DROWNING IN OUR PLEASURES?
So, I'm off to Colombia this week to once again have my eyes and ears tuned to things beyond my own parcel of real estate! Inevitably these trips to other places always remind me of a couple necessary truths...
1. God has people who belong to him and are doing incredible things for Jesus everywhere!
2. People with less than me often live more free and selfless than me.
3. I am part of a culture that is drowning in it's own over-abundant pleasures.
Copy and paste this for more on this topic...
http://christianity.ca/faith/faith-and-thought/2006/11.001.html
4. I love being part of what God's doing in the world - including the part he is doing in me!
Where are you being tuned? Where are you being rescued from drowning?
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Thursday, November 09, 2006
TRUTH BE TOLD
Let your "yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no."
Those words of Jesus sound so simple, don't they? Of course I mean what I say and say what I mean - or do I? The discipline of truthfulness and truth-telling is very difficult in this age of spin.
It disturbs me how often I use my words to justify who I am, why I'm doing something or why I'm not doing something. It irks me that half-truths are easier to tell than full-truths. Many of us don't out-right lie, we just withhold or speak our minds behind the back of one who deserved the truth of our thoughts. Even husbands and wives can live in secret from one another - daring almost to live in hiding where they are to be most fully seen. To be a Christian is to know the truth that sets free and live the truth of that freedom.
How can we be the Church if we aren't full of truth? How can we be a body if the right hand deceives the left? It saddens me when distrust infects the body of Christ - when brothers and sisters reject the harmony created by our diversity for a hiddenness, a facade, a camoflouge, a less than truthful co-existence that not only denies the truth, but actually fears it. I think that is actually more to the point - we fear the truth because to speak truth is to come out of hiding and then we have to completely trust God to embrace us and we throw ourselves upon the grace of others with nowhere left to run. In living truthfully we are exposed bringing to life that nightmare of standing in your underwear before the gathered throng.
I pray for more truthfulness in me - more "yes" and "no" that comes from His Truth alive in me.
Let your "yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no."
Those words of Jesus sound so simple, don't they? Of course I mean what I say and say what I mean - or do I? The discipline of truthfulness and truth-telling is very difficult in this age of spin.
It disturbs me how often I use my words to justify who I am, why I'm doing something or why I'm not doing something. It irks me that half-truths are easier to tell than full-truths. Many of us don't out-right lie, we just withhold or speak our minds behind the back of one who deserved the truth of our thoughts. Even husbands and wives can live in secret from one another - daring almost to live in hiding where they are to be most fully seen. To be a Christian is to know the truth that sets free and live the truth of that freedom.
How can we be the Church if we aren't full of truth? How can we be a body if the right hand deceives the left? It saddens me when distrust infects the body of Christ - when brothers and sisters reject the harmony created by our diversity for a hiddenness, a facade, a camoflouge, a less than truthful co-existence that not only denies the truth, but actually fears it. I think that is actually more to the point - we fear the truth because to speak truth is to come out of hiding and then we have to completely trust God to embrace us and we throw ourselves upon the grace of others with nowhere left to run. In living truthfully we are exposed bringing to life that nightmare of standing in your underwear before the gathered throng.
I pray for more truthfulness in me - more "yes" and "no" that comes from His Truth alive in me.
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