Pay Attention

As I was shaving this morning I kind of spaced out for a moment.  I stopped paying attention to what I was doing.  The consequences of my not paying attention?  I took a nice painful gash out of the top of my head, something I haven't done in a very long time.

Last week when I was out kayaking the two times I tipped over were because I stopped paying attention for a brief moment.  The second one I was simply pulling into an eddy (one of the calm water pools on the side of a river) and was pretty much all the way in and stopped thinking about what position I should be in for a brief moment.  It was just in that instant that I then lost my balance and in the river I went.

Isn't it the same in life?  I know for me when I stop paying attention to what God is telling me, where God is leading me, that is when bad things start to happen in my life.  Paying attention to God can mean devotion time, prayer, or even listening to trusted faithful friends.  God's voice takes on all kinds of shapes and sizes, you just never know what it might be next.  All I know is that I better start paying better attention.

Matrix Prayer

In the movie trilogy "The Matrix" the character played by Keanu Reeves (Neo) had this pose whenever he was about to fight.  He took a karate type pose with one arm extended forward with his palm up.  Then just before commencing fighting he would wiggle his fingers back towards the palm of his hand, kind of like you might signal to a friend or a child to "come here" except with all four fingers at once.  It had a beautiful sense of saying "BRING IT!" without ever saying a word.

I get a similar sense, similar image, when we pray in the Lord's Prayer the petitions, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  In a sense isn't that what we're saying to God?  "BRING IT!"  It seems such a dangerous proposition to pray these words, what might God's will look like?  Often times what God demands of me is more than what I would ever demand of myself, more than I suspect I can handle.  Sometimes God desires I do things I don't want to do, or that scare me.  Yet somehow when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we bravely ask God to "BRING IT!"

Evangelism

I've been thinking about evangelism recently.  Most of us, I think, most often think of people like Billy Graham or Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on our door when hear the word "evangelism."  This past winter I attended a conference in Arizona and I heard a new proposal for an "evangelism strategy" based on Jesus' sending of the 70.  In that story Jesus sends his followers out 2 by 2, so it was suggested that we don't go alone.  Another key element was telling the disciples to enter a house and say, "Peace be upon you" should they welcome you in.  So the suggestion was you find your person of peace, somebody that is a potential friend.
 
It is this point that I've gotten caught up in, finding your person of peace.  It's gotten me to think of Ruth and her, relatively, famous quote of, "Where you go, I will go..."  Ruth is so moved by her relationship with Naomi that she is willing to go with her anyway, even give up her religion, her faith, to follow Naomi's God.  What a remarkable thing.  What if we lived lives so compelling that others would want to follow the God we worship?  What might that look like?  It sounds a lot less intrusive than banging doors of strangers who don't want to listen to you.  It is as simple as living the life God has called us to.  So it seems we are all witness, we are all evangelists in a sense.  Wasn't it St. Francis who said something like, "Preach at all times.  If in doubt use words."?

Translation

Sometimes I get concerned that seminaries, our schools training pastors, spend too much time teaching their students how to translate Greek and Hebrew.  Don't get me wrong, I recognize that these can be valuable skills.  I just wish there was as much time, or more, spent on learning to translate into the common, everyday vernacular of the people.  We spend time in learning Spanish in classroom, but then we meet people who have moved here from Mexico and we discover we've learned a rather different language.  So now we learn Spanish in an immersion setting, so we not only learn the proper grammar but the way people speak Spanish.  We need to do the same with English.  The English in the theology books is good English, but it's not always the English you hear at the food court in the mall.  If we are to get the word of our faith out to the common, everyday person who spends time at the mall then we need to learn to speak their language, to translate into that language.
 
I came across a quote today from an e-mail mailing list I'm on from C.S. Lewis that gets at this as well.  I would like to share it with you now.
 
"An essential part of the ordination exam ought to be a passage from some recognized theological work set for translation into vulgar English - just like doing Latin prose. Failure on this part should mean failure on the whole exam.  It is absolutely disgraceful that we expect missionaries to the Bantus to learn Bantu, but never ask whether our missionaries to the Americans or English can speak American or English. Any fool can write learned language: the vernacular is the real test. If you can't turn your faith into it, then either you don't understand it or you don't believe it."
     ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) in "The Christian Century"

A Tug

I clearly felt a tug at my heart strings as I was going through the Nome Nugget and came across the following letter in the "Opinion" section of the paper.  I share it here for your reading as well...
 
"Dear Editor,

This letter is for some of my family members (you will know who this concerns after you’ve read this). I don’t know how else to get to you, to make you understand that I need each and everyone of you in my life right now. What I don’t need is any of you making false accusations about me, or kicking me and my kids out of your homes (after inviting us to stay). I don’t need any added stress in my life.

This past year has been very hard for me. I’m trying my hardest to live each and every day. What I need is love and understanding from all of you. Not once has any of you asked how I really feel. I’m scared. This is why I really need everyone in my life. You all stood by my side when I was trying to sober up (I’ve been alcohol-free for four years now). I don’t think this medical condition is any different.

Please, please don’t hate me. What have I done to you that put me on the spot? If I ever needed any of you, now is the time. I’m sorry if I did anything to deserve this treatment I’m getting right now. Just be here for me. Help me to get through this cancer that I had. Help me to live life to the fullest. With all of you, I know that we can get through this. What happened to “family values” that our mom and dad taught us?"

I Love the 90's

Okay, I'll admit it:  I got sucked into watching "I Love the 90's" last week on VH1.  I'm not sure what exactly it was, but I could hardly stop watching.  It was similar when they first came out with "I Love the 80's", which started this whole thing.  There is something fascinating about looking at history, recent history I suppose, from a pop culture perspective.  I wonder if this is how my generation is going to know history, sound bites and news only as it effected/relates to pop culture.  I wonder....
 
This is the culture I live in and have been raised in.  The critique that I most often hear from professors and the like, on sermons especially, is that I need to go deeper.  Often I feel like I have gone deeper, especially when considering the shallow sound bit culture I come from.  I do not offer it as an excuse, but offer it to ask the question of "how do I break free?"  For I sense within this sound bit world a desire to ask and wrestle with the tough questions, to dig in with great depths....although I warn you it's probably going to look quite different from previous generations.