bigger than

Sometimes I forget that God is bigger than anything else. My mistakes. My accomplishments. My future. My words. My past. My lack of skills. My relationships. The actions of others. World events. He is just bigger than it all. When I tend to focus on the minor stuff of life, I need something to help me jettison the small-mindedness and see once again that this ginormous God I belong to is leaps and bounds beyond everything. One of those helpful somethings is truth.

Truth is not a set of facts. Jesus said that he was the truth, so if I know what Jesus looks like, I know what truth looks like. But if I don't know what truth looks like, I can easily get confused, overwhelmed, deceived, or discouraged. Truth is consistent and alive, but not totally predictable (which is why I need to keep searching Him out and getting to know him better). And truth is bigger than my thoughts, my ideas, my understanding, my perceptions, facts, arguments, feelings, accusations, you name it. Truth cuts through it all.

God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God's Word. We can't get away from it - no matter what. - from Hebrews 4, The Message

One red flag that lets me know that I am not really letting truth be present and big in my life is the attitude that, "This does not apply to me." Or the thought that, "That person is being an idiot and someone should teach him a lesson." What I am doing by copping this defensive attitude is taking myself out of the equation. I have removed myself from anything I might learn in the scenario, especially humility. I have made myself bigger than truth.

A ridiculously tiny example that is one of my personal reminders to embrace humility and truth is jaywalking. I know it is illegal. I know that the laws are there for everyone's protection, including mine, but sheesh, where there is not a car in sight, what's the big deal? The big deal is not that I cross the street on a red light, but that I think the law does not apply to me. When I get defensive about this minor infraction, I am forgetting that my actions and attitudes affect an entire community. When I do this, I have taken a step away from humility and instead, moved in the direction of self-important pride that separates me from God and undermines community.

An example from the Bible is David, who got himself into a bit of a mess by having an affair with a married woman and then murdering her husband to cover it up. When Nathan (a messenger from God) came and told him about a rich man who stole his poor neighbour's pet lamb despite having an entire herd of sheep himself, David was outraged. He demanded that the thief be brought to immediate and severe justice. Nathan simply said, "You are that man." Oh oh. (see 2 Samuel 11-12 for details).

David had totally deceived himself into thinking that certain consequences did not apply to him. The very same guidelines that he believed were good and right for the general public to follow in order to maintain a peaceful and functioning community, were adjusted for his own benefit. His personal agenda became bigger than truth. It is a very dangerous attitude to indulge in.

I continuously struggle to keep myself in the arena of humility where I can embrace the truth, no matter how inconvenient or costly it is. I am not bigger than the truth. I am not bigger than the law. I am not bigger or better than the next guy. If it is Truth, it applies to all of us and it applies to me. And I want to apply Jesus to my life, yes I do.

I need more truth in my life. I also need more humility that will enable me to hear and see truth. I get lost too easily without it's guiding light and clarity. Let my life reflect that truth is bigger than me. That God is indeed bigger than all of this.

This is a photo of me and my metro cart. From this perspective, it is bigger than me.

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

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.’ Consider but a sampling o

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim

outWORD by Matte Downey

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Names of God

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

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