Just Sayin'

With God the worst thing is never the last thing...

(a quote from S.W.Hubbard)

 

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At a Well

So, recently @CTmagazine sent out a retweet over the Twittisphere of an article written by Lynn H. Cohick.  It purported to re-examine false assumptions that have been made about the woman Jesus met at Jacob’s well in the fourth chapter of John’s gospel.  The article itself is several years old but if you want you should be able to read it here:  https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/october/was-samaritan-woman-really-adulteress.html?share=uAO3P26FBPpC4OVshkCS7aS%2bJqoB9Cm7

The author unpacks the story assumption by assumption showing how our cultural biases have affected our reading of the story…

·        Married 5 times might not have been that uncommon… ‘It is more likely that her five marriages and current arrangement were the result of unfortunate events that took the lives of several of her husbands.’

·        The woman might not have been at the well alone…

·        The woman might have been coming to the well at midday because she was ‘helping a neighbour with young children’

·         The woman must have been respected in her community – ‘the fact that the townspeople listen to her testimony suggests that she was not a shunned sinner’

…basically, the author replaces all the old assumptions with new ones.  But that’s not my point…

It seems to me the point of the story is that Jesus comes to meet us right where we are…  Make the woman as vile a person as you like… or as sacred and righteous as you like… she is still not worthy of this encounter.  She could have been the first century version of Mother Teresa and still she would not have been worthy of a face-to-face, one-on-one encounter with the Living God.  Jesus was not bothered by her five marriages… or her attempt at deception.  Nor was He impressed by her religious questions.

Make whatever assumptions you need to make in order to feel good about the story but don’t miss the point.  Whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey, Christ wants to meet you… YOU!  He comes to YOUR well, whenever it is that YOU arrive, and asks pointed questions of YOU in the hopes that YOU will have the courage to ask HIM to fill your longing.

Your journey, your past, your present… none of these matter to Jesus – what matters to Him is YOU

Shopping Carts

The other day I was in Canadian Tire looking for a Mother’s Day gift…  (I know eh?  I married the perfect woman!) …any ways, I’m in Canadian Tire when a dad passes me pushing his little girl in a shopping cart.  I’ve always really liked the way shopping carts are set up – it’s intimate.  Not shopping ☻ but being face-to-face with your child.  I don’t know who designed the first shopping cart but they have my thanks!

So, there’s this dad and his daughter inside this Canadian Tire and just as they passed me I hear the little girl whine, “Daddy, I don’t like this… this is boring.”

I don’t know how long they had been in the store, but their cart was empty.  I can’t imagine they had been there very long (that’s ‘man-think’ I know).   We were well into to the store.  They would have had to pass through the automotive section and then the athletics department.  The little girl, positioned in the cart as she was, had a clear picture of where they had been.

“Daddy, I don’t like this… this is boring.”

She’s young I know, but I wonder if there might come a day when she longs to be in that seat facing Daddy.  Feeling safe, protected.  Will she regret not appreciating the ‘boredom’ of shopping with dad?  Will she regret not taking more time to look him full in the face?

There is a parable there.  To be situated in life in such a way that I am always looking Daddy in the face!  To let Him dictate where we go.

Of course, if I’m not looking at my Father, like the child in the cart, I end up looking over Daddy’s shoulder at where I’ve come from… the past… and so I base all my prayers, my statements, my complaints on the assumption that what was, is what will always be…

“Daddy, I don’t like this… this is boring.”

…what she didn’t see, and what we often miss, is that we are moving in a direction that will take us out of our past and into a place of joy and delight.  See, dad was heading for the toy section.  If only she could have turned her head to see, she would have found the bright blues and reds and pinks and greens of a section more to her liking!

Sometimes we are so focussed the past, we forget it’s the past – it’s what we’ve left behind. 

The Father is taking us somewhere…

The Father is taking you somewhere…  or …He wants to.

my 2c

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The Perfect Me

I was reading “UnBranding” a clever and informative book by Scott & Alison Stratten. 

(I could go on gushing about how much I enjoyed the book but you don’t know me so my recommendation means nothing to you… unless… you do know me in which case you’ve already stopped reading this and are off to find a copy☻)

People didn’t start trying to project the perfect image of them selves with the advent of social media.  (That’s not a direct quote but it’s pretty close). 

Trying to pawn ourselves off as better than we are is as old as the human race.  What’s different, what technology allows us to do, is to project an image of ourselves far beyond the circle of people who know us. 

Even that might not be so big of a deal if we didn’t also allow, invite… encourage… these complete strangers to rank and rate us.  It’s the rating that we chasing…

Why are we ranking ourselves and others?  Why are we creating 4-point, 5-point and 10-point scales by which to imprison our exceptional individual personalities?  How have we become so deceived as to believe our humanity, our uniqueness can be contained, reduced, enslaved by an arbitrary number.

The God I believe in created you to be you! …to be uniquely you.  Of the 7.44 billion people on the planet (and the billions of others who have lived and died) there has never been and will never be another you.  EVER!  (this is the real tragedy of abortion) You might find your doppelganger… you might find a soulmate who is so-o-o similar you feel you’ve known each other since forever… you might even be an identical twin… but they are not YOU!   …they will never be you.

You cannot compare your ‘rating’ to anyone else’s because no two people occupy the same scale.  God did not create you to sit in a balance judged by or against those around you… 

He placed you, His child, in a swing because He loves to hear your giggles and laughter as you fly back and forth.

my 2c...

 

Control - Tenth Avenue North

Mangers and Crosses

Protestants take great pride in their symbolic piety… or lack thereof.

In recent years we’ve abandoned the table… removed the cross… hymnals and bibles and stain-glassed windows…

“It’s not about the symbols” we’ve said, “It’s the truths they represent!  As followers of Christ,” we’ve continued, “we live the truths of the symbols!” 

(…I’m not sure that’s true but we like how spiritual it sounds and anyways that isn’t the theme of this post so I’ll let it slide). 

In truth, the symbols simply cost too much in time, energy and money to maintain… and we have other things (better things?) to do with our time… our energy… our money…

...it’s convenient how God no longer expects me to make a sacrifice of the things that I want for myself (that’s a different post too… I’ll let it slide).

Get to the point!

Surely, you’ve noticed how the protestant cross is always empty.  Catholics use a crucifix – a cross with an likeness of Christ still attached.  Protestants insist, “He is no longer on the cross!”  So, we shun crucifixes.  Some go so far as to call them idolatrous.

…which is ironic given our love of placing some sort of likeness in mangers at Christmas.

We prefer the baby Jesus to the crucified Christ.

Is that because we imagine we prefer a god we can control?  Because a manger-bound baby is safer?  Because a god-in-a-manger won’t challenge my attitudes, my spending, my busy-ness, my reveling, …and if he does I can always coo-coo-coo and pretend I don’t understand.

Christ on the cross confronts my lust and greed and selfishness and busyness and pride and….  Christ on the cross reminds me, “This is for you!”  Christ in a manger?  …He’s cute and cuddly and don’t you just want to pinch His cheeks as you scurry off to buy something else that you don’t need in order to impress people who don’t even know you exist?

Listen, I believe the cross… and the tomb are empty.  He IS risen!

…but the manger is empty too…

my 2c