Friday, October 30, 2009
A Hymn to God the Father
What's That Stench? Part 2
Thursday, October 29, 2009
What's That Stench? Part 1: Even the Righteous Man Sins
But think about it for a moment. For Noah and company, what must it have been like to be shut up for months with a host of animals and with one another, with no escape or respite? Imagine the constant labor to meet all the needs, and then...imagine the stench that must have permeated the place!
"The wise man has discovered the ineradicable sinfulness of man and he has learned to deal with people in the light of this truth. Too often, we live in a dream world. We are surprised to discover that someone we love and respect is a sinner. He or she fails us. It may be our husband or wife, our elder or pastor, our good friend or neighbor. Sooner or later you will discover that he, like you, is a sinner. He will fail you. He will surprise you." (Table in the Mist, J.J. Meyers)
In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer also reminds us: "The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous." Upon entering the Christian community, he says, "we surely must be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better."
So...what IS that stench? It's you and me, living side-by-side, sinning in front of and against one another and stinkin' up the place. We might as well get used to it. But HOW do we learn to live in that reality without being continually discouraged and disappointed by the paltry Image of Christ in our brothers? How do we live with the disillusionment and pain caused by these sinners among us?
Next time...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wordsmith Wednesday
Give Thanks?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Life Together
Monday, October 26, 2009
Leisurely Woman's Daybook 16
I am thinking...that I'm nearly ready to begin playing Christmas music!
I am wearing...SOCKS and a sweatshirt...ahhh...one of the great and varied joys of fall. I love fall.
I am hearing...Mendelssohn's Octet in E-flat Major.
I am reading...Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, in which he encourages us to abandon our dreams and ideals concerning Christian community and to replace them with reality...that we are only and truly bound together in fellowship by faith in Jesus Christ, not by our experience with one another.
Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together - the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.
I am creating...more greeting cards this week:
Friday, October 23, 2009
I Can See Clearly Now
In the meantime, let me introduce you to what, in the world of fashion eyewear, is known as "Geek Chic." (that doesn't work if you pronounce it like my darling friend, Nancy..."chick"! Love you, Nanc!)
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I Have a Dream 6
The stringed instruments that fascinate me the most are the dobro, the banjo, and the mandolin. Mandolin would be my first choice. So, what is stopping me? I have this fear of failure...plus I wonder if I am driven enough at this point in my life to push myself to conquer the thing.
Chris Thile (pronounced "teeley") of Nickel Creek has been a profound influence on my love of mandolin music. Here's a brief clip of him performing "Ode to a Butterfly," one of his many original compositions. Doesn't hearing him make you wish YOU could play the mandolin too?
Monday, October 19, 2009
Leisurely Woman's Daybook 15
Friday, October 16, 2009
First Lines
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Bon Appetit!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wordsmith Wednesday
Monday, October 12, 2009
Leisurely Woman's Daybook 14
From the kitchen...time for Thai spices and a pot of Red Curry Bisque.
A favorite thing...our church's annual Harvest Party. Tons of fun, food and frivolity in the backwoods of freakin' Eureka (see, Ros...I love Eureka AND Ladue!).
Plans for my week...um...same as last week. Cause...I...um...never DID any of that stuff I said I was gonna do.
A photo/video I am sharing...the last time my boys dressed up for the Harvest Party in 2006.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Rain Outside...Drought Inside
The Church's answer is categorical and uncompromising, and it is this: that Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God "by whom all things were made." He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God" - he was God.
If this is dull, what in heaven's name is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him "meek and mild," and recommended him as a fitting household pet for curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggests a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites. He referred to King Herod as "that fox"; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a "gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners"; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people's pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either. But he had "a daily beauty in his life that made us ugly," and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without him. So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness.
Perhaps the drama is played out now, and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world's history those words might have been spoken with complete conviction, and that was upon the eve of the Resurrection.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Leisurely Woman's Daybook 13
I am thankful...that missionary friends in the Phillipines, Kim & John Piet and their orphans, were spared any serious trouble from typhoon Parma.