True Story

More than one, but less than a dozen, people have asked me to do something different with my blog. Or start a new one. But maintaining two seems like an awful lot of work. So for the simple acedia of it all, I will just mix it up. Make a salad of posts, as it were.

And as an inauguration of this split-purpose writing exercise, I offer this:

If you read the book of Matthew from the beginning, you read early on (4:23) that Jesus went teaching and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. I wondered what it would be like to hear one of those sermons....yeah, I'm that dull. Because, clearly, the sermon on the mount is that same sermon He taught and proclaimed everywhere. And it is such a light-endowing, amplification of God's heart toward His people message. Quite deeper and harder than what the old testament prophets would have said.

And Jesus wraps it up with a perfectly stunning application. 'If you hear these words and do them, you are like the man who built his house on the rock and no amount of rivers or flooding can knock you down.'

Building your 'house' on the sand of ignoring God's ways, or of making yourself king is easy house building. Choose your house design, move a little sand out of the way and 'presto' the house is built. And just like you wanted it made.

Building your 'house' on the rock, is difficult house building. You have to adapt yourself to the rock. You have to let the shape of the rock affect your shape. It is a lifetime of having God's word and ways change you. But the secure and sure foundation, which is Christ Himself!, keeps you from crumbling in the inevitable floods and storms. God knows that our sturdiest position is allowing ourselves to be conformed to Himself. And He also knows well what a weak foundation our own desires and changing wants are.

The following quotation is a direct steal from T Prinzi's blog from the Rabbit Room. It lit up the insides of my brain when I read it and can't seem to stop meditating on it:

We intersect with other's unfinished stories every day, and this should
cause us to be filled with grace toward one another. I think we’re
often like the taunting fairies in George MacDonald's
Phantastes: “Look at him! Look at him! He has begun a story without a
beginning, and it will never have any end! He! he! he! Look at him!”

It’s easy to forget that each of us is stumbling through an unknown land
with hardly the faintest clue what direction we’re heading in, and
it’s easy to taunt each other instead of encourage one another.

Which gives me a clue to a question I have been asking myself. When Jesus tells us to 'not judge' in Matthew 7, He follows that instruction with 'don't cast pearls before swine or give what is holy to dogs'. My question has been, what is judging then? Sounds like judging to me, to call someone a swine or a dog.

But there seems to be an enormous difference between discernment and being judgmental. So the George MacDonald thought above is pointing me toward this thought: I am discerning when I notice that someone is being foolish or simple or scornful or teachable. I am judging when I imagine for a second, and communicate it to any other, that I am never vulnerable in that same way. That it would be unlike me and impossible for me to commit that same sin.

Because I am an unfinished story. I have no certainty what the rest of my life will be like. And in great humility and compassion for the struggles of others, I need to consider that my life is in great peril of stumbling, too. Indeed, I have had overwhelming seasons of stumbling already.

Back From India

I'm not exactly sure why but it takes me a little while to reconnect with my life after I have been gone to India. There are a few reasons that might be true: jet lag seriously messes with my brain. or. It is such a completely altered life for me that I get disoriented trying to rejoin my original me. or. Savoring what I saw and tasted and learned and loved is sweet and I like to savor it long. Maybe all this and more.

Anyway, I love this picture because it reminds me of a hilarious and glorious hour where these accomplished dancers pulled me into their circle and would not let me leave. Twice, I breathlessly stepped out of their midst and they hauled me back in, pulling on my sari. One of the women would slap my arms or back to make sure I watched her and did this thing correctly. I think I finally learned the steps, but I'm not a good judge of that!

As I look at the pictures of India that are on my computer I feel happiness and gratitude that I was allowed to be there again.