Parakalein

I had stopped blogging for over a year.

In some ways the well, in me, seemed to have dried up.  The hope and dreams of better days and better ways for the church and the world had grown hopeless and helpless in my mind.

I began doing less and enjoying less of life.

I discovered something old and fresh:

It is time to start new and fresh.   That is what I have decided.  That God has something and somewhere for  me to serve them.  Lots have changed but one thing remains true:

I believe in God.  The God I believe in is bigger than all the limited and limitless ways we speak of them.  They are one and many at the same time.  We limit God when we say this is true and that is not, this is good and that is bad, you are wrong and I am right!

I was at an unusual conference entitled "Pastor's Epic Failure Conference" in Pennsylvania a few years ago.   One of the speakers put on the screen a question of where is God on issues of morality, sexuality, faith statements. Debates sprang up in the room about different theologies, dogmas, decrees, etc. As he attempted to bring the discussion to an end he asked where is God in all of this.  Is God here? there?
My mind flashed to scripture in Matthew 24 that says when people say here is Christ or there is Christ don't believe it for no one know the time and place of his coming.

I suggested that he needed to draw a circle around the whole mess and say, God is there embracing it all loving us all into "One".  God's arms I am convinced are wrapped around the whole world wanting the whole world to come to peace in the way of love by wrapping arms of love around us all regardless of anything.

What if out of respect to ourselves we all said our statements of faith/belief regardless of religious identities but then added one last phrase, like:

Lastly, I believe that nothing I believe should separate me, make me feel superior to, or have me striving against anything you believe as we embrace the theology of love and peace, the anthropology of the forces of good and evil,  the discipline of integrity and honor, the characteristics of compassion and kindness, the qualities of courage and respect, and the practice of mutual respect, humility, and love.

Religion has so often been part of the cruelty and hostility in the world, I desire to sow seeds for a new age of spirituality leading us to a new kind of faith that is non-sectarian, a new kind of hope that is universal, and a new kind of love that is "willing to sacrifice as the prelude to true freedom".  Freedom is not when I have nothing left to lose but when I have everything to lose and everything to gain if I am willing to sacrifice!!

I desire to gift to my grandchildren and their children and their children not a "Christian World" but a world that embraces the Christian teaching of, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Jesus" who being in very nature God, was willingly sacrificed by the God who is one with him, on the cross not because it was just or right but because it leads us to the way to justice and righteousness.  God honors all who learn the road of willingness to sacrifice and serve as the royal road to peace in the world.