“It is not for us to predict the day – but the day will come – when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious language, but liberating and redeeming—like Jesus’ language; so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power – the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing near. Till then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who pray and do right and wait for God’s own time.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Thoughts on the Day of Baptism, Letters and papers from prison.
This mountain range is called The Steeples. I love the name. Steeples point to the transcendent and remind us to raise our eyes above the dailiness of life to something greater.
At least that’s what I understand the architectural metaphor to mean.
Alas, I must admit that like a lot of other people who have been given the opportunity to forgive some of the institutions operating under many of those towers, at times disappointment causes me to lower my head in embarrassment. In fact, I avoided them for a quite a while. Buildings may express aspirations, but it is Christ himself living in the heart of his followers that enlivens those expressions. Without love they are simply stones, wood, nails, and glass. Without love there is more joy found in a field of wild grass than in a group of other members of the body of Christ.
Without love the steeples silently point to thin air.
Lovers point to Love.
“So I [Jesus] give you a new command: Love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you as My followers if you demonstrate your love to others.” (John 13:34,35)
Without love, it’s all a gong show.
What if I speak in the most elegant languages of people or in the exotic languages of the heavenly messengers, but I live without love? Well then, anything I say is like the clanging of brass or a crashing cymbal. What if I have the gift of prophecy, am blessed with knowledge and insight to all the mysteries, or what if my faith is strong enough to scoop a mountain from its bedrock, yet I live without love? If so, I am nothing. I could give all that I have to feed the poor, I could surrender my body to be burned as a martyr, but if I do not live in love, I gain nothing by my selfless acts. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 The Voice)
But, bless God, I have seen love starting to awaken in the big C Church (the one all believers are a part of and not just the folks who go to the building on the corner.) I have seen those who are willing to lay down their lives for others. I have seen less-than-perfect people get over themselves and rise to care for each other, to pray, to watch and wait, to give, to serve, to raise others up. I have seen, with my own eyes, folks who haven’t spoken to each other in years forgive and reconcile their differences. I have seen families torn apart by separation change and sacrifice for each other, encourage each other and see each other the way God sees them.
Only God could do this. This kind of love points to Him more than any building -or any mountain- ever could.
“If you don’t die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil Young.”
In school we learned that in the physical realm for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
I wonder if, in the spiritual realm, for every anxiety there is an equal and opposite consolation available.
I wonder if there is, hidden in every adversity, an opportunity for greater blessing.
I wonder if, in His grace, God allows some losses in our lives knowing that His justice requires the one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy to pay back many times over what he took.
I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him. (Romans 12:3 The Message)
On the last day, the biggest day of the festival, Jesus stood again and spoke aloud.
Jesus: If any of you is thirsty, come to Me and drink. If you believe in Me, the Hebrew Scriptures say that rivers of living water will flow from within you.
Jesus was referring to the realities of life in the Spirit made available to everyone who believes in Him…
