God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
–Reinhold Niebuhr

A great quote by G.K.Chesterton:

It’s one thing to celebrate God’s hand in our lives, but its another thing, an essential thing, to join our hands with His, as His partners. The reason that God is not just snapping His fingers to fix the world is because from the beginning His plan was to rule this world in partnership with us, for better or worse, as hard as that is. Jesus has come as Adam restored, and we are restored with Him; we now have the opportunity to rule in the creation as we were created to, as we ought to. And the kind of ruling that this involves is humility, servanthood, kindness, compassion, honesty, etc.

If I am going to be a Jesus-follower, I need to be intentional about relating with Jesus, interacting with Him through my day to day experience. What makes this hard is that the conversation seems one-sided. I do not hear Him speak, I only ‘sense’ His direction or guidance of wisdom. It’s a thought or feeling inside of me that seems to be from Him. But how do I confirm this? How do I know its not just my own thoughts and feelings, or Satan misleading me?

The best answer I can come up with is His example. I look to the gospels especially for insight into how Jesus operated. Though it doesn’t answer all of my questions, it does help shape my general thinking and behaviour, and gives me enough to go on when I do not have all the answers I need or want. Continue reading Jesus-shaped living

Lord, I need to be honest. Reading 2 Samuel is not proving to be inspiring for my faith. It is actually causing me to struggle with how I view the bible. It also challenges how I think about God. That’s not a bad thing, struggling and being challenged can be a good thing. But I am having a hard time reconciling what I see and hear in You, and what I see in the old testament especially.

For the longest time I have read the bible with the assumption, ‘when in doubt, give God the benefit of the doubt’. In other words, if something seems wrong in what I read, there must be something I do not understand, and therefore if I knew all the facts, it would make more sense. The assumption is that You are good, so if something in the bible makes You look not good, the problem is in my thinking or ignorance, not in You.

I will continue to do this, Lord. But I just wanted to be honest and say that I am having doubts again. If I were not a christian and I picked up this book, I would be shocked at what I read. There is some twisted stuff in here, also stuff about You. Claims are made for God, about God, that make me cringe. Again, this is mostly from the old testament. I would much rather spend time reading the gospels, than reading the old testament.

Oh well, I press on. Somehow, You want to teach me something here. Thank You for helping me find some glimpses of good in the hard passages. And thank You for letting me be born now, in this time and place. I am not sure I could handle living in the old testament times.

The story of Chuck, the homeless man who collects treasures in his shopping cart, continues. Here is the next part of the story. Each week I will add a new chapter to the story, with the hope that we can become treasure-seekers like him. Please note, this is told as if it is a true story, but it is not!

I saw the homeless man a few days later, and this time I had some time to chat with him.

‘Hey, remember me? We talked about your treasures a few days ago.’

‘I remember’, he said, smiling. Continue reading Chuck’s story (Part 2)

Last Sunday I began the story of Chuck, the homeless man who collects treasures in his shopping cart. Below is part 1 of this story. Each week I will add a new chapter to the story, with the hope that we can become treasure-seekers like him.

I saw him downtown pushing a grocery cart loaded with stuff, junk really. I wasn’t going to say anything to him, but as I passed by, he looked at me and asked, ‘Scuse me sir, do you have the time?’

I noticed then that he was adjusting the time on a clock in his hands. ‘Its 3:30′, I answered, seeing the time on the town hall clock tower down the street. That’s all I was going to say, but what he said next caught my attention.

‘Thanks sir. I want to remember the exact moment God gave me the time of day’, and he set the clock to 3:30.

Intrigued, though still hesitant to talk with him, I asked, ‘ah, how did He do that?’

And so began a conversation I’ll never forget. Continue reading Chuck’s story (Part 1)

By Adrian Plass

When I became a Christian I said, Lord, now fill me in,
Tell me what I’ll suffer in this world of shame and sin.
He said, Your body may be killed, and left to rot and stink,
Do you still want to follow me? I said, Amen! – I think.
I think Amen, Amen I think, I think I say Amen,
I’m not completely sure, can you just run through that again?
You say my body may be killed and left to rot and stink,
Well, yes, that sounds teriffic, Lord, I say Amen – I think. Continue reading Amen???

Remember the post with the cartoon two weeks ago entitled “consumer religion”. And remember the great discussion it provoked? Well one person spent some time reflecting on how better to frame the picture, how to pain Jesus community as He would desire it to be. Linda Wielinga adapted an image used by the CRWRC (Christian Reformed World Relief Committee) for its world hunger emphasis called “One Table”. She added some balloon comments.
Notice how everyone has an equal place at the table? Notice how each one is giving themselves in worship, and to one another? No one person stands out from the others. Doesn’t this seem so much more like the community that Jesus had in mind?

Now the question is, how would you set up a ‘sanctuary’ (I dislike that word) to better experience this kind of community? Maybe more like a living room, or a dining room?