waiting...tick tick

It is now 12:42 am on Wednesday and I will leave in 30 minutes to pick Dean up from the airport. Way past my usual bed-time (unless I get into a book and then I have been known to stay up past 2 am - it is always, "Just one more chapter.")

Since I have 30 minutes, I am reading a chapter in The Message and writing something here. This verse strikes me as I read Job 6: "When desparate people give up on God Almightly, their friends, at least, should stick with them."

What would make you walk away from a friend? Many of our friendships are so cheap that we sell them for an insult or a misunderstanding or a moment of hurt and even just because it becomes inconvenient. Unfortunately, I have been in religious and church settings where the slightest hint of scandal or shame caused all the so-called faithful and righteous friends to scurry away from embarrassing or sinful scenes. Jesus was a friend of sinners and I can't really think of many people who aspire to imitate Christ in this area.

Real friends never leave. Even if you ignore them for long periods of time, perhaps reject their advances, and even change your beliefs, real friends are still there...waiting.

1:06 am. Time to change my clothes and pick up my best friend.

Comments

Jen said…

you are my real friend Matte! Thank you for not changing and staying 'you' even when I ran away!

12:04 AM

shane magee said…

sin is too easily a cause to reject someone else. i am a sinner. and friendship is under-rated!

12:35 PM

the songs we sing

NOTE: I am going to make some pretty strong statements below, but understand that it is my way of taking an honest, hard look at my own worship experience and practice. My desire is not to be overly critical, but to open up dialogue by questioning things I have assumed were totally fine and appropriate. In other words, I am preaching to myself. Feel free to listen in.

---------------------

When I am in a church meeting during the singing time, I sometimes find myself silent, unable to get the words past my lips. At times I just need a moment of stillness, time to listen, but other times, the words make me pause because I don't know that I can sing them honestly or with integrity. This is a good thing. We should never mindlessly or heartlessly sing songs just because everyone else is. We should care deeply about what we say in our sung, communal worship.

At their best, songs sung by the gathered body of Christ call to life what is already in us: the hope, the truth, the longing, t…

theology from the margins: God of Hagar

Our contexts have major implications for how we live our lives and engage with our world, that much is obvious. However, we sometimes overlook how much they inform our concepts of God. For those of us occupying the central or dominant demographic in society, we often associate God with power and truth. As a result, our theology is characterized by confidence, certainty, and an expectation that others should be accommodating. For those of us living on the margins of society, our sense of belonging stranded in ambiguity, God is seen as an advocate for the powerless. Our theology leans more toward inclusivity, and we talk less about divine holiness and righteousness and more about a God who suffers. On the margins, the priority is merciful and just action, not correct beliefs.
There are significant theological incongruences between Christians who occupy the mainstream segment of society and those who exist on the margins. The world of theology has been dominated by Western male thought…

the movement of humility

We live in a context of stratification where much of society is ordered into separate layers or castes. We are identified as upper class, middle class, or lower class. Our language reflects this up/down (superior/inferior) paradigm. We want to be at the top of the heap, climb the ladder of success, break through the glass ceiling, be king of the hill. This same kind of thinking seeps into our theology. When we talk about humility, we think mostly think in terms of lowering ourselves, willfully participating in downward mobility. This type of up/down language is certainly present in biblical texts (James 4:10 is one example), but I believe that the kind of humility we see in Jesus requires that we step outside of a strictly up/down paradigm. Instead of viewing humility as getting down low or stepping down a notch on the ladder of society, perhaps it is more helpful to think in terms of proximity and movement.

Jesuit theologian, James Keenan, notes that virtues and vices are not really…

outWORD

Search This Blog