God, Authority, the Bible--all the big stuff

For Christianity, The Bible makes claims about God. The Bible is both human written and just as much, a book made by God. It is not that the claims are true just because the Bible says so, I think, but because they are true the Bible says them. The Bible is so powerful because it says so much about God, but it does so in a very objective way. Yes, we may see it through our experiences, and people may misinterpret it, but it has authority, not for what it is, but for who is in it and behind it. Without it and therefore God, as a backbone of our reality as we submit to a Creator God, Christianity is mainly reduced to something sort of trite. Maybe it is then more or less about culture, or being good, or experience, or tradition. These aren't very compelling forces for coming under Lordship, and they have little to do with what changed the world in the first century A.D. For believers in Jesus of the Bible, the message of Jesus, is a message of belief and reconciliation with God. It is a message of love, and devotion to God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we concede on these points, then the fuel is spent. We have something rather empty.

Sometimes we like to have our reference point be ourselves, like our choices, and authority begin through perspective, which is really an impossible starting point. The lure and promise of modernity (we are still living in the gasps of it after all) was really the autonomous human--apart from God--saved by reason. Life then is choices, human directed, not God directed. In large part, modernity won the day. Christianity tried to meet it on its terms, and forgot about starting with God as authority.

The beauty of Theology sometimes missed by point-by-point systematics (Christianity's attempt at heading off modernity) is the narrative type which the CREATION-FALL-REDEMPTION-CONSUMMATION story that runs through the scriptures, like a stream.

This is another glorious thing about the Bible--Theology... and YES--experience, as we take in God through the story he tells us through it.

the flu and talks with God

It's amazing how the flu can cloud your head and you forget what wellness felt like once.

I thought I had run a head of the flu this year, barely escaped it, and then it caught me by the tip of my toe and felled me.

I don't suppose sleep is so sweet until that first good rest on the night we are well. I have been contemplating rest and what that means. . . in every sense. Mind... body . . .soul . . .(spirit) There is a giving up to do for it.

We forget about that. We want to demand for rest. Originally we come to the table, with two fists, in a kind of picket, with grievances. We barter. We deserve it. Then we beg. Finally we give in. Then we get it after-all.

I suppose I got sick in order to rest. I just didn't know it. I sleep and sleep. I have to. But my mind has to slow down too, and my expectations.

I think God is saying, "What are you thinking? Have you been trying to out do me?"

And I'm saying, " I guess I have..."

and he's just laughing... not in a mean way... just laughing because he knows this is my schtick. Just wave of the hand, and a chuckle that goes along with that kind of laugh, until I come to my senses. We're just walking. Just walking.

He says, "I'm in no hurry with you.'

And I'm saying... "I'm beginning to figure that out."

And He says, like he's got all day, "Okay, let's go."

So I get up, pick up my stuff to get ready, and he says,

"No, just leave that. . ."

Blessed

Blessed is the word coming out in much of my "lectio" readings. How I may be blessed, that God wants this for me, or how it tend to elude me... I am blessed. My God has made me thus. It is when I live in this and abide in this I see myself as such.