traces of an encounter

weird

i failed to save the words that i prepared for a recent talk. then i threw away the 'manuscript' when i was at a network meeting out of town. all i have are the scribblings in my journal... and these are sketchy at best. it's as if i'm not supposed to post them- that God intended for them to be used in only one context, and that those in attendance are to be the testimonial living out of these words, these ideas, this truth...

it began with a question that was posed in a book that i've been reading called The Deity Formerly Known As God by Jarrett Stevens. the question was this:

If you had to describe the God you've found floating in the wake of your parents' presence in your life, what would this God look like?

the time we spent together looking at the scriptures was rich and meaningful. at the end, people came to the cross of Christ in prayer...

• moved to embrace the reality that our picture of God is very strongly influenced (dareisay distorted) by the picture of our own earthly parents;
• moved to embrace the reality that God desires to be known personally without all the stereotyping that we've done as we've clambered through life and relationship trying to sort it all out;
• moved to embrace the reality that scripture promises joint heirship with Jesus Christ, but that this clearly doesn't have anything to do with living a charmed life- on the contrary it probably has to do with enduring suffering in faith and hope that somehow this endurance will be of use to someone somewhere;
• moved to abandon the expectation that God needs to be there in a state of perpetual intervention in order to be real and in order to prove love;
• moved to moved to leave the many preconceptions of who this God-person is at the tree of pain in order to move forward in the relationship with a clean emotional slate...

that i have lost all written record of this just makes that time more precious to me. to try to retype it would be like trying to rephotograph and eclipse.

all those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain
(roy baty- rutger hauer's character in blade runner)

the scriptures we explored together were:
romans 8.15-17
luke 11.9-13
philippians 3.10-13