control

Faith Like a Child

/ JJS / 2 Comments

1482981970032.jpg

Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 2; 147:1-11, Isaiah 49:13-23, Isaiah 54:1-13, Matthew 18:1-14

When his disciples asked Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” he called over a child and replied, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” 

What trappings of adulthood cause us to stumble? Pride? Possessions? Whatever they are, we need to cut them from our lives like the offending hand or eye Jesus warned us about.

What does it mean to be humble like a child? It means realizing we are completely dependent on God for our well-being. Everything we have – treasure, talents, even time – is a gift from God. It also means admitting we have little if any control of anything beyond our own behavior. Ego and guilt can easily convince us we are somehow responsible for fixing the world’s problems, when the truth is most of what we can do is clean up our own rooms. We shouldn’t use that as an excuse to duck responsibility, but as a guide to creating healthy perspectives. Insisting on our own way, when that way comes from the narrow understanding of our own experience, can create one of those “stumbling blocks” Jesus warned against. We are to welcome each other as children, because we are all the children of our Creator.

Maybe being child-like grants us a little license to be annoying. Most children go through a “Why?” stage, where every answer they receive is met with another round of “Why?” They are eager to understand the world, and don’t settle for the first answer they receive. We should be just as eager to pepper God with the tough questions as many times as we need to. Some of them will never be answered to our satisfaction, but what we learn by pursuing those answers is invaluable. Be wary of spiritual leaders who have simple answers but discourage tough questions.

Child-like faith isn’t about naivete or ignorance, but about realizing it is more important to be humble than to be in control.

To read other perspectives on this passage from Matthew see The One and the Ninety-Nine and Hands, Eyes, and Butterflies.

Comfort: You don’t have to control everything.

Challenge: Don’t try to control everything.

Prayer: Creator God, I am but a child before You. Thank you for all you do for me. Amen.

Discussion: What does child-like faith mean to you?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll  have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!

Present Imperfect

/ JJS / Leave a comment

1466443785675.jpg

Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 135; 145, Numbers 16:1-19, Romans 3:21-31, Matthew 19:13-22

The story of the rich young man is generally reduced to the beginning when the man asked how to be good, and the end when he left grieving because Jesus instructed him to sell all his many possessions and follow him. We commonly interpret this story to mean discipleship requires abandoning everything but Christ. This understanding is consistent with parables like the pearl of great price, but the middle of the story is the meat in the sandwich which provides more insight to sink our teeth into.

The man’s original question was: “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus responded: “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.” In other words: wrong question, buddy. Jesus followed with: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” When the man asked which commandments (the full Mosaic law had hundreds), Jesus named a few common sense ones under the general category of “love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said he kept them all, yet asked what he still lacked.

Sense a theme? The man sought a formula for salvation. He persisted in insisting his salvation would be his own accomplishment. We are saved by grace and not deeds, but the rich young man couldn’t comprehend a system where he was not in control of his own destiny.

Jesus’s final words to the man begin with: “If you wish to be perfect …” Ouch! Now the man had a completely avoidable burden of perfection laid on him. No wonder he grieved!

What if the man had been satisfied with “Love your neighbor as yourself?” If he could have accepted there wasn’t a salvation equation, but instead unearned grace, Jesus could have stopped right there.

Like the rich young man, we struggle to let go of that one last possession: a need for control. We claim grace, but insist on formulaic rules that give us an illusion of power.

“If you wish to be perfect” is not an introduction to advice on attaining perfection, but an indictment of any belief that we can or need to be. Faith is not an excuse to sin, but life under the law leads to grief. Life under faith leads to grace.

Comfort: God doesn’t expect perfection.

Challenge: Neither should we.

Prayer: God of Mercy, thank you for the gift of unearned grace. Teach me to extend that love to others. Amen.

Discussion: What rules do you have trouble letting go?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people.

Curveballs

/ JJS / 1 Comment

1457561126801

Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 5; 147:1-11, Genesis 50:15-26, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, Mark 8:11-26

Imagine you are Jesus. You’ve just miraculously fed four thousand people with no more than a few loaves and fishes. Not long before that you fed a greater crowd with fewer resources. Now you are in a boat with your disciples trying to use a parable about yeast to warn them about the pharisees and Herod. After a few minutes of pondering what you mean, they decide you are upset because … there is only one loaf of bread in the boat. If you were Jesus, would you have been a little frustrated that no one could seem to get past the lack of bread?

Are we wiser than the disciples? Do we treat every challenge like it’s the first one, or do we learn from our faith journey? No matter how many difficulties we’ve experienced, when new ones arise it can be hard to remember what we’ve survived. If God has seen us through illness, addiction, or betrayal are we able to trust He will see us through the newest crisis on the horizon? It’s not always easy, especially when we face the unfamiliar. Our first reaction is usually fear. But as the disciples eventually learned, trust in God can displace the fear. Trust may not completely eliminate the fear – we are only human! – but it changes our understanding of it. The trick is to remember that to God, this struggle is no worse than the ones that have come before.

Even the “best” lives are not free of challenges. As our faith matures, we begin to recognize huge challenges that didn’t register as important before. Issues of injustice, for example, become more obvious and less acceptable to us. If we can accept that life will never stop throwing us curveballs, that we have not failed because our lives aren’t perfected, maybe we can stop being surprised and devastated by them. If we are more in control of our reactions, we can surrender our troubles to God that much sooner. Some days we may ask how the bread could possibly be enough, but God is leading us to the bigger questions.

Comfort: You are not going through anything that God can’t see you through.

Challenge: When you are frightened by challenges, say prayers of thanks for all the situations God has already brought you through.

Prayer: Loving God, thank you for being with me in all situations. Forgive me when my fear interrupts my faith. Teach me to trust in you always. Amen.

Discussion: What things upset or frighten you because you can’t control them? Are you able to turn them over to God?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!

Baby Steps

/ JJS / Leave a comment

game-figure-598036_1920

Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 143; 147:12-20, 1 Kings 3:16-28, Acts 27:27-44, Mark 14:12-26

A famous story about King Solomon’s wisdom involves two women who bore sons within days of each other. After one of the sons died, one woman claimed the other had switched the infants while she slept. Each insisted the living child was her own. Solomon proposed to treat the matter like any other property dispute by physically dividing the infant in half. One woman immediately relinquished her claim so the child might live; the other agreed to his decision. Solomon declared the true mother to be the woman most concerned with the child’s survival.

There is a big difference between loving something, and loving to own it.

Is there anything we claim to love which we are willing to see destroyed rather than let it continue existing outside our control? Does the church come to mind? The innumerable denominations of the Christian church exist because people would rather divide over doctrine than live without control. When we sing “One Bread, One Body” is it more longing than truth?

Then there is public space – the civic and social realm in which we all interact. Americans say we value freedom of speech and religion, but our behavior doesn’t always align with those ideals. For most of our history, the default expectation of religion in the public space was Christian (and usually a homogeneous kind of Christian). As the public space grows more diverse – the inevitable outcome of the American experiment – some people find they don’t care to share it. From enacting laws that cross into theocracy to shutting down speech we find offensive, we seem determined to strangle freedoms rather than let them survive outside our control.

Like the grieving mother, we are more vulnerable to demanding control when we grieve. If we grieve the passing of a way of life we treasured, perhaps what we really grieve is not having our control challenged. If we grieve a past that left us voiceless, we can’t enforce silence and call it reconciliation.

Not everything we love, once let go, fully returns to us. If that stops us from loving it, maybe we never really did.

Comfort: You don’t have to control everything. 

Challenge: You don’t have to control everything.

Prayer: God of Mercy, unite your children in love. Amen. 

Discussion: Have you ever left a community over a disagreement? Have you ever been forced out because of a disagreement? How are they similar and how are they different?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!

Unlocked

/ JJS / Leave a comment

Old Key

Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 135; 145, Isaiah 63:1-6, 1 Timothy 1:1-17, Mark 11:1-11

Paul had many words of advice for his young colleague Timothy, a budding evangelist carrying on Paul’s mission to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles. He warned Timothy to speak out against the heresies that were gaining popularity among the church at Ephesus.  One of these heresies was Gnosticism, or the belief that a few special people were privileged to learn secret knowledge about the true nature of God and Christ. Some people also obsessed over genealogies and myths because they believed these contained hidden messages and information.

We don’t really have Gnostic cults today, but there are still those who insist the Bible somehow contains secret knowledge that waits to be unlocked. We can read about alleged “Bible codes” which reveal ambiguous messages that can be found in any sufficiently long text, or special prayers that are cobbled together like magic spells to achieve specific results. Some churches even have levels of access that are supposedly revealed with spiritual maturity but seem directly related to the size of one’s donations.

These distractions from the true Gospel message have one thing in common: the illusion of control. For some people, knowing the secret codes gives them a sense of power over their own lives or the lives of others. In some cases, it even gives them a sense of  power over God, like having the PIN to a divine ATM.

One of the beauties of the Gospel is that it is free and accessible to all who would accept it. There is no monetary price of admission and no inner circle to penetrate. It is worth our lifelong study, and it is certainly to our benefit to seek wisdom from others who have studied it, but true bearers of the Gospel know it demands to be shared indiscriminately.

Some people – from conspiracy theorists to serious theologians – get so caught up in controlling the Gospel message that they forget to surrender to it. Of course we want to understand the Bible, but Jesus didn’t invite us to become Bible trivia experts; he invited us to follow him in loving one another.

Comfort: Jesus is eager to be revealed to you, not hiding in code.

Challenge: Don’t be seduced by the fads of faith.

Prayer: Thank you God for revealing yourself to us through Christ. Amen.

Discussion: What things do you try to control?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group , visit comfortandchallenge.tumblr.com, or follow @comf_and_chall on Twitter. You’ll  have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!