Monday, August 31, 2009

Imagine...

My faith has so many unique qualities about it that it never ceases to amaze me. There is wisdom and insight and things that stretch even the wildest of imaginations in christianity. In the spectrum of world religions it really does make it difficult at times to see why others would want to believe in anything else! Sounds like I am bragging doesn’t it... well just maybe I am and I am doing it as one who is boasting in his Lord, and that is part of a what I believe is a healthy christian life. For too long now we christians have been told to hush up about our marvelous faith, we've been told our ideals, philosophies and values do not belong in the public arena, we've been marginalized by savvy spin-doctors and script writers from TV and movies, from tricksy authors of books and brash radio announcers and, tragically, we've been really good at doing what were told! We've forgotten the words of both the Older and Newer Testaments... Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.
Last night our church hosted something we call a Prayer Pinnacle. An evening of meditation on God and his word, a time to sing worship songs that stir the soul, a place where prayer with other likeminded believers could take place uninterrupted. It was delightful to say the least. One of the things that so impressed me about the Lord last night was his ability to stir the imagination while in prayer. In fact, I would say that the bible pushes us to pray with our imaginations fully engaged, to let the word of God and the Holy Spirit leave stretch marks on imaginations, to pray with total confidence that whatever we ask of our God it will inevitably be smaller than what the Lord had in mind for us.
God is good all the time and his desire to lead us into greater goodness knows no limits. His love for us is described as abundant, his joy over us is described as exceeding, his mercy for us is described as new every morning and faithfulness toward us is described as great!
If that was all you knew about anyone else we would boast about them to the high heavens. If that was all we knew about the Lord there is enough here to keep our imaginations going for quite some time. Truth is, this little bit of information doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths are beyond tracing out...
now let your imaginations soar…
and for heaven’s sake brag a little bit more about him today…
what’s not to brag about?

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

The Thinker


Romans 2:4 in the NASB bible reads this way... "Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience..." I suppose there could be a double meaning to the words "think lightly" here. One meaning could be to distain or hold in contempt or just not care the other meaning could be more literal, to just not give much thought to it. My challenge fell around the second meaning this morning. Not enough thought.
Thinking takes time. When we think about something intentionally we need space in our daily lives to do it. I believe that thinking time is on its death bed in our western culture. Thinking takes silence, that is the absence of noise, of T.V., telephones, text messages, DVD's, radio, CD's and MP3's and other people. Where can I go to flee from the presence of all these distractions?
Thinking needs a place. A quiet, comfortable, secluded place. A private place for solitude so that I can think undisturbed.
I think we think too little. We've lost the art of solitude. We've almost lost the capacity to think and spend intentional time thinking.
We must get it back or we will think too lightly which will lead to the first meaning. To hold in contempt; to just not care… and we breathe our last breath… and then it will be too late to think.