Skip to main content

FoCuS

There is one thing wrong with the spiffy camera Dean bought me for my birthday a few years ago: it does not have manual focus. Instead of highlighting the wonderfully ripe cherry above, the all-knowing camera believed that the disturbed snow on my deck was a much more interesting subject.

Today, I also feel sightly out of focus and wish there was a handy manual setting to realign things in their proper perspective. Perhaps it was the trek outside to wrangle some windblown trellis out from under my deck that resulted in cracking my head on a wooden beam and then breaking one of the trelli (I am almost certain that is the plural form of trellis and if it isn't, it should be), or the fact that Tea was convinced that she needed a second feeding and meowed in my ear for an hour this morning interrupting my 8 hour sabbatical, or the detour on the way to the bank that sent me driving through winding residential roads without cause (at least in my opinion), or any number of tiny things that just did not go well today. Somewhere along the way I set my patience adrift and chose annoyance and criticism as the motivational force for my life on this particular January day. Bad choice.

I was reading one of my fellow blogger's posts today in which someone chastised him for being too critical of the church. Are there glaring wrongs and errors in the church? Of course. Should we shy away from pointing them out? Not really, for how will things change unless we admit there is something desperately wrong? But I also understand this reader's comment. While I love this blogging man and his daring honesty, sometimes I think his focus, like mine, is just a bit off. The beautiful bride of Christ is before us (in fact, IS us) in all her imperfect and underdeveloped glory, but she is glorious all the same because Jesus chooses to imbue her with his love and stand with her and shine on her. If I lose sight of that glory at any time, I become the most cutting and critical cynic, pointing out so many flaws that hope starts to wilt in even the most buoyant souls. It is not a question of being truthful or honest, it is a question of focus. If my focus lies on the faults, where does hope live? Truth is not what we see in front of us, but how God sees what is in front of us.

I very much desire to see the creative power of words evident in my life, a characteristic of God (see Genesis one) and Jesus (be healed!) that I believe is lying mostly dormant in us because we don't know how to use our words. When I speak, I want life and light to come into any situation.

Anyone can see a valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37), but it takes a true prophet, a true seer, a person with a keen eye focused on the subject (and the subject of life is Jesus) to be able to call them to join together and live!

This cherry was sacrificed to my enjoyment immediately after this photo was taken.
Labels:

Comments

Shelley said…
Over Christmas I got into a controversial conversation with my bro, (what else is new) about the catholic church. I keep thinking about it, and I realize that while he is ever on the lookout for deception and wrong doctrine (according to him) I am on the opposite end. I work in a the catholic school system, and I am always looking for truth and life and real relationship with JEsus, and I find it everywhere. Sure the other stuff is there too, but what is the point of focusing on that? Far better to blow on the flame that I do see....
7:59 PM
shane magee said…
calling all 21st century prophets. god knows we need you!
9:39 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go...
3 comments
Read more

Esther's protest

I have been hesitant to write anything here pertaining to the student protests in Montreal, partly because I didn't believe I had any solutions to offer and partly because I just wanted to stay out of the controversial mess it has become.  Besides, I have studying to do.  But this weekend, something changed.  I read the book of Esther. First, some background:  the unrest started early in the year when a group of students decided to protest the tuition hikes proposed by the Quebec government ($325 a year for the next 5 years).  Seeing that tuition rates have been frozen for almost ten years, it seemed reasonable to the government to increase them to reflect rising costs.  This did not sit well with some students, and they organised an ongoing protest in which students were encouraged to boycott classes and refuse to hand in assignments.  It has now grown into a movement which has staged several organise...
9 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   C...
10 comments
Read more