So Much To Think About

Loving People
Theologian Gustavo Gutierrez challenges us: “So you say you love the poor. Name them.” A name is a good place to start, a meal is better, and life together is even better than that. Real love requires knowing, listening, understanding. It cannot be foisted on people from a distance.

Gregory Boyle says, “The measure of our compassion lies not in our service to others but in our willingness to see ourselves connected to them.” Love is not something that you can do to another. It is something you do with them.

Roses
RosesEveryone now and again wonders about those questions that have no readyanswers:
first cause, God’s existence, what happens when the curtain goes down and nothing stops it,
not kissing,not going to the mall, not the SuperBowl.
“Wild roses,” I said to them one morning. “Do you have the answers?
And if you do, would you tell me?”
The roses laughed softly. “Forgive us,”they said.
“But as you can see, we arejust now entirely busy being roses.”
Mary Oliver. 

Something More
My dad was an artist who made his living near New York City. He painted the portraits of wealthy people and often commented on the subtleties of fine art. One day he told me that if I looked closely at the paintings of the great masters, I would see all the colors of the spectrum in every square inch. This is what gives a portrait its richness and its depth. It’s also the thing that distinguishes the work of a genius from that of an amateur.
After a while, I began to wonder whether our lives are like a portrait being painted by a renaissance artist. If our eyes are too close to the canvas, we might be confused by its complexity and wonder, “What crazy person would put every color of the spectrum in every square inch?” Our souls will focus on disappointing things and we will ask a lot of haunting questions that seem to have no answer. Most importantly, we won’t be able to make sense of the entire work of art because we are too close to the pain.

If we never experience the rude disappointments of life, it is nearly impossible for us to have the richness and depth that a masterful artist seeks to create. We will offer only trite and shallow ‘answers’ to a world that yearns for something more. Someone once said that fundamentalism is to faith what paint-by-numbers is to the Renaissance. It presents a portrait of the divine that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. It oversimplifies the complex. Augustine said it another way, “If you can comprehend it, it is not God.”

If it were possible to have our souls painted by a renaissance artist, strange colors in strange places would appear on the canvas – each one emblematic of the events that broke us and deepened us. The richness and depth of our portraits would be reflective of a faith that has matured. It is not a paint-by-number faith. It doesn’t expect easy answers. It’s not intellectually lazy. It longs to uncover deeper and deeper layers of truth. It never attempts to domesticate God. It is wonder-struck by the mysteries that surround us. All these things bear witness to the genius of a divine painter who is still at work in us.
Will Kautz

Resurrection Hope
May God grant for each of us,
If our world has died in the night,
That we may see the first day of a new creation,
A new heaven and new earth.
Because on this day God walks again in the garden,
Not in the cool of the evening but of the dawn.
This, is our resurrection hope.
Duane W.H. Arnold

Grace is Greater than Sin
Celebrating grace is not endorsing, much less condoning, error. On the contrary, celebrating grace is holy acknowledgment of the doctrinal truth that grace is greater than our error (or sin). 
Some do not believe, it seems, this truth.
“Who is a God LIKE YOU?” 
The prophet places the question squarely in the context of the character of the God of Israel, 
“who is a God like you, 
PARDONING INIQUITY 
and passing over transgression … 
because he delights in showing mercy … 
you will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” 
(Micah 7.18-19).
Bobby Valentine

Gospel
While the gospel is a message, it cannot be confined to messages. While the gospel is the truth, it cannot be captured by a series of propositional truths. Before the gospel is anything else, the gospel is God. Gospel means “good news,” and the good news is God. The good news is not that God loves us. The good news is that God is love. The good news is not that Jesus saves. It is that Jesus is himself salvation.
J D Walt

STILL ON THE JOURNEY