outWORD by Matte Downey

Image from pinterest.com This is the third in a series of stories from exile. You can read part one  here  and part two  here . We all have a need to belong. This seems obvious. But what is not as obvious is that we also need to dissent, to set ourselves apart from the group. Belonging makes us part of something bigger than ourselves. It gives us a place to call home, a place to feel secure and safe. But without dissent, we become indistinct, a group member with no unique identity or will. Without dissent, we end up going along with everything the group does, no questions asked, a participant in dysfunctional groupthink. Any parent or psychologist will tell you that it is important and healthy for a child to learn dissent in their formative years. We need both belonging and dissent in order to be fully human. When we are experiencing some form of exile (dislocation and separation from what is familiar), belonging is harder to come by, but still vital. In less than ideal s...

Image from tumblr.com Talking about faithfulness can be tricky. Many of us have been beaten over the head with the faithfulness stick, told that we should be doing more, doing it better, and doing it more often, because this is what God expects and demands from us. To that I say a simple No. I want no part of burdening anyone with that heavy yoke, so this is not that. We have all had people break their promises, not show up when they said they would, bail on us when we needed them, reverse their good opinions of us, or just disappear from our lives. It hurts when someone is unfaithful. I think we all agree that the world would be a better place if everyone was faithful, but this character trait does not come easy. Becoming faithful people, people who reflect the nature of a faithful God, does not happen by sheer determination and will-power. Just as we learn to love by being loved, we learn to be faithful by trusting the Faithful One. If we look at the word, faithful, it means ...

Daniel's Answer to the King by Briton Riviére (1890) This past Sunday I finished my series on the stories in the book of Daniel. The last one is a familiar story, in fact, when I asked if anyone had ever heard it or read it, virtually everyone in the room raised their hands. You can read it in Daniel 6, but let me briefly summarize it here. A new King, Darius, is ruling over Babylon where Daniel has spent most of his life as an expatriate (not by his choice, I might add). Darius is a smart and powerful man, and he sets up a hierarchy of officers and governors to ensure that he maintains control over this newly conquered land. Daniel finds favour with the king and quickly rises to prominence. This leaves the other leaders with a bad taste in their mouths (yep, it's jealousy) so they hatch a plot to get rid of Daniel. Since they can find no fault in his work, they decide to attack his loyalty to Jehovah, the God of the Jews. It's pretty easy to convince a king addicted...

Ever worked for a bad boss? There are some horror stories out there about the crazy things people in positions of power do to those who are working for them. Here is one example: "My boss had his 80+ mother-in-law working for him as his accounts payable employee so that he wouldn't have to just give her money to live on...she had no income! His mother-in-law was in his office upstairs from mine, he calls my name very loudly and I ran up stairs. He was talking to his wife on his cell phone. Without hanging up from his wife he says to me, 'Would you mind giving her the Heimlich maneuver, she can't breathe.'" [1] Daniel, one of the young Hebrew nobles carried off to Babylonian captivity around 600 BCE, knew all about working for a bad boss. The subtitle for Daniel chapter 2 could well be: "When the Boss Wants Your Head."  In the book of Daniel we find that king Nebuchadnezzar has conquered Israel and dragged their best people to Babylon so that they...