Southern Gothic author Flannery O'Connor was said to spend three hours in the morning writing and the rest of the day getting over it. Writing is a neurotic enterprise that preys on our souls at times; reading doesn't do us much better it seems. We cast ourselves in a play of three acts and somewhere during intermission the scenic hands put up the wrong backdrop and we do "Hamlet" in a New York walk-up interior. Alas poor John I knew him well.
How do we live in these days where our sense of intelligence comes from a box; our sense period from a grocery store magazine rack where the sperm donor's rogue's gallery of celebrated status stares back at us in glossy inked unreality. Or to the Christian world where we thrive on the do's and don'ts of probity and propriety while life swirls around our ankles with the debris of humanity. Hmmm me thinks the reader is pondering lighter reading or possibly just more coherent. I think the answer while not "Blowin' in the wind" as the song simplistically states may be as down to earth. How do we feel about life, our life, ourselves? Do we read these as indicators of where we are going or just sign posts of our discontent?
We are in a place of need I find in our world, a need not for clarity as much as a need for faith. Faith? What faith? What do we put our trust in; to what do we owe our allegiance to outside of ourselves? We need to trust our relationship to the Father through Jesus. Don't have one? Or has religion supplanted your relationship, the rigor of a reality based on performance instead of the reality of performance based on relationship. We do because of our who. We rest in our isness. I've found a truth in life that has done me well of late-there have been no mistakes in creation made by God and that is particularly true of humans. Now we may need growth or any number of other things but the artwork is fine and it ain't paint by number.
Jesus asks us this question from time to time which I think is telling, "Who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am?" If He is indeed the Christ for us then we can rest in that and not apply cosmetics to His handiwork, nor yield to the "Satan" of self interest in proscribing the outcome of our journey with Him. We are called to the death, burial, and resurrection of the Messiah and His working in our lives and the calling of His grace to give us strength. "My grace is sufficient for you."
John
How do we live in these days where our sense of intelligence comes from a box; our sense period from a grocery store magazine rack where the sperm donor's rogue's gallery of celebrated status stares back at us in glossy inked unreality. Or to the Christian world where we thrive on the do's and don'ts of probity and propriety while life swirls around our ankles with the debris of humanity. Hmmm me thinks the reader is pondering lighter reading or possibly just more coherent. I think the answer while not "Blowin' in the wind" as the song simplistically states may be as down to earth. How do we feel about life, our life, ourselves? Do we read these as indicators of where we are going or just sign posts of our discontent?
We are in a place of need I find in our world, a need not for clarity as much as a need for faith. Faith? What faith? What do we put our trust in; to what do we owe our allegiance to outside of ourselves? We need to trust our relationship to the Father through Jesus. Don't have one? Or has religion supplanted your relationship, the rigor of a reality based on performance instead of the reality of performance based on relationship. We do because of our who. We rest in our isness. I've found a truth in life that has done me well of late-there have been no mistakes in creation made by God and that is particularly true of humans. Now we may need growth or any number of other things but the artwork is fine and it ain't paint by number.
Jesus asks us this question from time to time which I think is telling, "Who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am?" If He is indeed the Christ for us then we can rest in that and not apply cosmetics to His handiwork, nor yield to the "Satan" of self interest in proscribing the outcome of our journey with Him. We are called to the death, burial, and resurrection of the Messiah and His working in our lives and the calling of His grace to give us strength. "My grace is sufficient for you."
John
posted by John R. Jones at 12:44 AM
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