seasonal servant?

seasonal ministry?
definately
knowing when it's time to put the flip flops away-
there's the challenge


a friend was asking me in an email if i believed in 'seasonal ministry'... that is, a ministry calling that is relational, circumstantial and contextual, rather than universal. in other words, does God call us to ministry involvements that have both a beginning and an end?

where is it written down that everything of God must be forever simply because God is?

God is the immutable one- everything else is subject to change. this means that our ministry calling can change shape many times over the course of the trip. a ministry that arose from an expressed need may very well come to its conclusion upon either the ultimate meeting of the need OR the natural dissolution of that need.

either way, let the thing go and move on.

science God

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. Well I say there are some things we don’t want to know… Important things! (Ned Flanders)

i'm really tired of people drawing either/or lines in the sand when there should be meaningful crossover between science and faith. they are complementary disciplines. recently, in response to the silly simpsons quote above, a friend of mine said:

I find it curious that in this faith/science distinction faith is always accused of walking around blind to the realities of science yet science always seems to escape being criticised for walking around blind to the realities of faith. (hineini)

science is observational, theoretical and, above all, subject to time and further discovery. God is not subject… God IS the subject.

but without science, our study of God can become ‘incredible’, disembodied, mystical and esoteric. science needs to be simply another lens through which we see the love of God- indeed perhaps the very face of God.

for example, what if physics is only completely physical because we’ve relegated it to the physical box? what if part of the connection between all events, although perhaps not immediately perceptible as such, is that they are shadows, approximations or perhaps even enactments of that which is taking place in the spiritual realm and is, at the very least as real as this physical veneer…

what if the physical and spiritual were rent apart simply by our own spiritual disregard? what if science and faith actually belong together?

Q: what is the first sound recorded in the bible?
A: the voice of God: “Let there be light”

on the first page of our bibles, God and light seem to be together at the source of everything. on the last page of our bibles it’s the same. (genesis 1.3-4; revelation 21.22-23)

what if some scientific study of sound and light were to somehow inform our picture of our eternal God?

• isaac newton first used a prism to intentionally break white light into a spectrum, revealing that all was not as it seemed and paving the way for deconstructive studies like molecular biology and ultimately the splitting of the atom.

• taking the spectrum into account, divisionist painter georges seurat applied the properties of light to his approach to painting, essentially creating the possibility of the colour t.v. out of thin air and grandfathering pixelization, mused in his journals that …

“In nature, light is the source of reality.” (seurat)

• at the same time, albert einstein was developing theories of his own…

“Light is a particle that has mass and a volume of energy. energy (E) equals a constant number (h) times the frequency of the light (v) E=hv

In reality, all matter is nothing but condensed light.” (Einstein)

• in gary zukav’s book The Dancing Wu Li Masters the following observation is made in response to an experiment exploring the unexplainable connectedness of spinning particles…

"Sound waves only travel so fast… the fastest communication signal is the electromagnetic wave- like a light wave…" (Zukav)

and the gospel of John seems to begin with a riddle…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. (John 1.1-9)

in a bible i have, this prayer accompanies john 1...

How glorious you are, O Jesus, Word of God. My finite mind can only begin to comprehend your infinite wonders. My words can never aptly reflect who you are as the divine Word. You are before all things. Through you all things are created. By your light all things are seen…

And I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ

The only-begotten Son of God

Begotten of the Father before all worlds

God of God

Light of Light

Very God of Very God

Begotten, not made

Being of one substance with the Father

By whom all things were made

Who, for us men and for our salvation

Came down from heaven

And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit

of the Virgin Mary

And was made man. (Nicene Creed)

i love that, for the artist, God's artistry is richly woven into the fabric of creation, while for the scientist, God's 'intelligent design' illuminates and informs each new challenge, never giving it all away lest we stop looking for truth.

big bang

what does it mean for something to 'blow your mind?'

to somehow experience something so incredible that you not only struggle for words to describe it, but you just wish you could remain then and there forever?

revelation is a mind-blowing thing…

in the revealing of oneself, there is a deep permission granted which goes beyond anything casual, and a trust that opens oneself to absolute unconditional acceptance and therefore to ultimate rejection. because of the invitation to intimacy, revelation engages the hearts of both parties involved.

could it even be possible for God to experience this overwhelming sense of connection with us- for the mind of God to be blown?

having looked upon us wearing the blood of Christ and the filthy rags of our own righteousness for so long, there is this sense of anticipation in the scriptures that sing of God’s eagerness to see us as we are meant to be.

to see us standing naked before God
not nude before God... naked.
there is a difference.

the fundamental difference between nakedness and nudity is gauged by the degree to which we openly and honestly release ourselves from the whole personal image cultivation thing in favour of self-revelation that fosters intimacy…

this is very much what God waits and waits and waits for with regard to humanity. in the scriptures, the image of a bridegroom is applied to God to illustrate this sense of deep and meaningful anticipatory longing by God for the day of true, mutual self-revelation. likewise, the church is compared to a bride in waiting.

that's right. a bride to be.

i think that in many ways we've gotten it wrong as we've referred to the church as being the bride of Christ. we've applied our western tradition to an eastern analogy.

this past summer while in sri lanka, i learned that the daughter of a dear friend of mine had been married over the course of the year. i was amazed (and mildly disappointed, having not heard until then) that this had all happened so fast, and asked for some more back story. it was explained to me that it wasn't fast at all- that this had been in the works for the last five years and that the husband was in london while she continued to live in her father's home in colombo.

by and by i realized what was going on.

she was betrothed- given, but not yet taken. she was, in the view of everyone, the bride. however, the actual ceremony would be undertaken after a time of preparation- and until then there was all this waiting, hoping, dreaming, planning, preparing.

eventually this beautiful girl will be with her handsome new husband completely, and their minds will both be blown at the depth of connection to which the word 'completely' implies.

but until then, there is all this anticipation and imagination as all is made ready for the final revelation... the one that effectively consummates the new identity and echad that will be part of who they are forever.

is it any wonder that the final book of the bible which describes, among other things, the 'marriage feast of the lamb' is called revelation?

i've always thought that the title pertained to the vision that God gave the writer of the book- a revealing of that which was hidden: the future.

what if the title revelation deals with the fact that, for the first time since the fall of humankind, creator and creation stand before each other completely naked of all that has separated them in order for the sinful and the fallen to not be completely destroyed by the holy? what if it carries within its implication, the openness and vulnerability and the mutual givenness to each other that blows all minds, even the mind of God, simultaneously for all eternity?

(much of the inspiration for this thinking has come from rob bell's book sex God- in particular, the final chapter, aptly titled 'whoopee forever')

tough love

love is a cause.

it is God’s cause. it is about the giving of life, not the taking of it.

recently I noticed something new in the spelling of a familiar word…
within the word pacifist there is the word ‘fist’. never noticed that before. always thought that 'passive' was in there because i don't think i ever actually read the word and paid attention.

but there it is: paciFIST... not PASSIVist.

now, this isn't some etymological thing... just something that caught my eye when i was thinking about wars and rumours of war and trying to figure out how to aptly remember on remembrance day without somehow justifying more violence.

there is nothing passive about fighting against violence. whether it is violence being exacted against another using physical force or violence being exacted against another using mental force, guilt, manipulation, obligation, a cause is a cause and a fight is a fight.

love is a cause worth fighting to the death for… Jesus demonstrated this, giving life without hope of a receipt or a reimbursement… love is about attending to the needs of others because the deepest need of love is to see the needs of others met.

i wonder if this kind of thinking will get us into trouble.

sexy

(some leftover sunday morning sermonizing on a thursday afternoon...)

In the book of Hebrews, it’s written that God is the one for whom and through whom everything exists. If we take this understanding of our natural state seriously, we have to rethink what sexuality is. For many, sexuality is simply what happens between two people involving physical pleasure. But that's only a small percentage of what sexuality is. Our sexuality is all of the ways we strive to reconnect with our world, with each other, and with God.
(rob bell, sex god, p42)

although the 80's was not, in my view, a decade of noteworthy artistic significance...

other than perhaps for the reestablishment of pop music as a surprisingly meaningful force of social justice to be reckoned with (taking up the charge begun in the 70's by george harrison, ravi shankar and others with the Concert for Bangladesh) in the coordination of awareness and relief efforts like BANDAID's do they know it's Christmas? song ('84), the LIVEAID and FARMAID benefit concerts(85) which reshaped my personal thinking concerning art and justice forever

...there was one particularly interesting breakthrough in music technology that had everyone talking.

MIDI (musical instrument digital interface)

MIDI was one of the sexiest (in the above-cited, rob bell sense) musical innovations of the 1980’s. it operated upon one basic assumption: no matter what the manufacturer and regardless of style/genre usage or basic instrumental role in a musical environment, there should not be barriers between the instruments themselves… in this way all MIDI instruments were immediately compatible with each other… designed to connect in order to facilitate the making of music.

i've heard the expression let's not confuse love with sex...

however, with this whole 'bigger definition' thing, i'm not sure how much of a distinction needs to be made. i mean, if we're speaking only about biology then there's some implications there, sure. .. but if we are speaking about God's original plan as outlined on the first page of our bibles then there might be some more there that we are missing which is merely informed by our biology, not defined by it; opened by our biology, not closed by it.

if we see sexy as the ability to meaningfully connect with God, each other and our world, then there's not a whole lot of difference between this and love in the deepest sense. also, there is incredible responsibility attached to this endowment...

it appears as though, in God's design, sexy is

light, not darkness

delight, not lustfulness

engagement, not instinct

depth, not superficiality

freedom, not enslavement

justice, not exploitation

meaningful connection, not biological interface…

in this reading of the word and its implications, sexy invites connection and communion, and for God to look at creation every day and conclude that it is sexy is fun... but to take that further and conclude at the end of day 6, upon looking at us, that it was now very sexy is an invitation to reach for something higher than our lust for kicks when we start talking sexy talk.