Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Animal Kingdom
Sometimes, I pretend I am intelligent. Just like a monkey, I can walk on 2 legs. I can smile. Eat bananas. I can raise children and live in community. I can scream and make noise and get people’s attention. I am a highly developed species and function very well on my own. Just don’t ask me about grace. What it means to live forgiven. How to discern right from wrong; or love sacrificially. If you do, I will most likely screech at your judgmental intolerance and bang you on the head with my banana.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
know
So I feel as though I should post something, but my creative juices are not flowing. Therefore, I am posting a paper I wrote for class on "Know" as a functional quality. If you feel like reading a paper, enjoy! If not, I shall not hold it against you. It's a journaly-responsey-personalish paper so it's nothing terribly hard to read. I shall also try to write something shorter sometime and put it up for your perusal. P.S. This paper is not due until Saturday so if you have any helpful suggestions in the next couple days they are most welcome! (or after that too I suppose. :-)
The year before I moved from Ontario to Philadelphia was in some ways frantic one. I was working multiple jobs, involved with church and friends, and I felt like my home was simply a place I crashed, complained, and ran off to do the next thing. I have an excellent relationship with my family and I was very thankfully for how kind they were to me in all the craziness, though I know that I took it for granted. I realized just how much I had taken it for granted when I moved away for the year and missed them terribly.
The surprising thing was, as we emailed and called and wrote letters I began to realize just how little I knew these people who were my family. I loved them, lived alongside them all my life and of course saw all the best and worst of them, but they were simply “my family.” They were there, they always had been and they always would be. I could count on them. This is beautiful in itself, but even more beautiful was the deepening realization that occurred as I got to know them again from a distance. They were individuals with individual lives, struggles, happiness and sorrow. They were given to me, and I to them because this is how God created people to operate. As a family.
As I look around my church I began to see the same thing. These people have been my people for almost as long as I can remember, and I have always “known” them. But they always existed inside of my perspective, serving whatever purpose was useful to my kingdom of one. I loved them deeply. I cared about them deeply, but I did not understand them as servants of God. I spoke words of counsel, encouragement, and admonishment, but I spoke what was helpful to me, assuming that their problems were the same as mine. I debated, explained and taught, not because I wanted to understand my people, but because I wanted them to understand me. I wanted them to think like me, learn the things I had learned, and love the things that I loved. Loosely translated, I loved me and I thought they should too.
You may have noticed that I have been speaking in the past tense. This is not because I have somehow gotten over this struggle or miraculously been transformed into a truly selfless person. Every day I struggle with wanting to be known and approved of. Every day I manipulate people into filling these “needs” of mine. I want to know them because I want to fit them into my kingdom.
Psalm 139 blows this boat of mine right out of the water. It tells me things that radically transform the way I “know.” 1) I am completely and fully known. “Oh Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.” Every word, every thought, every emotion is completely known and understood by Him. I do not need to seek from people what they cannot give me. God has given it already. I am His. I am known. 2) He knows every single creature the same way He knows me. They are my people, but even more, they are His people. This is not my kingdom, it is His kingdom. We are family. We are servants walking together under our Savior and Shepherd. Having experienced His grace, and only through its power, I seek to know. Not because I seek to gain, but instead I desire to point them to Him and experience with them the power of His grace to change lives. As a church, we are a body and we need to know each other. When one part hurts, we all need to hurt. We need to laugh together, cry together and serve together. We need to look together outside of the church and seek to know those people also. Not the way they know themselves, but the way Christ knows them. We need to listen, to ask questions, to hear their stories and feel the weight of their burdens so that when they see us they will see Christ. May we seek to know them, that they may feel the power of His knowledge. May we show them grace, and show them Him.
The year before I moved from Ontario to Philadelphia was in some ways frantic one. I was working multiple jobs, involved with church and friends, and I felt like my home was simply a place I crashed, complained, and ran off to do the next thing. I have an excellent relationship with my family and I was very thankfully for how kind they were to me in all the craziness, though I know that I took it for granted. I realized just how much I had taken it for granted when I moved away for the year and missed them terribly.
The surprising thing was, as we emailed and called and wrote letters I began to realize just how little I knew these people who were my family. I loved them, lived alongside them all my life and of course saw all the best and worst of them, but they were simply “my family.” They were there, they always had been and they always would be. I could count on them. This is beautiful in itself, but even more beautiful was the deepening realization that occurred as I got to know them again from a distance. They were individuals with individual lives, struggles, happiness and sorrow. They were given to me, and I to them because this is how God created people to operate. As a family.
As I look around my church I began to see the same thing. These people have been my people for almost as long as I can remember, and I have always “known” them. But they always existed inside of my perspective, serving whatever purpose was useful to my kingdom of one. I loved them deeply. I cared about them deeply, but I did not understand them as servants of God. I spoke words of counsel, encouragement, and admonishment, but I spoke what was helpful to me, assuming that their problems were the same as mine. I debated, explained and taught, not because I wanted to understand my people, but because I wanted them to understand me. I wanted them to think like me, learn the things I had learned, and love the things that I loved. Loosely translated, I loved me and I thought they should too.
You may have noticed that I have been speaking in the past tense. This is not because I have somehow gotten over this struggle or miraculously been transformed into a truly selfless person. Every day I struggle with wanting to be known and approved of. Every day I manipulate people into filling these “needs” of mine. I want to know them because I want to fit them into my kingdom.
Psalm 139 blows this boat of mine right out of the water. It tells me things that radically transform the way I “know.” 1) I am completely and fully known. “Oh Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.” Every word, every thought, every emotion is completely known and understood by Him. I do not need to seek from people what they cannot give me. God has given it already. I am His. I am known. 2) He knows every single creature the same way He knows me. They are my people, but even more, they are His people. This is not my kingdom, it is His kingdom. We are family. We are servants walking together under our Savior and Shepherd. Having experienced His grace, and only through its power, I seek to know. Not because I seek to gain, but instead I desire to point them to Him and experience with them the power of His grace to change lives. As a church, we are a body and we need to know each other. When one part hurts, we all need to hurt. We need to laugh together, cry together and serve together. We need to look together outside of the church and seek to know those people also. Not the way they know themselves, but the way Christ knows them. We need to listen, to ask questions, to hear their stories and feel the weight of their burdens so that when they see us they will see Christ. May we seek to know them, that they may feel the power of His knowledge. May we show them grace, and show them Him.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
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