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?

Obviously there is no one word that can capture how God is. But I do wonder sometimes whether our dominant thought about God is helpful or harmful – to us and to others.
Do we primarily think of God as mad or sad… or joy-filled?
This is not an ‘either/or’ choice, but a question of God’s primary character.
The following is written by Wayne Jacobsen (co-author of The Shack), and made me think about how I primarily view God.
Be sure about this, how we view God will also show itself in how people primarily experience us. We will ‘leak’ the same quality in our relations with others – primarily mad, sad, or joy-filled.

“I’ve heard that there are two kinds of Christians in the world,” the young woman said perched on the couch of a home I visited lately. “People either see God as mad or sad.” On a normal day, that would have sounded fine to me. Either he is mad at our sin and wants to blast the world into oblivion, or he is sad over our sin and hopes to rescue us. Of those two, I’d choose the latter.

Continue reading how we view God

I recently read a quote about “community” and its impact on us. This relates to my struggle with ‘church’, but in a positive way. This quote shows how community can function positively. It seems to me this is a clue for when ‘church’ (or better, Jesus community) is working well:

“Living in community I discovered who I was. I discovered also that the truth will set me free, and so there’s the gradual realization about what it means to be human. To be human is that capacity to love which is the phenomenal reality that we can give life to people; we can transform people by our attentiveness, by our love, and they can transform us. It is a whole question of giving life and receiving life, but also to discover how broken we are.” -Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche

Community happens beyond ‘church’, it is somewhere we can share with anyone, everyone, if we are open. We can love everyone (yes, says Jesus, even our enemies) and we can receive from them. If we take the time to look at ourselves, we will discover how broken we are. And how that makes us like everyone else.

How can this apply to ‘church’? How can we experience community like this together?

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained. [Mahatma Gandhi]