache. I am not typically disposed to the look and smell and feel of what a church going Christian ought to be and when I look like I am then I am frankly faking it.

I do not come to God as conclusion because of these things but in spite of them. I know I bore you with the details of my constant conversion but this is my letter, I will do so again.

 It was an idea to me at first. A feeling that there was something larger seeking my attention and I heard that voice clearly. I say “He” but I do not think this being is male or female. We suffer a lack of pronouns here so I stick with the male since we, the church, are female and there is a divine marriage of beings afoot. I felt this being in my everyday life and though the moral compunctions of His presence were clear that was just a small part of the whole machine. I felt He wanted my attention and my life. I did not give either easily. I fought because I did not want the constant burden of looking up. The turning point was when those spots in me occurred that I could not explain. Gaps and holes and mysteries and propensities toward dreaming and being to the point that I could no longer deny that parts of me where undiscovered. He soon linked both things for me:  the idea that I had more to me that even met my own eye and the truth that He was that more. I was missing something and it was not a woman to love (though that has its high points) but a part of a person only known in the dark of God.

So, it has been that ever since. Even though I seek human community and stumble to conform, it falls back to that first moment of clarity: I am known completely by some other. Known and loved and expected and welcomed and imbued with a divine purpose and a unique spark of life. In Greek mythology Zeus has a penchant for mixing the divine and the human to birth heroes like Hercules and Jason and Perseus. In Christian reality, that is every single human being, the thunder of God hidden within every soul, and the goal of all talk about relating to God is to bring out the manifestation of these lofty, but mostly asleep, beings.  

Aweikinin 13/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-12

H,

It is the ultimate problem with grace and love. We are taught to earn things. We are told the system is value based. If we grant that there is a grund norm of all life then we begin to think in terms of how that vastness relates to us. If we take that a step further and give it an individual shape and form, say Christianity, then we read in the book of books that this is what He is like and these are the things we must do. From that point on we are on a steady road of guilt and redemption that must be a nightmare for any psychotherapist.

Of course, it is not as hard as all that. It should not be. It is a controversial argument to make in whatever form but our job, as He told us on that great visit, is to stay in Him. The things we hope to do for God and the person we want to be in God is merely a fruit of our relationship with Him. We come at it the wrong way because we think of Him in figures of speech. Metaphor, simile, analogy and all that humdrum I never mastered are good for descriptive purposes but they are no substitute for the experience of life. They all break down at some point because one person cannot fully describe to another what it is like to be in God. All our attempts to do that only lead to terrible sermons. We must live in it to know it.

Another worthy note, in this vein, is how the cup really does not fill you up. You do not become less hungry by giving up to God. You become more. You become more aware of your hunger. It is little wonder a rejection of “when we first believed” can manifest itself in a ruthless hedonism immediately after. The soul grows a bigger appetite to increase our capacity to be filled. Of course, it does not feel that way. It feels like we have gotten worse or more sinful. The truth is that we are just alive again and with the large appetite of the recently awakened.

The crucial thing to know is that God is in there with you. He is in all your efforts to get lost in things and out on the other end when you want to be found again.  This is an eternal enterprise for your soul. It will take time only He has. When you fall in a ditch, as I frequently do, He is the other voice telling you all this is not fatal. The only fatal thing is to give in to the idea that the dark is your home. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are like that prodigal son who recovers while eating on his knees with ….well; you know who he was eating with: porkies. Our moment of Zen, epiphany, conversion or re-conversion, after-guilt or wise moment just occurs every day. We must be rest assured we cannot get away from the father who waits with open arms for that daily return to love.

Aweikinin 12/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-6

H,

I do sometimes get an inkling of a feeling. A sense that I am surrounded by something good but this sense does not last long. Who can feel good for long in the bad air of the lower earth? This is the place where all the misery of and in the world can be lobotomized out of any being by the simple touch of luxury and the illusion of personal safety. We are all in the race not to change the nature of the biological contest, as least according to the kernel of Darwinism, but to thrive in it. We assign winners and losers based on opportunities taken and the sharpness of our own resolve. It is supposed to be the best of the world rising and, if you add a humanist or liberal or condescending tinge to it, those top hats helping the worst of the world. Not that those on floor also  can rise, that would be beyond communism, but that they can eat bread and water and live with low aspirations and “stay in their place.” The benevolent ruler as opposed to the malevolent despot but the problem remains that neither answers the innate question about the equality of man.

God save us from this low wall of being. God saves us from this low wall of being. He makes the measuring line intergalactic and announces that we all fall short of the highest ideals. He comes into our story and shows us what is good and perfect and that it is attainable. He locates our love for Him in how we treat people who can do nothing for us, it seems, and puts the saving of our soul in terms of utter sacrifice. It is a wise thing, this gimmick of grace. He is teaching us, slowly, what really matters and who really matters. He is protecting us from our worse selves by showing us the slant of love and teaching us to match it.

There is no stronger solution for the human soul than the map of truth that shows us where we have been, where we are right now and where we are going. The first two are beyond our constant delusion of control but the last is well within our purview of choice. We can decide today to start being better than we have ever been. We can start today to talk to God, again.

Aweikinin 11/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-4

H,

It is real comfort to know that I am not as spontaneous to God as I want to appear in real life. You know how I would always quote that epigram from Norman Mailer’s “Deer Park”:  “do not understand me too quickly.”  Right or wrong, I hate to be explained to myself. I do not know why. It is all that crushed hope of being read as bad when, even in my own sinful way, I was attempting to be good.

I do not mind this though. I do not mind when God calls out my intentions. It is good to know He is well aware how sick His child is.

Right next to our need to be in mysterious shells of self is the counter-intuitive need to be understood by at least one person. Is that not another sullen irony? We do not like to be explained around and told who we are but all of the pursuit of romantic love seems to be the need to find some stranger, at first, who understands us and to whom we can be ourselves.

It never fully unfolds as the fairy tale in our heads. All the fights in the world between lovers will track back as a betrayal of that first gust of mutual understanding. If we stay real long enough, we will discover that it is a myth for one human heart to know by instinct another human heart in any full sense. We can endure, ignore or pretend but there is no lie that can cover the fact that sometimes that person you love is thinking and acting like a total idiot. The rationalization and/or resolution of this primal bout of idiocy will break love or make love stay.

So, I am glad to be known by God. It frees the people I love from my inhumane need to castigate or condemn them when they do not buy into the hype that is my ego. I am free to come to God knowing He already knows my inner %$#@^&*. He tells me it is what He came to fix. It is comforting that He never goes: “Forri, you are absolutely right and so and so, well they are all wrong and I shall punish them.”  It is good for soul and spirit that He addresses every infraction with others and within me as a failure to love. He knows me enough to know my grouses are not as original as I think. In a wide sense He has lived in my skin. He has conquered all my issues with anger and self worth and the lusty need to get lost in wrong and now offers to me a better way. Every day, the divine hand stretches out to my light lacking soul with an indispensable offer to grow, to change and to be more like the Forri He has always had in mind. He has gone back to the basics. He wants to make me, and I think you too, perhaps, hehehe, into His full image and stature.

Aweikinin 10/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-3

             

H,

The crucial bit of intimacy with God will always be our ability to think we can hide from Him. We have inflated our idea of who deity is, in a false air balloon, to such a level that He becomes unattainable and flat to relate to. There is emptiness in worship that can only be filled with a new awareness and the great approach. Instead, we use loud microphones and songs that are not really songs but entreaties to a rubber god who likes his ego, well, rubbed. We are trying to trick God essentially because we see Him as a cosmic robot who has a track record of being led around by the nose by people ‘wise’ enough to ‘know’ the things that ‘please’ this idol we have put in the place of who we claim to serve. All the dynamism and prescient intelligence that must go into creation is left behind and we reduce God to a bargainer for tithes and offerings and ‘service’ to a particular doctrine or denomination. We forget He once said: “if I was hungry, I would not tell you.”

We say that actions come from intentions and highlight that God cares more for the intention because we are flawed and can make a mess of our best laid plans but we must also know that acts matter. What we do does matter. The heart must get right so that right acts can follow. It is not that God demands acts over intention or vice versa but that He demands both. He wants the heart to match the body. He wants worship to start within our hearts but move to every fiber of our being and our doing.

If we stay in Him we are told this will begin to happen. It is instructive what you said yesterday about guilt of not praying enough for our country. Guilt, however, does not come from God. The desire and ‘sorrow’ to repent does come from His conviction but guilt is often paralytic and, in our case, leads to bottles and acts that go nowhere. It is better to get up than to stay on the ground mourning the road already gone. Well, the road is never really gone. It is a narrow way of endless grace till we are transformed. I am not saying we will not feel bad or that we should pretend to be up when we feel down. I am saying we should always put in mind and heart that there is something beyond the grievous mistake and the so-called fatal flaw. He knows, He sees, He forgives and He calls us always to better things that lie ahead.

Aweikinin 7/11/2014

From Psalm 139:1-2

H,

It seems that self awareness is peddled about a lot in religious and non-religious circles but it is a crucial thing. There are many things we do that we cannot explain. At first these acts seem alien to us and then they form into habit and we expect them but we may never really know why we do them at all. The ‘talking cure’ as pioneered by Freud and his colleagues hints at the possibility of exploring the subconscious and what dreams may lie there that form in thoughts which more often than not become acts.

All of that is well and good and perhaps even revealing but nothing can prepare the soul for the ‘hard’ questions that intimacy with God promises. There is no dark place that the light that never goes out is not interested in ending. It is a love above all because it is concerned not just with the idea that there is intrinsic value in every human soul but that such value has eternal relevance and can rise to the great heights of holiness. This is not a nagging or pushy love that tells you almost with a snicker and that hypocritical sneer: “I just want you to be better, baby”. This is the all front account of grace and the leading up and up in love without any need to pull you down, the crucial Freudian slip, in order to, allegedly, bring you up. In this sense, no human can bring you up to anything. They can merely hinder and they can only help. Funny enough when they try to ‘help’ they often hinder and when they try to be honest and kind and loving they can only help.

The ultimate aim of God is the reformation of the soul to its primordial efficacy. He is curing death one soul at a time. It is not so we will live forever and become bored and brooding vampires but that we are able to become part of, and truly enjoy, the eternal delight. Love like this has to know your mind. Love like this cannot guess at your acts and words of defiance. A love like this can only start from above.

Aweikinin 6/11/2014

From Psalms 139:1

              

H,

You know that quote I like, the one that says every fight between two lovers is some version of the statement: “you do not understand me!”  It is the seminal attraction one human being has for another: I am understood by this other person. It is the basis of most human love. Friends share common ideals and the best of lovers can talk without fear of being misinterpreted or shut down. It is the ideal that pushes us from relationship to relationship, seeking that sun of understanding and that pillar on which to rest a head weary from explaining himself or herself.

It is rarely like that, though. We cannot read intentions and we learn not to trust words. We are often only able to judge character by action. We are judged by this same standard too. It is a bitter experience to be read out your intentions by others and you know, all the while they are talking, that it is nothing like what was in your heart at the crucial moment. It is painful not to be known.

Thinking of all of these things reminded me of the moment of surrender I had to God. Of course, in reality, this surrender is a series of moments and not just one. The crucial one, on this road, has been the realization that I am understood by God. I cannot tell you how that freed me from the burden of living my life by the preferences of others. It taught me not to labour to explain myself and not to fret over the stinging rebuke that comes when others read me wrong. It helped to eschew the bitter pill of anger and revenge. I realized myself how much I look at others and judge them when I do not know a thing about who they really are.

This was the rock of my loving God: He knows me. It declared itself in my heart as a unconditional truth. And more than knowing when I intended to do good he knew the bad I was trying so desperately to hide. He knew the thoughts I had I could not share and the struggles I covered up in fake smiles and half laughs. It was like the dream of every hungry lover come true. He looked at me, He knew, He accepted, He was guiding me toward change but the quality of His love was not diminished by the infancy of my eternal heart. I knew I was on to something in that holy moment of waking up to truth. It is a joyful thing to be known.

Aweikinin 5/11/2014

From Romans 12:1-21

H,

There is that old bile that rises in my throat and then may show itself in spiteful looks or acts. The human soul is not carved to the shape of indignity. It is not made to be put down. It is not wired to receive deception with joy or hurt with magnanimity. This does not mean that it is innocent of these things done to others. If it was then there would be no wounds and there would be no bile.

I have to admit that my slights have been slight. There are people really wronged walking about the earth. There are disasters and tragedies that are evidenced in broken hearts and stilted souls. What can man do to me? The psalmist cries. A lot, I should think. I know that is not his point. His point is something like Christ said about “fear not who can destroy the body but who can destroy the soul”. A wounded fractured soul is still in pain and so it is still alive. The eternal value of it is unaffected by temporal events if it thrives in God. The psalmist did not merely boast that man can do nothing to him or her. He boasted based on a belief in God. He looked up and looked down and decided what was eternal and what was not. He wisely decided that man was no match, even under the influence of the great foe, for the glory of God.

Perhaps this is something lost in the modern church. Everything is an insult to us. We are angry if someone does not immediately bow to our greatness. We are upset if we are not at the epicenter of things. Everything wounds us and so our witness is small. We do not carry the marks of Christ lightly. We are not like them that went joyfully to their deaths for the love of God and (that other) country. We are not recognized by some, in hulking language, “puny human!” and our joy is made incomplete. With bile in my mouth, I say we all need to grow up.

When we give ourselves to God we see that things are different. The world may not change but we surely must. We cannot force this change any more than we can force the weather but it will come upon us and we will respond to it. The change in altitude will change everything else. We are at a height where everything else is small and the glory of God is sure. We are too quick, in the now,  to want to get ahead in life as the world sees it and make a mark on a fading earth. If you believe, then you know that no one will remember your bank account in eternity or that you changed Nigeria or made sliced bread better. These last two are worthy causes and done with the right heart are forms of worship, much like anything done in God. Yet, when made the focus of any life are limited instances where man is being man and will rise no further. The soul is the thing. The soul you nurture in God and encourage in others is where God rates the thing. We give our all to Him and in doing so we do much more than our secular hearts could ever do and for others too. We are that ‘living’ sacrifice made for ‘greater works’ because the time has come and the harvest is full but the hands are few. When I think of this I have no time for bile or anger. I barely remember what he said and what she said. My own amateur attempts at sin fall down and plead help because something greater has taken the place of that great need. It is a sacrifice worth making because the first one who did it now sits at the right hand of God. Where the earth, though it may not seem so, is planted and being planted under His feet. He will come to collect. ‘Soon’, we are told. He is first preparing a place for you and I to sit as former lambs in those heavenly places. 

Aweikinin 4/11/2014

From Romans 12:1-16

H,

It is complicated. Once you begin to think you are doing ‘humble’ things a huge pride-bird lands on your shoulder. You are not actually doing it because you are humble but to have the look of humility. It is like when you help someone but cannot wait to tell someone else the good thing you have done. We are constantly looking for validation in places that do not matter. It is not enough to be good but to be seen with goodness as a bell round about our necks. It is not enough to be looked at by God; we need to have the flaky eyes and hearts of petty, vacillating and unrighteous human beings like us.

The apostle Paul was brilliant in stating that he now ‘glories’ in mistakes, weaknesses, soul defeats and setbacks. He understood where the glory lies on the human soul is not the fake good look but the ugly true look. The grace of God applies itself more readily to those who let their issues show. It is no wonder it is so hidden in the Church buildings we spend Sunday mornings at. We are all wearing too much make up.

We have to let our wounds show. This is the realest thing there is. You can help no one if you do not first dive deeply into the currents of God’s love and grace. That is where you get the humility you need to serve others with a full heart. One glance into the divine purity and you are not comparing yourselves with your fellow fickler. You see this is a mighty heart you are being made into and it is hard and you will fall and so will others and you learn compassion and unity and the need to hold each other up.

This is the mighty trick God has played. To those who like the idea of being individuals and having their own say, He ties the personal decision to love Him to the reality of being like Him and living for others. To those who are into groupthink and ‘we are the world’ movements He ties the loving of others with the grace that only comes with a personal relationship with Him. Both can do none of that in perfection without grace and both will get the other gift they do not have: individual spirits and a family of lights.

Aweikinin 3/11/2014

From Romans 12:1-14

H,

It is hard to ignore the everyday tragedy that is unfolding over there. When disaster stays a while it can seem to become a part of life itself and normalcy may remain if you view it from a distance. Yet, to those living in this tragedy, and you serve some of them; it is not something that can be looked at with a detached heart. It is a daily look into the abyss and the stinging remainder that all life is fragile in this form of skin and bones.

It is easy to go dark and seek a violent solution. War against war is the easy fix for everything and though it may be, and I say this grinding my teeth, palliative in the short term it has no panacea for a lifetime of peace. The ultimate cure has to be the remedying of a man’s soul. I am making no excuse for evil nor am I saying it should not be confronted. I am saying that there may be souls lost in the dark-world of these terrible crimes but it does not remove from us the objective of love to our enemies and blessings for our persecutors. It is something Christ did himself. He would not invite us to do the same otherwise.

We pray that does innocents return and we pray that does who are responsible are caught in the web of their own great travesty against right. Can we not also pray that though the bodies are destroyed the soul can live? That truth spreads in the land and reform comes from conflict? Am I going too far?

Let me go back. I have used the worst example but the better one is more personal. We have been down this particular road before. We know what it is to pray blessings on those who deserve only curses. How about that face you cannot stand or that voice that makes you gag? How about those that misunderstand you and talk you down and spread lies? How about the ones that break you heart and wound your soul? Christian character is the hardest thing on earth. This is where it shows its best hand: resisting evil but not condemning the evil avatar. Praying for the lost and seeking that all bad is turned to good. In the hustle bustle of this present life these might seem like mundane issues next to power bills and flashy decoders. In the reality of eternity these are the things that do not change. This is the man vividly described in psalm 15. This is Christ. This is who we are to be.