Week 4 brings new perspective.
Sunday's preach was on the topic of immigration. Speaking into a very real issue, at a very real time for a very real reason - the Gospel.
The Gospel is about real life, not really about heaven in the future.
The Gospel is about transformation and God's rule and reign now.
His rule and reign in a world that rejects it.
The Gospel is all about real issues in real time.
So, the Scripture's teach that Christ followers are "strangers in a strange land" (1 Peter 1 & 2).
To understand this brings new perspective on how Christians engage with the issue of immigration - both documented and undocumented.
Scripture is teaching that because of the distinct and different lifestyles of Christ followers, a lifestyle that is different that the majority of people - the society in which they live will view them as strangers.
Now here's the twist. In our country, if Christians lived as Christ expects us to we would be living at the margins of our society .......and who would we meet there - the immigrant!!
This is the charge, or should I say the opportunity.
If Christians lived as Christ expects us to live, a mass of people who politicians have turned to to help win the past three elections and bring them to the White House, would have to engage justly and fairly with the immigration issue.
As long as Christians - who should be the loudest voice standing with the migrant - stay silent; politicians can ignore it.
Ours is the Christian generation that can accomplish historic things.
This is the generation that could abolish world famine; this is the generation that could eradicate malaria as a killing disease; and ours is the generation that could create an equitable and fair immigration policy for the US.
What an opportunity!
It comes with the challenge for Christians to live on the margins as Christ expects us to.
To live the Gospel!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Week 2 or 3 ...spirituality is living more than lessons.
Week 2 or is it week 3?
Begun running some bigger distances than I have for a couple of years. Wondering/testing if this is the year I try for another marathon.
So I pulled out a new type of marathon training plan - the Hansen plan.
In my 14 weeks training plan I will cover a total distance of 622 miles.
The last time I did a marathon I ran 3 days a week and covered a total of 380 miles.
The short of the Hansen - kill you before the race date so you'll never actually run a marathon!
Or .....run 622 miles so that when you run a 26.2 mile marathon it will feel a mere walk in the park.
So I've begun.
I'll give it a few weeks trial and see how my body holds out. Then decide.
But interesting methodology.
Run double what I've run in training before - and yet - while my other training plans had four runs that were either 18 miles or 20 miles in total the Hansen plan only sees me reach 16 miles (still 10.2 short of marathon distance)!
The philosophy includes you may not do a big 20 miler, but when you do your 16 miler, the runs you've put in the days before and the days after will make the 16 miler feel like a 26 miler without the actual pounding of the concrete and the wear and tear on your body.
So now, as a church pastor, I have to now try and link this methodology and my attempt to train with it, to something to do with Jesus!!!
Here's the best I can come up with:
......nope, got nothing.
But then maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this constant need to try to spiritualize everything, misses it.
Maybe its the doing itself that is spiritual not a lesson you can learn from it.
Maybe its not about finding a spiritual parallel but living spiritual in whatever parallel you are in.
Maybe my marathon training can be spiritual.
What I won't now do is list a whole number of ways it can be. That misses it as well.
What I will do is take on the challenge of this training wanting to know God in the midst of it.
Spirituality is living more than lessons.
Begun running some bigger distances than I have for a couple of years. Wondering/testing if this is the year I try for another marathon.
So I pulled out a new type of marathon training plan - the Hansen plan.
In my 14 weeks training plan I will cover a total distance of 622 miles.
The last time I did a marathon I ran 3 days a week and covered a total of 380 miles.
The short of the Hansen - kill you before the race date so you'll never actually run a marathon!
Or .....run 622 miles so that when you run a 26.2 mile marathon it will feel a mere walk in the park.
So I've begun.
I'll give it a few weeks trial and see how my body holds out. Then decide.
But interesting methodology.
Run double what I've run in training before - and yet - while my other training plans had four runs that were either 18 miles or 20 miles in total the Hansen plan only sees me reach 16 miles (still 10.2 short of marathon distance)!
The philosophy includes you may not do a big 20 miler, but when you do your 16 miler, the runs you've put in the days before and the days after will make the 16 miler feel like a 26 miler without the actual pounding of the concrete and the wear and tear on your body.
So now, as a church pastor, I have to now try and link this methodology and my attempt to train with it, to something to do with Jesus!!!
Here's the best I can come up with:
......nope, got nothing.
But then maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this constant need to try to spiritualize everything, misses it.
Maybe its the doing itself that is spiritual not a lesson you can learn from it.
Maybe its not about finding a spiritual parallel but living spiritual in whatever parallel you are in.
Maybe my marathon training can be spiritual.
What I won't now do is list a whole number of ways it can be. That misses it as well.
What I will do is take on the challenge of this training wanting to know God in the midst of it.
Spirituality is living more than lessons.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Week 1 Non Violence: A Dangerous Idea!
I know its only the first week of 2011, but here's my best book so far in the new year:
Non-Violence:The History of a Dangerous Idea @ Mark Kurlansky.
Maybe as we start a new year we need to revisit how we live in a world that annually is growing more violent than the years/centuries before.
Kurlansky is not writing from a Christian perspective but he does quote a powerful divine decree "those who take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Does it not seem ironic that a nation that purports to hold to Christian heritage holds the most powerful military force in the history of humankind!
The classic pamphlet on this subject was written in 1815 by David Low Dodge, the man who is considered the first American peace activist. A devout Christian, who at the end of the 1812 war formed the New York Peace Society. Risking the accusation of being disloyal and unpatriotic (how things never seem to change) he postponed his publication until the war was over. It's title was "War Inconsistent With The Religion of Jesus Christ."
Here's a most thought provoking quote from his writing:
Perhaps the most fascinating and disturbing insight that Kurlansky reveals is that throughout history though most religions shun warfare and hold nonviolence as the only moral route toward political change - governing people have always shunned nonviolence and co-opted religion and its language into their violent campaigns.
"If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. The first and most prominent example was a Jew named Jesus!"
Ouch!!!
Gets you thinking about what it means to be a follower of the rebel Jesus.
Non-Violence:The History of a Dangerous Idea @ Mark Kurlansky.
Maybe as we start a new year we need to revisit how we live in a world that annually is growing more violent than the years/centuries before.
Kurlansky is not writing from a Christian perspective but he does quote a powerful divine decree "those who take the sword shall perish with the sword."
Does it not seem ironic that a nation that purports to hold to Christian heritage holds the most powerful military force in the history of humankind!
The classic pamphlet on this subject was written in 1815 by David Low Dodge, the man who is considered the first American peace activist. A devout Christian, who at the end of the 1812 war formed the New York Peace Society. Risking the accusation of being disloyal and unpatriotic (how things never seem to change) he postponed his publication until the war was over. It's title was "War Inconsistent With The Religion of Jesus Christ."
Here's a most thought provoking quote from his writing:
"The professed object of war generally is to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace; but war never did and never will preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace, for it is a divine decree that all nations who take the sword shall perish with the sword. War is no more adapted to preserve liberty and produce a lasting peace than midnight darkness is to produce noonday light."
Perhaps the most fascinating and disturbing insight that Kurlansky reveals is that throughout history though most religions shun warfare and hold nonviolence as the only moral route toward political change - governing people have always shunned nonviolence and co-opted religion and its language into their violent campaigns.
"If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel. The first and most prominent example was a Jew named Jesus!"
Ouch!!!
Gets you thinking about what it means to be a follower of the rebel Jesus.
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