"Allegiance...................."

”The incarnation is not a thirty-three year experiment by God is history, a one-shot, physical incursion into our lives. The incarnation began with Jesus and it has never stopped. The ascension of Jesus did not end, nor fundamentally change the incarnation. God’s physical body is still among us. God is still present, as physical and as real today as God was in the historical Jesus. God still has skin, human skin, and physically walks on this earth just as Jesus did. In a certain manner of speaking, it is true to say that, at the ascension, the physical body of Jesus left this earth, but the body of Christ did not. God’s incarnational presence among us continues as before.” – Rolheiser, “The Holy Longing”

When I look at our flag, I do not see merely red, white, and blue, but those who gave themselves to the utmost defending that for which it stands. I do not see stars and stripes, but the basic principles originally set down in a preamble to a constitution. If our politicians appear to have forgotten values brought forth out of, not just a holy Book, but an inner well that connects us all, and if, indeed, much of our population no longer anchors its soul in the Gospel, that doesn’t change the horizontal umbilical cord connecting us as a nation. I’ve got to believe such “hook in our belly” is what took responders up into buildings about to crumble that day. When we lose respect for each other, when all that matters is “me”, we deny the very roots of our existence. Insert Christ and one can improve on that; but the addition is a personal choice, not a demand. Not God “bless” America; rather God “save” America from ourselves. God save a Church that, in many ways, seems to have either lost or confused that which the above author states. He and I could yet hold different views of what “incarnational presence among us” actually means, but he goes on to say that the Body of Christ “is not something that represents Him, but something that is Him.” Faith is not an adoption of moral works. It is an infusion of the resurrection in terms of our knowing His reality in all that we are and attempt. The journey is a stumble down the path, our humanity still part of the package; but any outreach, any witness, must come forth from a vertical flow that spills over into another man’s willingness to receive. The “sword” belongs to the Holy Ghost. May He defend us from our enemies and search our hearts with the same blade……

"Noise......................."

I listened on the internet to a sermon preached the night before. Second night. Another packed-out revival crowd. The visiting “evangelist” took his theme from the Book of Genesis, comparing the story of Joseph to Christ in our present-day circumstances. In many ways, the events recorded are similar to what Jesus endured. No actual crucifixion; but certainly rejection; and the coat of many colors signifying authority unto the one assigned it and then equating to hope lost when its blood-stained fabric was shown as proof of its owner’s demise. Easy to understand the congregation’s enthusiastic applause and shouts of “Glory!”, “Amen!” when Jacob, sitting on Egypt’s throne was likened unto the Lord’s resurrection. It was a great message. No mention, however, was given to the more than four hundred years of bondage God’s people would know before His deliverance would part the Red Sea, nor the four more decades required in the wilderness trying to purge them of what life in Goshen had stamped into their identity. Just saying. While there’s often, no doubt, a good meal placed before us in the sanctuary, the pastor anointed and speaking from his heart, it doesn’t mean the whole enchilada has been served. You don’t get the entire Book in thirty minutes. Manna found on Sunday needs to be renewed on Monday. The journey demands returning to the well, digging in the depths, an anchor-line that holds you when nothing makes much sense. This isn’t like learning Algebra. You don’t graduate from Bible class with a diploma to prove how well you have solved the enigma and can explain it unto others. In truth, the gulf between Heaven and Earth was spanned through a connection in our “belly”, not our head. Too much room for error up there………

Bifocals.........................."

Sunday evening service began a four-night homecoming revival and the sanctuary, including the balcony, was packed like a tin can full of sardines. People were still arriving thirty minutes into the worship portion, some expecting and demanding front row seating. If the usher wasn’t wrong, mistaking an “ugly baby” for something else, one woman even lugged a hand-held carrier in with her occupied by a small dog. Individual chairs were squeezed into nooks and crannies, clogging aisle to the point of no quick emergency escape should the unforeseen occur. Leaving early only made it clear to me that “humanity” remains “humanity” no matter where one encounters it. The parking lot was a maze of vehicles left in any available space. Lanes were blocked, presenting an enigma that took me a few minutes to solve even though the exit was not that far from my car. To each their own; but that’s not my idea of “church”. I wonder, though, knowing that each of us can and do filter life through our own individual history, personality, genetics, and probably several more adjustable knobs. We see what we want to see and all too often miss what is right in front of us. The night before, with the Youth Detention Center scheduled for Sunday morning, my mind yet had no clear direction in so far as how to approach the kids with what was on my heart. Hoping to acquire a Bible verse through some solitude with Him, I unleashed the pup into the back yard and walked toward a bench there beneath some trees. Spook was running in circles around me, his hyper energy too much for this old man. Then, there on the ground about to meet me in my next step, was about a fourteen inch garter snake, frozen in its awareness of me, and me now frozen in the sudden realization of possible encounter. The dog jumped over it at least four or five times, yet never saw it, too wrapped up in his own silliness. Finally I grabbed the little white maniac, holding him by his neck, putting his face no more than a few inches from the reptile, but still gained in no way any awareness on his part of what was immediately before him. Gaining his freedom, he circled me once before plopping himself down right on top of that which he had not yet discovered and laid there panting for thirty seconds or so. When he finally trotted off for more mischief, the poor snake was in coils wondering what whale had held him hostage. I shook my head and continued for my original destination and something, someone, inside me whispered “Here’s what you were wanting.” Indeed, it was. The boys in my assigned unit laughed at the story, began to ask questions; and, for forty-five minutes we explored the Gospel with the Holy Ghost. This is ever a stumble down the path, with or without Christ. What we gain in Him is an anchor-line and the occasional poke of His rod and staff to awaken us to reality……..

"Reality....................."

"Whatever way you put it, I am here only because my world is here. When I took my first breath, my world was born with me. When I die, my world dies with me. In other words, I wasn't born into a world that was already here before me, nor do I live simply as one individual among millions of other individuals, nor do I leave everything behind to live on after me. People live thinking of themselves as members of a group or society. However, this isn't really true. Actually, I bring my own world into existence, live it out, and take it with me when I die." - Kosho Uchiyama

A visit to “Whiskey River” yesterday discovered the above quote, the thoughts expressed within it, coincidently, being what has entertained my mind the past few days. This author has confused world” with “life”, in my opinion, one’s departure from all that exists in no way eliminating all else. One’s perception of “the whole enchilada”, of course, might well be singular and subject to being lost if not written down in some manner; and maybe that’s really why some of us are drawn to scribble our identity, our reasoning and our fantasies, down on paper in some form or fashion. In truth, however, each of us possess no more than what our soul and our spirit have determined it to be and none of us have captured the whole as it really is. While I have never agreed with Rene Descartes, the man who once said “I think; therefore I am”, at least in the translation of it that all of society has assigned such phrase, yet there is, within it, a certain “ring of reality” wherein it can be said that each of us hold our own particular image of this journey and walk within it as we see it. Having eyes, vision is only as we determine it; having ears, hearing requires revelation to first penetrate our brains, not just pass through our ears,this why Jesus told Nicodemus that, before a man could “understand” and “enter into” the kingdom of God, he must be “born-again”. Without a reconnection, an internal “hook-up” whereby the Holy Spirit becomes available unto us, there is no direction, no purpose, just a stumble down a path that we, ourselves, determine, a zig-zag that stays with us even after rebirth in as much as we choose our will to His. The anchor-line is there to tug at our hearts. Stagger is a matter of learning that we can trust His reins to correct us as we go……

"Farming.........................."

Having talked with the Detention Center boys last Sunday on pursuing Christ “through the bull’s-eye”, via that inner point of connection established within us by the work of the Cross, my intention this week is to simply pose the following question: “Why is it easier to accept an unexplained universe, but hard to find faith in a tangible Creator?” If some would suggest the problem, in this country, at least, is the result of social media (music, movies, and television), along with an evolved corrupted educational system, having brainwashed our children, I tend to define it more in Biblical perspective: “For the time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God." Making such a statement, however, must also include the truth that we can’t just blame the situation, as it exists, on this present-day bunch, the thrust of the Gospel message, it seems to me, lost long ago. Then, again, maybe it is as it was meant to be: the reality of Christ “in” me being that treasure hidden in a field, and the Church, not the world, being that soil discussed in the Parable of the Sower. Now, there’s a shocker! An examination of the ecclesiastical institution as a whole, however, proves us with a Jesus who comes in various shapes and sizes, each with His own list of “Thou-shalt”s and “Thou-shalt-not”s, each with no real explanation for the claims we make concerning Him, simply a dictate that it’s either “Believe or go to hell”. We raise our children on “Father Abraham had many sons”, vacation Bible school, and a religious format; and then wonder why those who stay have no real depth. The “Pearl of Great Price” is right there in our midst, but all we possess in so far as sharing Him with others is doctrinal dogma passed from generation to generation. Tradition may alter it all somewhat as we go, but seed sown able to take root only in as much as it finds Him. Whether we’re ministering to kids locked up in a jail cell or attending their weekly Youth service, His resurrection must come forth. No reproduction. No self-inflated ego behind the pulpit. It is He who saves; and the procedure is a life-long process……..

"Visitation.................."

Exercising on my treadmill and needing a change of pace Monday morning (that phrase utilized not to suggest any altering of my gait), I switched from another Ravi Zacharias sermon to Jimmy Swaggart preaching on the present day status of the Church. No doubt there are those who would find him nobody to be addressing that particular subject, but separating the man from the message is something the journey taught me long ago. If humanity, as it exists in all of us, suspends grace, then the Gospel has lost its power. Redemption is just a word we, ourselves, have created, defined by our terms, not His. We’re good at that, it seems to me; and, over forty-two years down the road, while I find myself still seated within the ranks of Pentecost, enough has changed along the way, in both my thinking and theirs, that it’s no longer the same experience, service-wise. I watch from afar, content to wait on Him, wanting the “connection”, not just emotional exuberance. In other words, faith is not a matter of how much “grunt” one puts into their “name it and claim it”, praise should come up out of an inner well if it’s genuine, and worship is a surrender acknowledging His omnipotence. Anything less is just “us”. No foul assigned if freedom is permitted; no restriction necessary if common sense is observed; and, to be honest, pursuit rather than atrophy seems to me a good thing. Knowing Him in a “fusion”, however, whether to be used in a gift of the Spirit or to simply be immersed in the reality of all He is, doesn’t require any physical act. There is “stirring of the water”, a warmth that touches you from two flames becomes one, a bit of a breeze, perhaps, that takes you unaware; and suddenly there is no denying His presence meeting you right where you are. Healing. Assurance. Hope for whatever. Holiness is just another name for the Holy Ghost; and I’ve seen Him so thick over a congregation that people had to run for either the altar or the back door, one. It’s been a long time since such a manifestation has so enveloped us, so long that few are left who remember such occasions. My heart cries to know it again……..

"Fusion.........................."

For the first time in a long time, even though we were there occupying another church’s spot on the schedule, my group had the Youth Detention Center alone, as it fell to us, anointed, appointed, and split into three cell blocks, Liberty and Debi with the girls, Tony and I ministering, each to a different boys’ unit. My own “congregation” amounted to seven individuals, all in their late teens, less than half claiming any prior encounter with Christianity beyond what came to them here while incarcerated. Mostly I sat at that front table, talking to them, unable to get much dialog, questions or otherwise, yet, to a lad, all of them soaking up what I had to share. Never did there come any point of real conviction. Nonetheless, we laughed together at some experiences out of my own life, got serious with the Gospel, and enough seed was sown for the Holy Ghost to use when buddies weren’t there beside them, when evening “lights out” left them looking at the ceiling of their cell, when life as they knew sit began to be mentally pondered. Pushing with a “raise your hand if you want this” has never been where I operate, having seen too many accept the moment only to lose roots in the journey afterwards. “Peddling my totem pole” isn’t my passion. There is a reality one can acquire, a “hook in one’s belly” that secures the soul on high, an anchor-line relationship we might know in the midst of the storm. Tonight, in our evening service, while the sanctuary crowd, en masse, did not find itself submersed in the Spirit, at one point a handful of people stepped out to express that which was bubbling up within them, running, shouting, dancing in the altar area. It was Tom Smith, though, who connected with me. Never, in all the years I’ve known him, has he so emerged from the sidelines, quiet, humble, a worker, not just a “pew-member”. Now, before my eyes, he walked the aisles, hands trembling, gratitude pouring from his heart, worship who he was, not just part of the program. It fed my soul. This singularity was where I walked in at forty-some years ago. If much has changed along the way, this, at least, remains: Heaven and earth yet come together in Him. That is my focus. That I pursue......