Words of Fire Blog

Wednesday's Word: A Suffering Savior, A Saving Faith

3/20/2013

I have been studying the passion narratives in Mark this Lenten season so that I can retell the stories. Entering these stories has been gut wrenching.  Jesus bore all this for us?  How could people, including the religious establishment, have been so cruel?
"Some spit on Him..and beat Him." Mark 14:65

Jesus' agony. Jesus' suffering. Jesus' absolute loneliness break my heart.
"They all forsook Him and fled." Mark 14:50

His disciples left him to suffer, to be beaten, to be ridiculed, and to die alone.
"Even the temple police took Him and slapped Him." Mark 14:65

We want to turn our heads, we want to be like the disciples and flee for more pleasant pastures as fast as our legs can carry us.
"Now a certain young man having a linen cloth wrapped around his naked body, was following Him. they caught hold of Him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked." Mark 14:51-52

But the passion shouldn't allow us to turn our backs. We cannot turn away: we
look in the face of the suffering Savior and we are able to face our own pain,
our own loneliness.

May we reflect our suffering Savior:  Let us not look away.  Let us weep with the hurting, comfort the lonely and embrace the left out, just as our Savior did for us.

Wednesday's Word: Single Sailing

6/20/2012

Cruise ships are full of activity: meet the Shrek family for breakfast. Learn how to Samba after lunch. Play bingo before dinner. Smoke cigars.  Dance to Michael Jackson tunes after the midnight buffet.  Shop. Play cards. Join a tournament.  Learn how to mix drinks.  Watch a movie. Climb a rock wall.  Get the picture?

What surprised me about this cruise was the “single and solo travelers'” get together.   There was one scheduled each day of my 7 day experience.  The place? The bar. Single travelers can’t meet, it seems,
unless they are in a place that serves massive quantities of alcohol. There was no similar gathering for women, the military or hot sauce aficionados. The meetings did not take place in the gym, the theatre or one of the ship’s numerous restaurants.  The singles met in the bar.

I did not join the party.  I felt too much like a closet anthropologist, watching a species’ habits in order to report on them later.

What do cruise ships, churches, and your maternal grandmother think that all singles want? They all assume that we want to meet other singles—ultimately, so that we won’t remain single. There must be more to the single life than trying to get out of it.

Jesus tells us to come to Him when we are feeling lonely, disconnected and burdened. He promises us that we will find what we need in Him. We won’t get a hook up, but we will learn about ourselves when we seek Him.

Singles, it seems to me, need to feel connected to someone, to something greater, in order to feel alive and valued. We run the risk of being self absorbed and selfish in our interests, in the allocation of our talents, in the use of our gifts and our time.  The world desperately needs committed singles. Those of us who do not have children have an almost unlimited amount of time to devote to our soup kitchens, our prisons, our hospitals, our nursing homes.  We can reach out to the lonely, the left out and the lost.

Our churches (and our cruise lines) have the right idea about connecting us, but not just to bars.  We need to connect to our destiny--and what a glorious adventure that will be.

Bon voyage!

A God Who Tells Tales

3/2/2012

My God is a storyteller. It's no mistake, then, that the Bible I read is mostly stories: Stories that make us laugh and cry, gasp and giggle. We read of kings and shepherds, prophets and prostitutes, warriors and widows.  We see how God relates to people.

Take, for example, the story of Jesus and the woman at the well.  (John 4) Instead of condemning or judging the woman, Jesus speaks to her. Here is a God who accepts me. Likewise, when Jesus sees the widow of Nain grieving over the body of her child, the story tells us that He "had compassion" for her. So, He raises her only son from the dead (Luke 7). Here is a God who understands my pain and is moved by my tears. My Bible's stories help me to understand my God.

It's not suprising, is it, that we learn about others by hearing their stories? We learn about families and failures, loves and losses. We gain friends because we are able to share our stories with others.   In the same way, we grow closer to God through reading His stories.

Why is it, then, that when we hear God's stories, we want to explain them, not just experience them? We want to place them into theological structures: christology, soteriology, trinitarianism, ecclesiology, pneumotology. But our God doesn't want us to dissect his heart, He wants us to feel it.

Why not try it? Read God's stories. Experience His pain and ponder His passion. Hear His heart beat.

You will find that it beats in time with your own.

Wednesday's Word: A Suffering Savior, A Saving Faith

Wednesday's Word: Single Sailing

A God Who Tells Tales

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