Day 15 - Loving All Kinds

 

"Some read the Beatitudes as Jesus’ version of what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit,” where Paul speaks of love and joy and peace and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). This is not what the Beatitudes are. Instead, they are a listing of the sorts of people who have found their way into the kingdom vision of Jesus, the sorts of people who love Jesus. All kinds of people love God. We can embrace this diversity."

Today's thoughts were interesting for me.  First of all, when I read the title for the day, I thought that he would be talking about loving all kinds of people who need Jesus.  But that wasn't really his focus today -- instead, he was talking about loving all the kinds of people who love God.  And then he went on to talk about loving those who love others.  In other words, one of the ways that we live out the Jesus Creed in our lives is to partner with and appreciate all kinds of people who love God and love others.  This was interesting to me because I have, at times in my life, kind-of had this thought that the particular group of God-loving, Christian people that I was a part of were the only ones really out there doing the work of God.  In a sense, it was up to us, and only us, to save the whole world.  When I write it down and look at it that way now, it seems arrogant to me - or perhaps, ignorant.  Those are strong words, but I don't know any other way to say it. 

Today, when I look around, and as I have opened up and experienced the work of other God-loving, Christian people outside of my once rather small circle, I find all of these kinds of people mentioned in the beattitudes...  many kinds of churches reaching all kinds of people with different ministries both in my community and all over the world, those reaching out to and loving and serving the homeless, those who are living and working alongside the addicted who are trying to overcome their struggles, those on college campuses creatively and passionately reaching students, those giving up vacation time and leaving their families to go into places that have been through natural disasters and do whatever they can to help and serve and love...   and on and on. 

So I find myself today, as McKnight said, 'embracing the diversity' of all the different kinds of people who are out there loving God and loving others and continuing to wonder about and look for the ways that I may join in along with them.  It has certainly opened up many new ways to love others as Jesus did.  :)

[ I do have one thing I'd like to say about McKnight's statement above that hit me the wrong way...  He makes a strong statement about the idea that the beattitudes are not just Jesus' version of the 'fruits of the spirit' saying that idea is just not what the beattitudes are.  I find myself these days getting a bit suspicious of such strong denouncements of other's ideas.  I went back and read through the beattitudes with the 'fruit of the spirit' idea in mind and I can see how someone could interpret them that way.  In my mind, it's not such a bad way to look at them - I think it just gives you another way to gain insight into them.  So that's just my take on that - and it probably just reveals my new 'bias' that we have to be cautious about thinking that there is only one way to look at a passage of scripture... ]

 

Day 14 - Love the Needy

So I am going to show a little love to myself today by NOT trying to play catch up on the days that I have missed and simply let myself start where I am.  I'm really not OCD about too many things, but this is hard for me -- I don't like skipping things.  But I really need to keep moving forward, so I'm going to give it a try.  :)

Today McKnight talks about loving our neighbor, specifically those who are in need.  The problem is, we often don't realize or recognize those who are in need because we are not  listening to them or looking for them in the way that Jesus did.  He made reference to the story of Jairus' daughter and brought out something that I had not seen before.  He says, "Jesus hears with the ears of mercy and readiness to help. When someone told the synagogue ruler Jairus that his daughter was dead, Jesus overheard the statement and said, “Do not fear. Only believe, and she will be saved” (Luke 8:50).  There is a lot of chaos in this moment and still, Jesus hears the news that is being delivered to Jairus and is able to respond to it with healing words of comfort and hope.  I know that when life is hectic for me and there seems to be many needs all around me, it is very difficult for me to continually respond in a compassionate way to the needs around me... and here, Jesus does it even before he is asked to help...  that challenges me!

But the part of this that I liked the most talked about "Linking With the Hands of Jesus." When asking the question "Where do I begin?" in meeting the needs of others, McKnight says this:

Link with the hands of Jesus. Jesus has the hands of healing, renewal, life, and restoration. When Jesus saw the unclean leper, he touched him with the hand of healing (Matthew 8:3). When his disciples were dizzied by an encounter with God and shaken with fear, Jesus touched them with the hand of renewal (17:7). When he saw the young man lying dead on a funeral bier and saw the man’s mother in grief, Jesus touched the bier with the hand of life (Luke 7:14). When one of the disciples reacted to Jesus’ arrest by chopping off the ear of a man, Jesus touched the man with hand of restoration (22:51). Jesus touched those in need with hands of grace. How might we touch others with the hands of Jesus?

Healing, renewal, life, restoration - Jesus has generously touched my life in all of these ways - now, how will I touch the lives of others?

Day 9 - God on Call

So I'm out to town again with Anna at a gymnastics meet so I'm experimenting with posting from my iPad... The good news for all of you reading is that I won't be as wordy as I usually am!  ha :).    This is also my excuse for not posting yesterday...  busy, busy day.

So just a quick couple of thoughts from yesterday's reading.  I loved his opening verse :

"Go home to your friends and tell them how much The Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you."  Mark 15:9

He goes on to say that, "'Mercy' is one of those words in the bible that tells a story.  Just as the doctor only comes to our home when we are in need, the only time "mercy" shows up is when someone is in need."

In other words, when there is a need for mercy, there is usually a story behind it that calls for care, love and compassion.  That is what Jesus offered to those he encountered.  It is what he offers to us.

I liked this too:  "God's mercy lurks in the shadows of your life."  He goes on from here to talk about the hidden and broken things of our lives and I really like the idea that God's mercy lives in the midst of the hardest things in our lives... It is there for us even when we aren't aware of it.   This is where McKnight makes the point that God is always "on call" for us. We just need to reach out in confidence that his mercy is always there.  :)

Day 8 - Looking for God

Perhaps I have noticed this before and forgotten, but I was surprised by it this morning. 

McKnight starts today's thoughts with the story of Abraham waiting at the entrance to his tent and 3 visitors showing up.  (Gen 18)  As the story goes on, those 3 visitors turn out to be the LORD.  From this, McKnight makes his first point - look for God in others.  As McKnight says here, "What they thought were human visitors to whom they showed hospitality was the presence of God. Sometimes we see the face of God in others, and they are not always angels." 

That was a good point, but what I thought was neat was that 'the LORD' appeared first in the form of 3 persons...  the trinity perhaps?  Just thought that was kind-of cool and hadn't remembered noticing that before.   

McKnight also calls us to look for God in disguise (the man on the road to Emmaus who was later revealed to be Jesus) and then finally to look for God at the table (in communion).  This last one was a refreshing way for me to consider thinking about times where I take part in communion with other believers.  I can too often go through the ritual without 'seeing Jesus' as I should during that time.  I like this:

The God of the Bible shows up in ordinary ways, daily, in ordinary things for ordinary people. If you want to be shown the face of God, come to the table, and you will see the God who gives himself for you and who invites you to feast on himself. There, in that small meal, you will find forgiveness, grace, mercy, power, and—most of all—fellowship with God and with one another. At the table we experience the love of God that put the Jesus Creed into motion.

He finishes with this verse:

“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened,

and they recognized him.”

—Luke 24:30–31

Again, a verse I've seen a million times but had not noticed these last few words, "and they recognized him."  How often in any given day, at any given time, is Jesus right beside me and I just look past him - not opening my eyes - not taking time to notice - not seeing - that he is right there.  All I need to do is open my heart to recognize him. 

Day 7 - Midnight Mary's Love

"Midnight Mary" was a woman whose son never came home from WWII.  The story is told of her walking to the train station every single day, for years and years, hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, this would be the day that he would get off the train.

That kind of persistant love, McKnight says, is the kind of persitant, watchful, longing love that God has for us.   He goes on to recount the story of the prodigal son and shows, again, how the father waits patiently and faithfully for his wayward son to come home.  He says this:

You might give up on yourself, but God doesn’t and won’t. His love is persistent, and it this kind of love that creates the Jesus Creed...
Our Father, no matter what we have done, loves us enough to wait longingly for us.

McKnight also mentions Adam in the garden and this quote struck a nerve with me:

...when God asked a hiding-behind-the-trees Adam: “Where are you?” The implication is clear: God wasn’t going anywhere; God was waiting persistently for Adam simply to come out from behind the tree. And only by coming out to meet the face of love would Adam find healing.

Wow... that is so true.  Any time in my life that I have found myself hiding - purposely or even sometimes not realizing it - the only relief and healing that comes in those situations is when I come out of the shadows and allow myself to look, once again, into the face of God.  And it really is a face of love - because the fear of the face of judgment is what ususally keeps me in hiding.  Only when I remember that it is love that I will encounter, do I find the courage to come out of hiding.

Day 6 - Eikons of Love

We love, so the first three chapters of Genesis inform us, in four directions. We love God, we love ourselves, we love others, and we love the good world God has given to us. So, when Adam and Eve chose to go against God’s good plan, they “cracked” that eikon. To be a cracked eikon means that our love is distorted in all four directions: we don’t love God as we can, we don’t love ourselves as we should, we don’t love others as we ought, and we don’t love the good world God gave us as we are designed. The gospel is designed to restore us in all four directions—in our love for God, for ourselves, for others, and the world.




 The word 'eikon' is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word meaning 'image.'  So the focus for this day is realizing that we are ideally to be image-bearers of God's love... towards Him, for ourselves, for others and for the world we live in.  It helps me, today, to think about the gospel being designed to restore us to the perfect reflection of God's love in all of those directions.  I think about what a cracked mirror does to a reflection - it distorts it.   And even though in and of myself I am hopelessly cracked, the gospel tells me that Jesus, living in me, can perfectly image His love in all directions in my life... and that IS good news.  :)

Day 5 - The Divine Dance

The mysterious idea of the trinity has been explained to me in many ways over the years but this is the first time I have seen it described this way -- as a dance.  I love picture-images like this that help me get grasp on things that are beyond my sense of reason.  I realize this kind of imagery doesn't help everyone, but it helps me. :) 

How are the three “one”? Here are Jesus’ own words: “the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” The oneness of the Father and the Son is the oneness of mutual indwelling of one another. Now, if we add to the Father and the Son the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, we arrive at something distinct to our Christian faith: the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one because they indwell one another....
To say the three are one is to say the one God is a community of mutually indwelling persons where each person delightfully dances with the other in endless holy love...
I do marvel at how well some people can dance. Their entire bodies seem to be overwhelmed by the music and the beat and the meaning of the words. Somehow the body moves in such a way that the music begins to take on bodily form. We might say that the dance incarnates the music, just as the Son incarnates the dance of the Trinity. God is love. The music of God is love. Anyone who loves God and loves others is dancing, whether he or she knows it or not, to the divine dance. To love is to walk onto the divine dance floor...
Love isn’t something we produce. Love, like dancing, is surrendering to the music on the divine dance floor.

As I was reading this, 'So You Think You Can Dance' came to mind.  And this idea that the "dance incarnates the music" came to life for me.  When you watch people who really know what they are doing bring a piece of music to life with their dance, it's just beautiful.  And that gives me one more way to understand and think about Jesus ...  that He brings to life the love of the Father.

Day 4 - Facing God Today

The LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

This prayer of Moses summons Israel to experience the healing glory of gazing into the face of God. What the Bible is telling us is that God’s face is turned toward us with divine delight in who we are, and we are invited to turn our faces toward God to find grace and peace.

McKnight goes on from here to talk about the intimacy of our face-to-face relationships and how important they are to us.  Those who mean the most to us are those who we encounter and know face-to-face.  Family and friends who we can be most comfortable with - who really know us and love us anyway. :) 

This is the kind of relationship that God wants to give to us - one that is face-to-face.  When we are able to look into the face of God, full of assurance and confidence that He loves us completely and without finding fault, then His grace and peace will be real to us.

Day 3 - Loving Others

Disclaimer:  You'll notice my next 3 posts are all on the same day...  I promise I didn't fall off the wagon that quickly!  I was out of town all weekend with a bunch of crazy teenagers and had no wi-fi and quite literally, no time... so I'm catching up today.  :) 

This lesson on Loving Others focused on the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Here are my two favorite quotes...

A scribe asked Jesus how to gain eternal life. Jesus, ever the good teacher, asked him what the Torah teaches. After proving to Jesus that he understood the Jesus Creed, that the two central commands of God’s Torah were to love God and love others, that scribe asked Jesus another question. This time, though, the scribe revealed that he was not yet ready for the revolutionary nature of the Jesus Creed he had so glibly coughed up. He asked Jesus, probably with a little sniff of snobbery, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Jesus answered with the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30–37). That clever parable revealed that the real question was not “Who is my neighbor?”—a question that permits one to create boundary lines—but “To whom should I be neighborly?”

This tendency of ours to create 'boundaries' walls us in to our own comfortable world and we start to label those outside of our walls and stereotype them according to those labels... rich, poor, black, white, mexican, homeless, disabled, handicapped, crazy, gay, straight, christian, athiest, muslim,  and on and on....  McKnight says that Jesus was challenging the attitude of the Jews at the time who only treated Jews as their 'neighbors.'  They were, and we are, great at taking care of their own, but Jesus calls us to take down the boundaries and love ALL of our neighbors. 

Neighbor-love, as Jesus teaches it and practices it, crosses those boundaries because it responds to needs, not labels. Two of the biggest challenges of living the Jesus Creed are these: learning to see and hear the needs of the one who happens to be my neighbor and learning to discern when and how to respond.

Day 2 - Loving God

So I have committed Mark 12:29-31 to memory and have recited it several times throughout the day today...  I like having that on my heart and mind. :)

Today's reading focused on loving God.  My favorite "one-liner" from today was this:

"To love God means to yearn for, to pray for, and work for what glorifies God and what puts God in God's place in your life."

I like the idea of putting God in God's place in my life. :)

And then there was this thought:

"David Gill writes of two kinds of love:  table-love, which is the love of fellowship and commnuion, and cross-love, which is the love seen in sacrifice and devotion.  We might add that we findv this first kind of love, table-love, through his second kind of love, cross-love.  We could say that we find delightful communion with God by giving ourselves to God just as we find delighttful communion with a friend or lover by giving ourselves to the other.  Jesus calls us to the cross-love of God by giving to God our heart, soul, mind, and strength - and on the other side, we find table-love with God."

I think, perhaps, I know this 'cross-love' that Gill speaks of... but it is the 'table-love' that still feels elusive to me and that I so desire.  Perhaps that means that there is still more of the 'cross-love' that I need to learn and to practice and then one day I may find myself more fully on the other side in the 'delightful communion' of table-love with my friend Jesus.
 

40 Days Living the Jesus Creed

In a rather last minute move (I decided to do this yesterday!), I decided I wanted to do something for Lent this year.  I've never done anything before - never thought much about it, really.  But I saw a link to this book by Scott McKnight and thought it would be good.  I decided that I would read each day's devotional and post something from what I've read each day.  I know Lent is usually a season of giving up something to help focus more on Jesus and his sacrifice for us, but I somehow felt the need to take something on that I hope will help me to intentionally draw near to Jesus in this time.  Of course, I also find that in doing the reading and blogging, I'm also giving up some of my creature comforts to take the time to do this, and that's a good thing. :)   (Like right now, I'm already being sorely tested, having just walked in the door at 9:30 from a very long day.  Mostly I just want to eat my ice cream and go collapse in bed. ha)

So, the focus of today's reading was on the Shema. (in the form that Jesus told us to remember it):

"Hear, O Israel:  the Lord our God, the Lord is one;  you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength."  The second is this, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  There is no other commandment greater than these.

McKnight is urging everying to commit this to memory and repeat it as often as you think of it throughout the day...  "To remind ourselves, in a sacred rhythm, that our central tasks are to love God and to love others."   And I love what he says just after this and it is my takeaway from today...  "It is one thing to do what seems to be right or good and just;  it is another thing to love God and to love others - all day long with every ounce of our being."

This is the shift I find myself needing right now - not just trying to do good, but learning to love God and others with every ounce of my being - there's not much room for self in that equation.  So challenging.