Gravel

Greenwood Street was unpaved when I lived on it. Since it was in the city limits, the city was responsible for maintaining it. This amounted to running a road grader over it once a year, and respreading the gravel over it evenly. Of course, this need to be done to keep deep ruts from forming in the roadbed, and to eliminate pot holes.

For me on my bike, this was always a difficult time, because riding a bicycle on a street with gravel ranging in size from peas to baseballs can be a real challenge, I never looked forward to the visit of the road grader. However, after a week or so, car traffice would push the larger stones to the side or the middle, forming smoother tracks that would were better for biking, and all was well in the universe again.

Sometimes God runs a road grader through our lives, disrupting the routine, making it hard for us to ride our bikes the way we're used to. But those disruptions can keep the tracks from becoming ruts.

Shadows, Part Deux

When is the church not the people? In once sense, if the people we're talking about are Christians, they are always the church. It's just that, sometimes we aren't the church in the sense we think we are.

What, then, is the church, and what is it not? Luke tells us in Acts that the church is what God adds his people to. It's a God thing, that's important.

I'm going to make some bold statements now—at least they're bold for me—without any of the softening comments that I am tempted to add.

- The church is not a human institution; it is a divine one.

- The church cannot be reformed or restored by humans. In other words, if restoration is needed, it is the humans that need restoring.

- Humans do not determine who is and who is not one of God's children; God does, and while he is just, he is also more gracious and merciful than we tend to be.

- In battle, turning on and attacking members of one's own army is treason.

C.S. Lewis said that we live in a land of shadows; this is not the ultimate reality. We shouldn't fight each other over shadows, but should urge each other on to the light. The church is people who belong to God, and who are leaving the shadows and walking toward the Light.

Shadows

I've been listening to _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ by Robert Pirisg in audio form in my car. Yea, I know I'm about three decades behind on this one, but I still haven't read _War and Peace_ yet, either. I have read Aeschylus, Aristotle, Chesterton, Conrad, Khayyam, Thoreau, and Wilde, though, so I have at least a little literary edumacation. Oh, and Twain, lots of Twain.

Anyway, about a third of the way in, the author has an interesting analysis of what a university really is, in the context of a state legislature's attempt to both control what is being taught and "dumb down" academic standards to allow anyone to have a college degree. He distinguishes between the university as an institution rooted in the Western history as opposed to the university as a state-funded institution that owns buildings and pays professors.

He starts with an illustration of a former Catholic church building that is now used as a bar, complete with neon beer sign over the doorway. Locals are outraged because of the perceived desecration, but the Catholic official on the spot tells them they've completely misunderstood what the church is. It is not the building, and that particular building is no longer used by the church. There is no desecration involved—at least not in the sense people think.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering? ("I think so, Brain, but if we give peas a chance, won't the lima beans feel left out?")

I grew up hearing that "the church is not the building, the church is the people." Of course, this doesn't really stand up to linguistic analysis, as English is not Greek, "church" is not really a one-for-one translation of "ekklesia", and language evolves anyway. But the point is a valid one, I think, even if we don't take it far enough.

The fact is, sometimes the people aren't the church, either. Now, I have to figure out what I mean by that. More later.

P.S. I love the title "Shadows", it sounds so deep.

Do You Know Where You're Going (To)?

The song "Do You Know Where You're Going To" has always annoyed me because of it's bad grammar. But, it asks a question Mom might have asked as I headed out the door on Greenwood Street. Where are you going, who will you be with, and when will you be home? She wouldn't let me go some places, or do some things. She was sometimes incredibly mean, and I love her for it.

Mike Cope has great thoughts along these lines on his blog.

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do

Joe Walsh knew what he was singing about. In Exodus, over and over again the Israelites complain. They complain about the food, about the living conditions, about Moses and Aaron. Miriam and Aaron complain about Moses. Never mind what wonders they had seen God do: the plagues, the release from slavery, the parting of the Red Sea, manna. Never mind that God had blessed them with the riches of their Egyptian neighbors.

This isn't limited to the ancient Israelites. What is it about humans that makes us want to complain? Why do we miss what God us done for us? Maybe Philippians 4 is where we need to spend more time.

Sobering

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Flower Patterns

A child offers her father a flower to show her love for him, and the father punishes her for not following the pattern of showing love that he hid in a document. I forget whose illustration that is, but it's good. This one is mine: two children offer their father flowers. One gives a daisy, the other a violet, and he punishes them for disunity.

We would rightly say that such a father had serious problems, and his family was dysfunctional. Why, then, do we think God works that way? Why do we think he is looking for technicalities to keep us out of Heaven? After all, this is the God who sacrificed his beloved, one and only Son to save us.

My ear was blistered last night by a brother who told me, rather violently, by phone, that I and others with me have strayed away from the pattern of the early church--and are risking judgment--by having worship services that are not identical. When I challenged him to show me the pattern that he asserted existed in the Jerusalem church in Acts, he hung up. It made me sad for him, as he's missing the point of the story.

God wants our worship, not our obsessive-compulsive searches for hidden codes of conduct.