Hope is on the screen again - from, "In the End - The Beginning."
Christianity is wholly and entirely confident hope, a stretching out to what is ahead, and a readiness for a fresh start. Future is not just something or other to do with Christianity. It is the essential element of the faith which is specifically Christian: the keynote of all its hymns, the dawn colouring of the new day in which everything is bathed. For faith is Christian faith when it is Easter faith. Faith means living in the presence of the risen Christ, and stretching out to the coming kingdom of God.
The "fresh start" can be a simple as a fresh start for me. A fresh start when there seems to be no place to go or no one who will have me. The fresh start of God's Reign cannot be dismissed for it awaits our entrance. But we don't always want to go there. Sometimes it is better to stay in the past and wallow in defeat and discouragement...but that is really never true. It is never better for our life today to stay grounded in the debris of yesterday. God promises a future and we are invited into a confident place in which God defines us and we have nothing to say about it except, of course, "Yes God." The future is a gift and it contains the life that has been waiting for us...we need only follow the power of the Holy Spirit that keeps trying to pull us into God's promised Reign.
Connection: Take a bath in the power of God's Reign that is yanking at us and making room for us. What a way to wake up and walk through what can be a pretty sorry day sometimes.
Hand us this day as you have always promised, O God. We are too often tired of the ways things have been but then, we do not have the energy to even trust that you - the Creator of all that is and will be - will sustain us and bring us into new life. Feed us with you Bread of life today. Amen.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Monday, January 17, 2005
18 January 2005
On with hope and the future...with Jurgen Moltmann.
...God comes to meet men and women out of (God's) future, and in their history reveals to them new, open horizons, which entice them to set forth into the unknown and invite them to the beginning of the new.
What an image to remember! In the middle of this day God greets us from the future and in the present we are given an opportunity to take part in a promise that will take us beyond what we are able to see and hold. Today comes to us as that invitation to open up our lives and move into the life that has been promised to us. Therefore, we can walk into a reality called justice, mercy, kindness, love, forgiveness & reconciliation even if it is not where we intended to go when we stepped out of bed today. God is meeting us with new ways too walk all through this day.
Connection: Fear not and begin to live in ways that may take you just out of the way you know so well. Fear not because God is present with us...just as promised.
Lord, we do not know where we will go today but we know that you will hold us and shape us. Empower us to trust the way you will call us as we step forward into your Reign. Amen.
...God comes to meet men and women out of (God's) future, and in their history reveals to them new, open horizons, which entice them to set forth into the unknown and invite them to the beginning of the new.
What an image to remember! In the middle of this day God greets us from the future and in the present we are given an opportunity to take part in a promise that will take us beyond what we are able to see and hold. Today comes to us as that invitation to open up our lives and move into the life that has been promised to us. Therefore, we can walk into a reality called justice, mercy, kindness, love, forgiveness & reconciliation even if it is not where we intended to go when we stepped out of bed today. God is meeting us with new ways too walk all through this day.
Connection: Fear not and begin to live in ways that may take you just out of the way you know so well. Fear not because God is present with us...just as promised.
Lord, we do not know where we will go today but we know that you will hold us and shape us. Empower us to trust the way you will call us as we step forward into your Reign. Amen.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
17 January 2005
An ongoing look at hope - Jurgen Moltmann.
'May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope', writes Paul to the congregation in Rome (Romans 15:13).
This is unique. Nowhere else in the world of the religions is God associated with human hope for the future. God is the one who is Eternally Present, the deity is the Wholly Other, what is divine is Timelessly Eternal: all that is common coin. God is 'above us' as the Almighty, or God is 'within us' as the ground of our being: that is familiar. But a God of hope, who is in front of us, and goes ahead of us in history?
This is the God who suffers death right to its end without anything being withheld. This is the God who goes through death and invites us to follow. There is no lecture on how to rise above the pains and sorrows of the day...there is no systematic way of understanding our human predicament and mastering it. Our God faces death and walk through it and walks out the other side and bids us to follow. We do not "get out" of the death we all fear. We go right into it because that is what it is to be human. But we follow the one who has "been there and done that" and promises something for all who do not turn away from death. Therefore, our God pulls us from where God is - the future & waiting for us to arrive - and is simultaneously with us along the way. In this way, we will never be alone as we reach out into the fullness of God's love that keeps unfolding for us.
Connection: I think it take a committee of people to keep ourselves filled with hope. I don't mean a formal committee...I mean a bunch of folk - maybe only two or three - who will help us lift up our eyes to that which is not seen so clearly - just yet. Do you have those kind of people around you?
Bring us out of the slavery of these days and set us up within the grace-filled Reign of your love, O God. For within the bounds of your love is a future we cannot see on our own...and yet we long to be there...even now. Amen.
'May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope', writes Paul to the congregation in Rome (Romans 15:13).
This is unique. Nowhere else in the world of the religions is God associated with human hope for the future. God is the one who is Eternally Present, the deity is the Wholly Other, what is divine is Timelessly Eternal: all that is common coin. God is 'above us' as the Almighty, or God is 'within us' as the ground of our being: that is familiar. But a God of hope, who is in front of us, and goes ahead of us in history?
This is the God who suffers death right to its end without anything being withheld. This is the God who goes through death and invites us to follow. There is no lecture on how to rise above the pains and sorrows of the day...there is no systematic way of understanding our human predicament and mastering it. Our God faces death and walk through it and walks out the other side and bids us to follow. We do not "get out" of the death we all fear. We go right into it because that is what it is to be human. But we follow the one who has "been there and done that" and promises something for all who do not turn away from death. Therefore, our God pulls us from where God is - the future & waiting for us to arrive - and is simultaneously with us along the way. In this way, we will never be alone as we reach out into the fullness of God's love that keeps unfolding for us.
Connection: I think it take a committee of people to keep ourselves filled with hope. I don't mean a formal committee...I mean a bunch of folk - maybe only two or three - who will help us lift up our eyes to that which is not seen so clearly - just yet. Do you have those kind of people around you?
Bring us out of the slavery of these days and set us up within the grace-filled Reign of your love, O God. For within the bounds of your love is a future we cannot see on our own...and yet we long to be there...even now. Amen.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
14 January 2005
Jurgen Moltmann comments on the healing power of Jesus.
Sinner are, in the gospels often defined as people who are sick.
Out of the darkness into which they have been banished, so that no one is forced to see them, they come into the light of Jesus and seek the healing power of his physical presence.
...These healings are always associated with the expulsion of 'unclean spirits', demons. this is a way of saying that Jesus' vital power was to an extraordinary degree infectious life: it was vita vivificans - life that gives life. When Jesus comes, life comes into a sick and frightened world.
Unclean spirits is not just a way to refer to people who have a physical sickness. We would to well to see unclean spirits as that which grabs a persons heart and life and changes it from being beloved and thus loving into something else. Therefore, we could even say that when Jesus expels an unclean spirit it could be that the person suffered from "meanness" that was so deep that no one was able to come near the person. Could it be that that someone was so "full of themselves" so self-absorbed that no one else in their life really mattered much at all, that they lacked the wonderful gift of the living presence of God's love and were therefore possessed by an unclean spirit? When Jesus comes into their life and heal them, they begin to live a life filled with love and with life actions reflective of such love. That's a real healing event.
Connection: Old biblical words can really seem foreign. Then again, if we look around as the absence of the love of God as put to life in Jesus, some of them are not odd at all. Look around. There are many ways the healing love of our God is needed all around us.
Bless us with your power to heal, O God, so that our ways may give way to the life-giving will that brings healing into our broken world. Amen.
Sinner are, in the gospels often defined as people who are sick.
Out of the darkness into which they have been banished, so that no one is forced to see them, they come into the light of Jesus and seek the healing power of his physical presence.
...These healings are always associated with the expulsion of 'unclean spirits', demons. this is a way of saying that Jesus' vital power was to an extraordinary degree infectious life: it was vita vivificans - life that gives life. When Jesus comes, life comes into a sick and frightened world.
Unclean spirits is not just a way to refer to people who have a physical sickness. We would to well to see unclean spirits as that which grabs a persons heart and life and changes it from being beloved and thus loving into something else. Therefore, we could even say that when Jesus expels an unclean spirit it could be that the person suffered from "meanness" that was so deep that no one was able to come near the person. Could it be that that someone was so "full of themselves" so self-absorbed that no one else in their life really mattered much at all, that they lacked the wonderful gift of the living presence of God's love and were therefore possessed by an unclean spirit? When Jesus comes into their life and heal them, they begin to live a life filled with love and with life actions reflective of such love. That's a real healing event.
Connection: Old biblical words can really seem foreign. Then again, if we look around as the absence of the love of God as put to life in Jesus, some of them are not odd at all. Look around. There are many ways the healing love of our God is needed all around us.
Bless us with your power to heal, O God, so that our ways may give way to the life-giving will that brings healing into our broken world. Amen.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
13 January 2005
We continue with words from Jurgen Moltmann.
For people who believe in God for Christ's sake, God's righteousness and justice can be perceived, not from the law of the cosmos or the course of history, but from the life, self-surrender and resurrection of Christ, his presence and future.
What is it we see in the life of Jesus. Let's not look at some theory about his life. Let's look at his life and the vulnerability that creates life within a vicious and judging world. Let's look at how intimate he was with those who were to be kept at arms length or just outside of shouting distance. Let's talk about justice and love not as a hypothetical notion about which we can debate until there is no action taken, but let's talk about the life that defines justice and love and let's reflect on how it is a life that is available to us. We too can offer ourselves as vulnerable lovers of others because we are first loved and filled with worth that needs no self-inflation. Present and to come...is the Christ among us.
Connection: No time like the present to walk out of our box and encounter the world with the love and sense of justice that moved Jesus through his days.
Give us vision, Lord of Mercy and all Hopefulness, so that as we move through this day we may see it fresh through the lenses of your grace and love. Amen.
For people who believe in God for Christ's sake, God's righteousness and justice can be perceived, not from the law of the cosmos or the course of history, but from the life, self-surrender and resurrection of Christ, his presence and future.
What is it we see in the life of Jesus. Let's not look at some theory about his life. Let's look at his life and the vulnerability that creates life within a vicious and judging world. Let's look at how intimate he was with those who were to be kept at arms length or just outside of shouting distance. Let's talk about justice and love not as a hypothetical notion about which we can debate until there is no action taken, but let's talk about the life that defines justice and love and let's reflect on how it is a life that is available to us. We too can offer ourselves as vulnerable lovers of others because we are first loved and filled with worth that needs no self-inflation. Present and to come...is the Christ among us.
Connection: No time like the present to walk out of our box and encounter the world with the love and sense of justice that moved Jesus through his days.
Give us vision, Lord of Mercy and all Hopefulness, so that as we move through this day we may see it fresh through the lenses of your grace and love. Amen.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
12 January 2005
We continue with the vision of Justice in "In the End - The Beginning."
...God is also already present where injustice is suffered. If God brings about justice for those who suffer violence, then he also identifies himself with the victims of violence, putting himself on their side. What is done to the poor and helpless is indirectly done to him too. His justice-creating righteousness is intensified through his Real Presence among the victims.
This is one of the hidden realities of our world unless we trust that the God of scripture is really still with us even as we move into this day. It is the reality that can and does create hope among those who are victimized in many and various ways because in the middle of everything that should not happen, we are told is the God who never leaves the side of the victim and oppressed. The scriptures are filled with those kind of stories. They are not meant to be mere entertainment. They are to remind us of our God when the day comes in our lives when injustice reigns and its brutality will not stop. It is here that this "justice-creating righteousness" comes to life and people today become the stories told tomorrow of victims embraced by our God in the most evil of days.
Connection: There are many poetic ways of talking about God's power and grace coming upon us within the dark days of our lives. Sometimes, that reminder will come to others in our words and our presence and our simple, encouraging touch.
Be present in this day, O God, for we are in constant need of your Reign of peace when we are threatened and overwhelmed by the powers around us. Remind us again that you do indeed come to be with us...even us. Amen.
...God is also already present where injustice is suffered. If God brings about justice for those who suffer violence, then he also identifies himself with the victims of violence, putting himself on their side. What is done to the poor and helpless is indirectly done to him too. His justice-creating righteousness is intensified through his Real Presence among the victims.
This is one of the hidden realities of our world unless we trust that the God of scripture is really still with us even as we move into this day. It is the reality that can and does create hope among those who are victimized in many and various ways because in the middle of everything that should not happen, we are told is the God who never leaves the side of the victim and oppressed. The scriptures are filled with those kind of stories. They are not meant to be mere entertainment. They are to remind us of our God when the day comes in our lives when injustice reigns and its brutality will not stop. It is here that this "justice-creating righteousness" comes to life and people today become the stories told tomorrow of victims embraced by our God in the most evil of days.
Connection: There are many poetic ways of talking about God's power and grace coming upon us within the dark days of our lives. Sometimes, that reminder will come to others in our words and our presence and our simple, encouraging touch.
Be present in this day, O God, for we are in constant need of your Reign of peace when we are threatened and overwhelmed by the powers around us. Remind us again that you do indeed come to be with us...even us. Amen.
12 January 2005
We continue with the vision of Justice in "In the End - The Beginning."
...God is also already present where injustice is suffered. If God brings about justice for those who suffer violence, then he also identifies himself with the victims of violence, putting himself on their side. What is done to the poor and helpless is indirectly done to him too. His justice-creating righteousness is intensified thorugh his Real Presence among the victims.
...God is also already present where injustice is suffered. If God brings about justice for those who suffer violence, then he also identifies himself with the victims of violence, putting himself on their side. What is done to the poor and helpless is indirectly done to him too. His justice-creating righteousness is intensified thorugh his Real Presence among the victims.
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