word to your mother.
i believe that God created music to be a direct connection to the soul of every human being. he has created us each so uniquely and given us each unique tastes. but words when sung somehow have a mystery and sanctity that you cannot find on a flat note out of the mouth. when word and song come together, i believe that something magical happens. we cry and sometimes it makes us smile. or we put the windows down and drive knowing that it will all work out. but music will always be a tool. a way for us humans to really connect with each other, to really express our feelings and let others express them with us.
i love music.
leaving ‘Christianity’
By Mark Scandrette
Standing outside on the street after our meeting, Daniel lights a hand-rolled cigarette. Taking me aside he confides, “I guess because I was raised in the church, it is difficult for me to find God there. I am now looking for God outside the windows of the church.”
Our quest to see God as light and to trust the goodness of God is complicated by the windows through which we view the world. Many of our problems with God are actually the problems we have with one another when we aren’t looking at God through the same window. If a person’s yearnings or doubts lead her to look at God and her world from another window, she is often given a subtle or not so subtle message that she is out of bounds. Sometimes it only takes looking out the same window from a slightly different angle to get this reaction.
Some friends who were looking through new windows once told me, “We have three years of funding to start a church, but we aren’t sure that we will even be Christians a year from now.” What made them make such a brash statement? They were waking up to the social ethics of Jesus, and a desire for more integrative bodily spiritual practices – two things that had not been emphasized in their family or religious background. Their instinctual reaction was to assume that because these explorations were incompatible with their inherited window of “orthodox belief,” they were losing faith. “Are you losing faith,” I asked, “or just learning to enlarge your perspective on God and to practice your faith more holistically?”
Sometimes our mental categories are the problem. We have a tendency toward an either/or rationale in regard to our beliefs about God and our world, often assuming that rather than being complimentary or paradoxical the different windows are in opposition to one another.
The Heaven
I lived as a monster, my only
hope is to die like a child.
In the otherwise vacant
and seemingly ceilingless
vastness of a snowlit Boston
church, a voice
said: I
can do that –
if you ask me, I will do it
for you.
franz wright
drink deeply
“To that soul which has tasted of Christ, the jaunty laugh, the tempting music of mingled voices, the haunting appeal of smiling eyes – all these lack flavor. And I would drink deeply of Him. Fill me, O Spirit of Christ, with all the fullness of God.”
some verses that are driving me now.
by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain.
1 Corinthians 5:10
the Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Matthew 13:44
how do you profit if you gain the “whole world” and lose your own life in the eternal Kingdom?
Mark 8:36-37
the unmarried woman is concerned and anxious about the matters of the Lord, how to be wholly separated and set apart in body and spirit; but the married woman has her cares centered in earthly affairs – how she may please her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:34
jim elliott:
“II Timothy 2:9 says, “The word of God is not bound.’ Systematic theology – be careful how you tie down the Word to fit your set and final creeds, systems, dogmas, and organized theistic philosophies! The Word of God is not bound! It’s free to say what it will to the individual and no one can outline it into dispensations which cannot be broken. Don’t get it down ‘cold,’ but let it live – fresh, warm, and vibrant – so that the world is not binding ponderous books about it, but rather is shackling you for having allowed it to have free course in your life. That’s the apostolic pattern… And those who are arguing about foreknowledge, election, and such: read those verses 14-26, and then look how the apostle is willing to leave it a paradox. ‘God gives repentance,’ and ‘they recover themselves.’ Yes, yes, I’m naïve, and glad to be so in such a case.”
“Father, make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”
-Hudson Taylor “Life” or “The Growth of a Soul”
Life in Part.
The Apostle Paul was a vagabond. He left the comforts of home and family to pilgrimage through uncertainty and assumed death. What he knew was God’s call, and he also knew that he really wasn’t that different from the people to whom he was going.
They were people like him, like his friends and family- people with cares, feelings, deep desires, fears, and frustrations. Paul also knew that God was speaking clearly for movement. But at Mars Hill he invited conversation about the person of Christ. He didn’t condemn. He didn’t spit out all of the answers on them. He listened. He encouraged.
I have been thinking about this alot in the context of a “church” community. What does it look like to be a true community of Christ followers. What does it really mean to put on his shoes, to walk a mile or two, to be disciplined enough to love the most difficult people to love? I’ve been discovering that we all have the community we need, but we must choose to embrace it. Neighbors, coworkers, friends, relatives, roommates- there are people all around us to whom we influence. I want to learn to really take care of my family like it talks about in First Timothy.
I desire the Father’s interpretation. I don’t want to think on my own, in my own earthenness. I want that for our team. Jesus welcomed people into his home. Am I doing the same? He even said that when you hold a banquet, you should invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind- and everyone will be better for it. It’s funny how my ideas about ministry continue to evolve and change.
Is it really effective to live outside of the struggle and go “into” it, do my “ministry” and then go back out of it, back into my safe community, back into my comfort, back into the mediocre pool of selfishness? I don’t know. I’m still wrestling with that.
Another thing is safety. In asking the question as a young single woman, I have no choice but to address the realities of ministry in the city. I was discussing this with Mark Scandrette, and he reminded me that Jesus always sent his disciples out in groups of two. We must do ministry as a team. Not only does that build camaraderie, but also creates a community of challenge and accountability. But I must always remember that true ministry of Christ is always dangerous. It was never supposed to be “safe.”
“Conversation is stillborn if it does not lead to action.” Talking about prayer is not the same as praying. Debating social issues is not the same as engaging affected peoples. Discussing justice and poverty is not eating with the forgotten and the hungry. If I want to live it I must live it. I don’t want to be a church community that reads and preaches but does not do. That would be death to me.
I really don’t know what our little community will look like. But I do believe that it is so important for us to be in prayer together, for us to worship together, for us to “act” together in service and to live in the dailies together. To share meals with our friends and neighbors, our brothers and sisters who we meet on the street. The mom nextdoor who just needs a break from taking care of her children. There was a communal nature to the primitive church, the church that is spoken of in Acts 2. What did Christ have in mind for the church? What was really in his heart for the church? Have we fallen terribly from that goal? Can we live it out in practical ways?
I believe that we should always define ourselves by what we’re for more than what we’re against. I want to imitate Christ’s example by doing tangible exercises to show His love. I guess it’s back to Winona Volunteer Services for me. Care to join?
