Monday 27 July 2009

Here are a few more days at the beginning of this week that will will look at Divine Abundance - by William Willimon.

There is a pervasive nihilism at the heart of modernity, a sense of scarcity. We are on our own, making our way in a world of want as best we can with insufficient information and not enough love. Freud, who did much to form the modern mind, spoke of "obscure, unfeeling, and unloving powers" that determine our fate, reviving the early Greek view that we are, in Homer's words, mere "toys of the gods." If there are gods in the heaven above, they do not reveal themselves to us and have no benevolent intent for us here on earth below. This is a story that captivates modernity.
A Christian is someone who looks upon the world, the passing scene of current events, the sweep of history, her own life, and believes that there is, despite our first impressions of nothing, not just something but Someone. There is a discernible pattern. We look, with non-Christians, at the same events, the same history, and yet we see a distinctive movement in a particular direction, a surfeit of meaning. Salvation is the story, the whole story, from beginning to end, the discernible shape of the narrative that is being told by God, not just the end of the story. Christians become protagonists in God's story. This is what it means to be saved.

We are a part of this unfolding of God's living story that is at hand. Here it is called a "pattern." I think this pattern is also something we may know as the character of God's Reign. We are not left without a vision. The vision is that of the unfolding of life and the shape that is that life. When we say things like God is love, that is definitely about our God. And yet, as we say that about our God, the character of that love is the power that opens us up to receive such love and also to become such love. We are not pushed into this life. We are not like chess pieces in a cosmic game. We are the way in which our God makes known the way God's hand enters into the scene and how that touch or embrace uses us -as we are- to bring about the life that vision calls forth from us and all creation.

Connection: What part of this character of God's Reign will be a driving force within this day as you move along the way of our Lord, Jesus?!

Keep us in our place, O God, but carry us into the domain of your will so that as we engage the world, we will do so from a place in which we are beloved and from which we begin to love in your name. Amen.