Forgiveness

There’s too many books on this subject.  Too many Christian and otherwise religioussy books how to apologize, how to accept the apology, how then to cast the offense in the sea of forgetfulness (as god has done), and then how to never go fishing again.

Apostolic fathers start getting cited: “I consider it rubbish, forgetting the things behind”

So, the MO becomes “Get over it!” or “Deal with it!”  Honestly, neither of those makes much sense to me anymore.  They both represent a suburban understanding of “wrong”.  In the insulated environment where gossip represents a grievous offense and a sprained ankle or even the misfortune of cancer is seen as evil incarnate, there’s honestly little reason to believe in real good or real evil, real right or real wrong.  When the culture of our gospel is that of imperial security, it makes complete sense to strike the “antiquated” words good and evil, right and wrong, from our vocabulary.  Because of this understanding of evil, we can rightly tell people to “forgive and forget”—imagine holding on to the “offense” of someone’s tonal inflection, or being consumed by angst over being interrupted in conversation.  If these are the worst of our wrongdoings then we need to cease conceiving of evil at all…those things aren’t evil…they’re annoying…

But, for one horrific minute imagine a world outside of Suburbans, Hummers, sprinkler systems, bourgeoisie concerned armchair activists (by the way, that’s what I am), and then acknowledge genocide, holocaust, infants with aids mercifully aborted or cruelly incarcerated within death camp orphanages in which there is no hope for adoption, only a prolonged death, poverty, depraved hunger, child prostitution for the sake of survival…then…then say there is no wrong…then say there is no evil…  In that reality, and perhaps in that reality alone, one may truly begin to acknowledge the terror of the self perpetuating Fall of creation and the need for a Curing redeemer.  There, in those dank places, we begin to consider the greater implications of a caring creator, a savior king, and miraculous healing.  It is precisely in the violent face of real evil that good is challenged to truly embrace what it means to forgive….forgiveness, of which it’s said, “there is no greater miracle”.

Forget?  No, true forgiveness cannot, should not, forget the appalling injustice of what has occurred.  However, through the Divine intervention of resurrection Life the depravity of the Cross is able to be seen through new eyes.  It has been revealed in a new light.  The one who experiences the resurrection of forgiveness sees their memories transformed into new constructs, revealing grace and the power of God to transform us.  “In forgiveness the past is not forgotten, but it is remembered differently, recalled differently.  Nothing in the past has changed, but it seems like a different past; the situation has lost its burdensome weight.  The act of forgiveness changes the whole trajectory of a persons life and invites radical hope, faith, and love.”  (Rollins, The Fidelity of Betrayal). This resurrection from the death of wrong doing now can no longer condemn the injustice that has brought it such newness of day.  Instead, it can only embrace it. 

How I need this resurrection of memory, where all is the same, and yet everything has changed.  

Original empire?

The doctrine of original sin was a convenient “truth” for the builders of the empire [Rome 418AD].  They could continue to conquer the world and subdue peoples.  And now they could do it with the authority of a divine calling.  What the world needed and what the masses throughout the empire required was the truth that they, with their church princes, possessed.  Truth was to be distributed from above.  It was to be a religion of dependency.  And part of the conflict with Pelagius [a well known Celtic Bishop, teacher in Rome and then Palestine] and other teachers in the Celtic mission was that a people who believed they were made in the image of God and were therefore bearers of an ancient wisdom and an unspeakable dignity were not a people that could easily be cowed by power and external authority.  The empire and its church chose to neglect the sacred tune at the heart of the human soul.  Instead they heard only a disharmony of original sin that had to be denounced and therefore could be dominated.”

From “Christ of the Celts” by J Philip Newell.  

 

What a fascinating quote.  So…I wonder…isn’t it fascinating that while the Catholic Church shored up the official opinion on original sin by stamping out the “heretics”, that a whole different breed of believers existed who saw humans as the children of God vested with the divine character.  Interesting that perhaps an empire needed to squelch that thought.  Does the empire still need to squelch that?  Religious empire.  Consumer Empire.  Political/Military Empire. They need us to be sinners…NOT saints…because the minute that people believe they are OK and that others are OK, then they cease to need to export someone’s brand onto others…

Wow…now that’s interesting.

The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher…a great read.

Three days ago I received “The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher” by Rob Stennett. I really knew nothing about the book…but the back sounded fascinating:

“Ryan Fisher is a 28-year-old real estate agent who doesn’t believe in God, but lists himself in the Christian Business Directory (along with a Jesus fish symbol) to beef up sales. He and his wife, Katherine, attend church to validate his new religious image, where he sees the possibilities of utilizing business principles to create his own megachurch. They move to Bartlesville, Okla., and create “The People’s Church” where Ryan preaches a feel-good, do-good gospel (”I’m not encumbered by things like the Bible and Jesus”). As church numbers swell, Oprah calls, local pastors are on the warpath, a religious fanatic plots Ryan’s assassination, and Katherine is smitten with Cowboy Jack, a karaoke singer-turned-worship leader who pens Christian lyrics to popular radio tunes. Is Ryan in over his head?”

From the first page, I was hooked. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a 28 year old semi-part time real estate agent…maybe it’s the fact that all the images that Stennett fidels with are all too familiar to me (the Alec Baldwin styled worship leader, the professionally happy greeters, the moment where Ryan–who still doesn’t believe in Jesus but wants to be a Christian to engender more business deals ticks off his wife who calls him a phony; his response to her was priceless: “I’m a brave new kind of Christian…one who doesn’t have to believe in Jesus.”…classic). I don’t know but this book is hilarious and thought provoking.

In the end, I wish I could say that the book was just a bit of silliness…but something in me says that this book is all true…and some of it really happens too.

Check it out.

Possiblities vs Guarentees

I just got a puppy.  I know…stupid move right?  Well, you’re probably right.  Honestly, the sleepless nights, the random “accidents”, and needing the patience of Job to cope with his mischief have me second guessing the whole transaction.  Ah well…  Still, we picked a great breed.  If you’ve ever researched dogs you know that breeds have very different personalities.  Take for instance my old dog, Rigby.  He was an Australian Shepherd, a herding dog.  And guess what, he was constantly herding us, constantly working. We’re convinced that he never slept.  It’s amazing, we never had to teach him to do that. His instinct kicked in. He just did it. Born that way I guess.

I think that’s how I’ve viewed the church.  Like a dog.  Engineered for certain behaviors. No effort needed.

The funny thing is that it’s really not how it works, with dogs, with humans, or with the church.

It’s why you can’t seperate a pup from it’s mother too early.  If you do, it can’t learn the things that become “instinctual” to it.  The mother conditions it and socializes it to become what it eventually does.

With humans the same is true.  Go to a human development class, you’ll find out.  It’s all about conditioning.  And there’s a variety of opinions on what kind of conditioning works, some think constant and rigid training is neccesary while others say it needs to be hands off.  But everyone agrees that there’s an element of grooming that is absolutely imperative.  Or else?  Ever hear of feral children?  Tarzan or Moglai or Nell?  The rat girl from Texas? Without socialization, without training, without that conditioning kids acculturate to the void that surrounds them, be it rats or wolves or monkeys.  We become what we’re around.  Even though we have the possibility to function as a full human there is no guarentee…the right conditions have to be in place.

It’s true of the church too.  She may have the right genetic code but without early socialization and conditioned relationship with her parent she becomes a wild and erratic aberration of what she was meant to be. That’s why you find Paul freaking out in 1 Thessalonians where he was only able to spend a couple of weeks, “I long to come back and impart some sort of spiritual gift to you”.  He realizes that the right foundation requires time, energy, and interaction. And some will point out that it turned out alright in Thessalonica considering the second letter.  Except…the truth is the second letter is just as frought with concern as the first.  Paul is terrified that it wasn’t enough.  It keeps him up at night. He is grieving.  I can just hear the mystic home churchers: “Come on Paul…just trust the Spirit…These guys are the church…just let them BE.  When are you going to develop faith and not worry so much?” I love it because I’ve heard those words before…

The truth that Paul knew and that life confirms is that anything born to a particular destiny has the possibility for the glorious but NOT the guarantee.  Just like life the church requires effort and labor, we must “work to preserve the unity of the Spirit” (wow…I guess that means that unity of Spirit is something we can lose…), we must “press on towards the goal”, we must “set our minds on things above” (which by the way means, set our priorities on the things that Father values…this isn’t some kind of commendation to become of no earthly good).

Just “being the church” doesn’t guarantee that we will actually express Christ’s Body, the Church.  Alot of people get confused on this point.  They throw out “wherever two or three are gathered in my name there I am” as a reference for “church happening” as Christians get together for coffee.  I can just hear a latte foam lipped guru saying: “See…THIS is Church”…over a cup of joe.  But that verse keeps going doesn’t it?  It’s about church discipline primarily and Jesus is saying that we should feel a sense of freedom in dealing with issues even when the larger gathering isn’t present.  He ends by saying, having taken the issue before the two or three, if nothing changes, “take it before the church”.  Hmmm…it would seem then that according to Jesus the two or three certainly have Christ among them, but they are not the church…just parts of it.  Again, go back to life…my own body.  My hand IS the body…but it’s not the whole body…it’s only a little piece…without the whole it won’t work.  Again, I hear an argument coming.  This is really about the universal church.  We are parts of the universal whole.  Yes…true…but unless Jesus was advocating teleconferencing, when he says “take it before the church” he means the local, locatable, assemblyable, gathering collection of interelated people.  My point?  The Church isn’t just pie in the sky atmospherics that we ARE simply by the nature of being Christians.  There is an intangible element to it that seems to congeal mysteriously and takes us from being simply Christ followers to actually representing His eternal Body.

There’s no guarantee that this moment will ever come.  Just because you get a bunch of people who love Jesus into the same room you don’t necessarily have the full expression of the Church.  You may have the raw genetic material for it.  But, as in life, it requires some growing up…some conditioning…some socializing…

Referring to the last post…it requires the kingdom…it requires some space…it requires the brush being cleared, the gospel being declared, lives rearranged…and then, in mystery beyond mysteries people might notice a change, a difference…they might not be able to explain it, but they look around and comment, “I think the Church touched down. I think it’s being expressed.  We didn’t try for it. We weren’t aiming for that…we were simply responding to Him.”

When I think of planting a new church…

Have you ever heard a three year old kid freak out because they want to put the star or the angel on top of the Christmas tree?  They whine and cry and whimper and demand to anoint the tree with a topper.

But, what if that obnoxious call to action came in July, long before December, the Christmas season, and a new doug fir freshly cut in our front living room? It’d kinda be weird wouldn’t it?  It’s just a thought really…

And so I wonder if trying to set up a church, an expression of the Bride of Christ, expressly appointed to live in organic relatedness as a many membered multi functioning physical incarnation of our Lord…whew…I wonder if trying to construct and produce that isn’t like demanding to put the tree topper on a Christmas tree before it’s been cut, long before December.

I don’t mean that comment in the ways that you may think. I’m not saying that it’s inappropriate to plant churches or form new congregations or any of that.  Really…I think there is a time and place for that.  And I’m not making this comment out of that ultra pious uber spiritual position that “man cannot build anything” kind of mentality.  I think that God has given us sanctified minds and has called us to be “co-workers” with Him. He calls ordinary fisherman to tend to his sheep as shepherds, he calls super spiritual religious elite to become foolish evangelists trekking the globe ministering to churches, he even appoints young men to raise up “elders” in congregations…I’m not challenging the fact that God uses women and men to do His work, we are as always His hands and feet.

No, what I’m saying has to do with an order to things…first things first…

Jesus came preaching the kingdom, right?  He came proclaiming a whole new way of arranging our lives around God’s priorities.  He came making the radical suggestion that God’s good dream was at hand, extremely near, and that it was accessible by those who were willing to violently reach out and take hold of it, becoming participants in God’s solution to a world corrupted by a downward spiral of fallen choices.  It seems that everywhere he went, Jesus was communicating God’s reign, God’s rule in the here and now.  This was His primary message.

Guess what he mentions twice?  The church.  2x, seriously.

And I’m not devaluing it by any means…rather I’m saying that if you look at the book of Acts, a collection of stories focussed on early believers, you find God’s ekklessia, His Church.  My point? The church comes out of the kingdom.

Allow me to further illustrate.  Jesus told a parable about a treasure and a field.  The man who wants the treasure must first secure the field. He must give everything he has for it.  Then, and only then does he gain the treasure.

This is an example of seeking the kingdom first.  As we give our everything–as our lives are radically changed into his image–a space is gained, a field is secured, a clearing is made…a clearing where something can be built upon.

Before the Church can be revealed in a locality or a church can be planted, there must be a space created for the possibility of it.  That space is opened up through the proclamation of the good news of His kingdom and the practicing of the instructions of the Master kingdom citizen, Jesus.  As we hear His words and practice them we are compared to “wise builders” laying a solid foundation for a building…that building is the church…

So…let’s make this really local and practical…before there is a congregation of people organically fitted together a space must be created where people can hear the words of Jesus and evaluate their lives in the light of that reality.  The kingdom must be proclaimed to a collective of individuals.  As they choose to respond as willing vessels to God the church very well may emerge…praise God if she does…

But…we start with the kingdom…creating a space for Him to speak into peoples lives and to be transformed into His image…

From the past 8 years of organic church…that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned…learned the hard way…still…we learn.

Mission and Movement

I’ve been reading through the Gospels again and was struck, once more, by the last verses in the 1st chapter of John.  It’s such a wonderful and symbolic picture of discipleship for me.

The lamb of God is identified by John the Baptist as being present in the world, the Father has inaugurated His son’s ministry by declaring that He is pleased with Jesus (isn’t that interesting that all of Jesus’ distinct mission and ministry flows from a place of the Father being well pleased in His Son…it begins there, but Jesus doesn’t just camp out basking in that presence, He then follows, obeys, and is directed by the King)…and then two young disciples of John get REALLY curious about Jesus…they go as far as to trail after him and then go further by asking him where He is staying.  I take that to be an amazing moment. It’s like, for the first time in human history (and the History of God) in many ways, folks want to be around God and to know what He’s about…Jesus does an interesting thing…it’s a profound statement, “Come and see”.

My feeling about that statement is that it is so invitational…come and see what I’m about…come and take part in the activities I am doing…come and participate in the Mission that I’m engaged with…or not…
There’s a risk there.  There’s a moment, just like in every moment that Jesus initiates with would be disciples, where they are able to choose to be about other things besides the Way of living he proposes…Some folks went back to lives of sin, some folks went back to ordinary lives of subsistence and “being”, and some went back to worshipful lives of observing God…but only a few (we are told) did as these two men did that day…followed in the footsteps of the Rabbi and were caught up in his dust. The truth is that Jesus always makes the offer, but he never chases them down.  He lays out the decision to join him in his mission but he never conscripts or drafts…simply invites…

Being an evangelical seems to extend beyond agreeing with some theological tenets, in many ways it reminds me of Catholics who never practice but always identify themselves as Catholic…it’s a bias they’re never able to shake…it’s their culture…it’s in them…and I wonder how much it is just IN many of us.  It simple effects us regardless of how far we’ve distanced ourselves from the dogmas it holds.

One aspect of evangelicalism is this idea of “come to us”.  It demands of sinners and it demands of God, “bring them to us”.  Having shaken the extreme notion of needing to convert every person I see, I can’t help but think that we still fall into the notion of “this is my life…God comes to me and brings me His will…”  It’s a safe place to be, that’s for certain.  It’s wonderfully comforting. And maybe that’s what is needed for many folks. Safety.  Their lives are too convoluted and confusing as it is…why add un-security in spirituality?

But of course…there’s always a risk isn’t there?

And though all are called, a few will choose to take the invitation of a lonely Rabbi who has no place to lay His head…they will venture out with him as he has compassion on the multitudes, touches the lepers, eats with sinners, and spends the majority of his time with the spiritually AND SOCIALLY ill.  They will actually lose their own lives…materially, socially, and spiritually in order to take on His radical new Way of living.  “Come and see…”

“The starting point for mission is a missional God who is active in the world.  God invites us and beckons us to join his mission.  So in this sense, we join in with what God is doing rather than ‘taking God with us’…God is already working in the world.  Our role is to discover where and then to stand alongside God.  Many evangelicals believe they are taking God to the world and into their daily lives…I do not like the dualsim associated with that kind of theology.  God leads and we follow as we can.  We find that God is planting and we water it…I don’t take God in with me but find God where he is and then join him.”

Relevant or Peculiar?

If we are to become wombs of the divine, then what we give birth to will not only take a great deal of careful nurturing but will also be very specific to the culture and the place where it is born.  In order to reach humanity, God had to re-emerge and be reborn into human form.  In the same way; we need to re-emerge and be reborn into specific places and cultures in order to be truly incarnate to them and so to reach them.  God came all the way to us–yet we now expect people to come so far toward us in the church.  Far away from their music, far away from their vernacular, far away from their visual language, their codes and symbols.  God was born again–became nothing and re-emerged–in order to reach us in our own language, to live and grow among us.  As the body of Christ, we must do likewise and, just as for Christ, this re-emerging will take immense courage.  Kester Brewin “Signs of Emergence” pg 68

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But…what we bring them to is Holy! It is true! When we force them to abandon their culture we invite them to lay down earthy and embrace spiritual…right?

Well…maybe not…maybe our sacrosanct hymns and jesus-my-boyfriend chorus’, our insular and exclusive terminologies, our detached rituals…maybe they are simply our sub-culture…created and kept by us for us.

Maybe the how is never as important as the Him.  It’s about His Life breaking through and into this world…and He always seems to do so by incarnating himself…coming to others as the other.

The tension of being relevant versus peculiar is found held in Christ…fully human and fully divine…totally relevant and relatable and yet completely beyond and intangible.

This is incarnation–this is His History and our story…

What shall this man do?

God…Evolve…

Jack Miles, a noted ex-Jesuit author, in his extraordinary Pulitzer prize winning book “God: A Biography” presents the God of the Old Testament.  He examines YHWH from an entirely literary context, as if the Lord described were a character in a novel.  Miles applies the logic that every great character must adapt and change, and if this is true, he wonders if we see this in the central character of the Bible.  Yes, is his answer.

In a 500 page scholarly romp through the Old Testament Miles dances through the evolution of God, from childlike loneliness and need for self understanding which prompts creating a self portrait (imagine a painter who can only under themselves as they create on a canvas), to a fierce adolescent warrior God filled with unexplainable nationalistic fervor and favoritism, angrily crushing this nation and that people all so his special friends can secure a place for themselves.  He highlights boisterous God. Burly and vindictive God. Regretting and fretful God. Love sick God. Finally he concludes with Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Day’s, exhausted, weary from war and tired from testing his relationships…and then God is silent.

It’s a great book…one that will truly provoke thought and wrestling with the cultural icons we’ve erected regarding the knowledge of the Holy (I’m not saying I agree with any of it…still it will provoke thought)…but that’s not my point…

I want to reverse Miles’ picture.  What if it’s not man who has to endure God’s shifting maturation process…but God who endures ours?  As Lewis said, “We heard God but as though in a stutter” or through muffled ears.  God is forced to negotiate and even accept the catastrophic understanding that those who assumed to know Him held.  He is grieved as the tribes of Joshua’s account misinterpret His intentions and then annihilate their neighbors.  He is saddened as Israel develops imagery of a god of fire, mountain, wind, and war that resembles the baals more than it does his kind heart. He stares on as they learn to become professional worshipers of Him while completely neglecting the tenderness of His heart. And He waits…He speaks into the chaos…sometimes with clarity (Isaiah 53, 58, Amos, Micah, Hoseah)…and altogether too often is relegated to the sidelines while those who see Him most fail to show Him at all.

Viewed through those lenses the Old Testament becomes the saga of people who are coming to grips with a God who is remarkably “other”.  And they come to grips rather poorly.  Their story can be seen as anything but prescriptive…except perhaps how NOT to go about knowing God.  But really they were simply evolving…their ability to see God was developing.

As humans we cannot perceive things as they are but only as we see them to be, as we have context for them. It’s interesting that we actually fail to see certain objects because we have no “context” to understand them through. So it is throughout the history of God’s people.  In fact, they can hardly see Him except through their own biases.  Abraham cannot understand Him as the only God, his polytheistic mind cannot shore up the tension, so he calls him “God Most High” or “the high god”…one among many…highest, certainly, but only? Hardly.  Moses, and his biographers, whose understanding of Egyptian, Caananite, and Sumerian gods was greater than that of YHWH, find Him in mountain (Baal), in the fiery offering (Molek), and in the sacrifices of harvest (Isis).  Later, one prophet, Elijah, experiences a transcendent moment and understands more of God than any who have gone before him…not in the wind…not in the fire…not in the thunder…not on the mountain…but in the still small (and ever present) voice of spirit.  And what is actually happening in that moment is our vision of God is expanding…our context is growing…our sight and our hearing is improving.  By the end of the Old Testament the disastrous views of God have come crashing to a standstill.  They are spent.  Powerless and tired…And ready to be corrected…ready to be reinterpreted altogether with a characteristic turn of the phrase, “You have heard it said…but I tell you…”

Alright…so all that has me thinking…

What context am I putting onto God?  And though you don’t know what you don’t know…here’s one that I’ve been chewing on: I think that I know Him as the angry God who is perpetually against.

Surely this must be my view of God, because it is certainly how I have approached each successive spiritual movement in my own life.  Angry at secularism and science I cling to rationalism and the retreatist sacred (5 years spent in that tomb).  Angry at the institution and organized way of relating to God I devolve into primitive church, I deconstruct Him, His people, and His words (8 years spent in that tomb). What am I now angry at?  All that I have done before? Materialism? Consumerism? The world system? The Empire of the West? Recently a friend said something to me in the passion of a spiritual moment we were sharing concerning greater revelation about God’s Kingdom, “it’s so exciting that rather than being against the institution (organized church) we now have something to really be against…the world system“…and yes…that’s true…I believed it when he said it and I still do…but why, oh why is my god always against something? Why is he always demanding the holocaust of burnt offering and the devastation of other tribes and cities?  Is that the only context I have for Him?

Recently I posted about not wanting to be critical in my blog posts…I wanted to forge ahead and create fresh and new without reference to the distasteful (which I feel seems to be in vogue).  Someone told me that they imagined it’s just easier to be critical on a blog…it requires less energy and less creativity…just log on to what someone else is doing and start picking it apart…tadah! You’ve created a successful and popular blog entry.  But that’s just life…it’s easier to deconstruct, easier to devalue, easier to criticize, easier to be against than for.

And in the end…maybe my perception of God isn’t as highly evolved as it should be…maybe I’m back there with these other folks drawing my sword and looking for a better battle ax to use against the “heathens” (whoever happens to be on the other side of me at that moment).

I don’t know…I’m just so weary of dreams whose only reference points are failed realities…it requires so little…

Perhaps YHWH here and now will close this section of my life as he did the Old Testament, with silence…with waiting…with painful and agonizing emptiness…

Perhaps only then will I be ready to hear Him and see Him as He is…God with us…Immanuel…”The kingdom of God has come!”

The Gift

A young man approaches Ghandi.

“Mahatma,  how can I know God?” he asks the old crinkled Indian guru.

Ghandi grabs the young man by the hair and drags him to a basin of water where he proceeds, with surprising force, to dunk the startled seeker.  Ghandi pulled him up briefly, only to plunge his head under several more times.  Finally, wrenching away from the death grasp, a heaving–gasping–soaked–nearly drowned young man collapses backwards in confusion.  He can barely breath and has clearly had a near death experience.

The old teacher stoops down and whispers, “When you are as desperate for God as you are now for breath, then you will see Him”.

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I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of days.  That dunking, that almost drowning provided the gift of breathing and the gift of desperation.

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A friend has recently gone through a devestating, faith shaking, experience of hurt and victimization.  To hear him talk though, you’d think he had met God face to face…not that there’s an absence of doubt, hurt, or confusion…because that’s all there…but rather his assurance of the Fathering of God is iron.

And he says to me, “I just feel like I’ve gone through this very dark place and now I want to live. I want to enjoy my kids–every moment with them, every laugh, every cuddle; I want to experience life fully, fiercely…I feel so much more alive than I ever have…”

It occurred to me as he said that to say: “…as though you’ve just come up from being under the water.”

And then he says: “What a gift…what a gift.”

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Desperation is the gift and tragedy or loss or suffering or shock is all to often the giver…sort of…

Thank you Lord for the gift of knowing you.

What might the prophetic look like today?

Have you been left desolate suburbs and city streets?

Have you been withered away and wrenched apart great arctic glacial flow?

Do you fail to gather grain?

Do your crops of corn and wheat and hops cease to grow?

Where are your customers you tower’s of economy and produce, McDonald’s and Starbuck’s?

Where are the sounds of laughter or children running on the playground?

The streets are crawling with disease

The houses are caving in while the naked shiver inside

Does the sun scorch the forests and set them endlessly on fire?

Does the rain ever let up or the floods leave any dry earth?

What of the cars that once gathered supply?

They, abandoned, bring together no more.

What of the planes that littered the sky?

They, like birds of prey, are now extinct. 

How?

Why? Why do the nations rage and war for water as for oil before it? Why do kings and presidents and chairmen tremble for fear—like rat’s scurrying about looking for scraps of bread or a pinch of meat? 

How?

Why? Why do mothers abandon their children as they are born so that an early death will save them from a long life?  Why do father’s venture out of their walled stockade homes and not return? Why do young men—even young men—lose hope?

“I gave you empty stomachs in all of your cities

and lack of nutrition or any bread

And yet you did not turn back to me!”

                                    Says the sovereign Lord.

“I sent plagues among you, like Egypt, I killed your young men with the sword. I struck your victory gardens and private vineyards. I withheld rain in one place and sent to much to another. People staggered from town to town for water and did not receive a drink…still you have not returned to me.”

                                    Says the sovereign Lord.

“What have we done?”  the people ask, the religious beg to know their grievance. “Didn’t we seek you daily? Didn’t we memorize your words? Didn’t we study about your truths? Didn’t we worship you endlessly? Didn’t we gather at the right times? Didn’t we celebrate your Holy Day’s? Weren’t we passionate about you? Was there ever a time that we didn’t speak your name? Haven’t you been our all and our everything? Isn’t it true that we’ve accepted all this from your hand? Didn’t we sacrifice our lives for each other? Didn’t we love our fellow believers enough?  Haven’t our songs been filled with limitless praise and our gestures been full of abandonment to you? What about our adoration, doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

 

                                    Says the sovereign Lord,

“I hate—I despised your religious get togethers…I cannot stand your meetings…Even though you have brought me the offerings of your labors and the deep worship of your heart…I will not accept them…I have no regard for them. Take away the noise of your songs! I will not listen to your guitars or your piano’s or your drums.   You have lifted up the Messenger and forgotten His message.  You have adored Me but not what I adore. 

“Let justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never failing stream!”

That’s your only way out. 

In that day I will restore your fallen cities. I will repair your broken walls and restore the ruins of your houses and will rebuild it as it was intended to be used…