The Lost Message of Jesus

"What is God's Kingdom like? What story can I use to explain it?...It's like a seed sown, shooting up and growing quietly" (Mark 4:30). Jesus constantly undermined the nationalistic fervour and demand for open revolt, warfare or revolution that so many Jews hankered after. There would be no violent upheavals. The Kingdom is about a quiet, social and spiritual revolution, not a bloody and political one.

But more than that it is to be a place of flourishing for the oppressed and marginalized rather than the realm of continual self-interest for the already privileged. It was ordinary, poverty-stricken (shalom denied) and oppressed Jewish people that desperately needed God to do something for them, and to do it now!

So, it is that Jesus begins his three years of teaching with the explicit declaration that the Kingdom, the inbreaking shalom of God, had finally arrived. Some might not recognize it, for its shape was different to everybody's expectations. It was different, however, not because it promised less, but rather because it delivered far more.

-Steve Chalke (pages 38-39)

"We live with the idea that the gospel's chief aim is to make us fit for heaven, when in reality Jesus' message is focused on making citizens and recipients of the Kingdom of God today...As the Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon put it, 'A little faith will take you to heaven, but I pray for the kind of faith that will bring heaven to earth.' Authentic Christian faith isn't so much about ordering your private world as ordering the whole world...'The truth is,' he said (an African preacher who has a twist on prosperity preaching), 'the Bible doesn't preach prosperity in our narrow twenty-first century understanding of the word. But what it does teach is the shalom of God. Something that is far richer, deeper and broader than the temporary and shallow happiness that economic prosperity gives people'...Shalom, a word that appears over two hundred and fifty times in the Hebrew Scriptures, is a kaleidoscopic vision of what life is like when lived in line with God's agenda. It incorporates contentment, health, justice, liberation, fulfillment, freedom and hope...shalom is the equipping of a person so they can cope with life's suffering and sorrows while basking in the beauty and joys it brings. Shalom is about comprehensive well-being and flourishing at every level of life - socially, economically, spiritually and politically."

- Steve Chalke (Page 36-37)

A Heretic's Guide to Eternity

In this Spencer Burke's book he writes, " Art Kleiner said a 'heretic is someone who sees a truth that contradicts the conventional wisdom of the institution and remains loyal to both entities.'"

Spence himself writes on page 21, "I believe that the message of Jesus, once loosed from its religious confines, has the potential to contribute to the global yearning for the sacred and the divine. I believe that there is hope for the heretic, for God's grace is a much bigger gift than we've ever imagined."

Magic and Sunshine

With your magic
My adventure recoils
only to unfold a quest

Create, I cannot for you
Nothing speaks truth
Clear enough to you

Only satiate me
with your voice

Carry me
with your voice

It's filled
with a century's wisdom

With the tenderness
Of a newborn's coo

I would rather write
These words with my tongue

My eyes forming the lines
My hands the good inkwell

Your magic is deep
it centers me

Fear of idols
that don't understand me

And tears
that don't trust

But it's magic
because it reaches further

And I've found that
when it truly divides me

It's only returning home.

Why do I send it away?

If it's magic, it's free
And when it's free - you are home.

seasons of plee and glee

Down to the water

I brought my name

Up to the mountain

I carried my shame

But in this moment

The leaves have fallen from my tree

The fruit trodden under a season of glee.

Dependence to Interdepence and the one in between

In a conversation with Phil Nellis (www.elnellis.blogspot.com) we chatted about wanting to have our own place versus having a place to share with another family. I really began to understand that having your own place and being independent is where I'm at right now. I'm living with my aunt and uncle which is awesome and a blessing, but there is an underlying desire to move out and have my own space. I saw my sister go through this and many others. It's like we just want a place that we call the shots and that we're responsible for ultimately, without strings attached. That is the desire of a lot of people. It is not a wrong desire but after listening to Phil, who has had his own place for a long time, he longed for a bigger backyard for his son, more space for his family and their interests, a better cell signal, etc... and so they are thinking of getting a house together with another family that has the same desires. What an interesting move. I'm definitely not there but as Phil described why, it began to make sense and I agreed with the whole concept.

We finally distilled it down to a three part movement, dependence, independence and interdependence. If interdependence is the goal, there is a need then to move through these movements but at the same time, there is no need to skip them or move quickly through them. It seems that at the beginning of our lives, we do need an environment that we can depend upon someone else to substantiate and account for - some paternalism and maternalism to get us started.

Then we need a time of independence and establishing our castle walls. This seems to be a time of leaving in order to embrace one's own identity, values, boundaries, life goals and direction, etc... These things need the time and space that they require in order to be established and so there needs to be some time given to allowing that process to work out. The paternalistic and maternalistic structures that birthed the genesis of one's identity need to step back almost radically yet incrementally while the transition and overlap takes place between the two stages of dependence and independence. We need to leave the table in order to find our own table for a time, but the next transition is as important and needed - interdependence.

Moving from Independence to Interdependence is the direction that we all need to take eventually if we are to take the leap into life's dreams and goals because there are many more pieces of the puzzle than ours to fit together in order for the big picture to be seen and accomplished. This stage could well describe the idea behind mutual submission in one's spousal relationship. You bring yourself with your table to that person's self with their table and begin to fit your tables together to see if they fit, then if they do, you cut dovetail joints and glue them together and put a white table cloth overtop to form one table. This process can also take place with married couples and other married couples as Phil and Ruth are doing. They are interdependently sharing space with another family to benefit the whole experience but not in a way that loses their identity to another or challenges their values - they are seeing if their table could fit for a time with another couple's table and then they 'push' them together and put a table cloth over for a time, but not indefinitely, just a time of interdependence. It's beautiful.

I believe this process describes the history of denominationalism, countries, families, friendships, organizations, companies, etc...

Just because it has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that it has to be done a certain way,

I heard a quote given by a Jewish Rabbi (I think) name Mordecai Kaplin - "Tradition should have a vote, but not a veto."

I like it, but what is tradition, only the living faith of the dead. So what is wrong with tradition - nothing, but traditionalism, that is, the dead faith of the living, has many problems. Let it go and move on and know you're blessed and will be blessed again.

Questions for Dependence, Independence and Interdependence:

1. What creates the need for each step?
2. What creates the need to emerge from each step?
3. How does that happen?
4. Why should it happen?

Hypocrites Unite

"You can't always practice what you preach but you can always preach what you practice."

"Unfulfilled Dreams"

"And I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable."

-Martin Luther King Jr. (1968 in "Unfulfilled Dreams")

My favorite comforts

1. Bed

2. Bath

3. Beers (of all kinds)

4. Books

5. Babe (girlfriend that is)

Glory cannot be reduced

This is an email correspondence between a professor of mine about the relationship between God and the nations and our role in saving the world and why missions needs a more dynamic and inexhaustible view of God's glory that is not only transcendent but also...



Nathan,

Thanks for your note, especially the expression of your aspirations. It is great to love people, and don't forget that you have to have seen the glory of God since to love God, so you have to see the glory of these nations to love them.

Warmly,
Dr. VanGemeren




Dr. VanGemeren,

If I can remember, I would love to speak to you about what you just wrote. How much do we allow the dignity of Creation to be our motivation for redeeming it alongside of God as participators in the Kingdom of Heaven? Mother Theresa always served people because she literally saw them as Christ and so she was serving Christ. I don't agree with this and think that we should see the glory of creation and that God receives glory when the dignity of ourselves, others, and the creation is restored. I also believe that God made a "good" Creation but that He put us in the world and gave us the creation mandate to make the world better by spreading over the whole earth. Since we are inherently image bearers, we would spread his glory just by our presence in different sectors of the globe among other reasons. Jonathan Edwards had a view of the God-World relationship like this and having read that and some other thoughts that I have had, I sensed that the reason for the missional mandate in reaching the nations is to go and unearth the God given dignity of these nations and to let them encounter Christ in the way they are supposed to. And that when they encounter the Gospel, there will be flavors and nuances of the Gospel that will come to life that have never come to life before and it will reflect another prism of the radiance of God's glory from within that culture, language, ethnic worship expression, etc... I feel that we are only to introduce the Gospel through Scripture, service, our presence and ultimately our love and then let them encounter the Spirit and take hold of Christ, Scripture and then leave it in their hands and hearts after some time with a guiding hand for some time after but not to interfere, only to warn and give counsel. This way they will appropriate faith in YHWH in a very contextualized and unique way. Once that takes place it seems that they will begin doing theology for themselves and the flavor that their culture and language has will be infused with the Gospel and in turn bring the Gospel to life in a way that it has not before. The Gospel therefore has a reciprocal relationship to culture and people group distinctives, one that allows each to come to life more than before they encountered each other. It won't be a new teaching but the Gospel instead is a dynamic life giving message of transformation that has central teachings to its core but that as it encounters different cultures and languages that it will be unfolded more and more and we will be able to learn more of who God is through that new prism being uncovered. So ultimately, there is so much more to dynamically discover about God as He encounters different cultures and even generations as they encounter Him for the first time.

This is one way in which the glory of God is radiated from within the nations. It is in their encounter with Him and their embrace and appropriation of His Gospel. So ultimately the Gospel grows in its ability to be expressed and illuminated as it encounters different nations, tribes, people groups, etc... As "Wisdom" is a vast and complex idea/approach to life with and under God's reign that can never be exhausted, so also is the "Gospel" as an approach to redeeming all things (Col. 1:19:20) and it's definition will never be able to be reduced because it is also alive and continually dynamic as it receives its source from within the Trinity.

So when one culture encounters another culture with the Gospel the point is to call the receiving culture to encounter the Gospel with as little cultural baggage from the culture that has brought the Gospel so that the receiving culture can appropriate the Message of Scripture as succinctly and closely to their cultural/linguistic/geographical/historical/emerging/ethnic identity as possible while still maintaining that which is helpful from the culture of those who brought the Message. To impose one's own culture in any way then, is a indirect or direct denouncement of that which God has called good in Creation. I don't assume that all of culture is good, but that the core identity of each culture within a people group is good as it related being a part of the created order. We were all created the same but when God confused the languages at Babel and separated the nations, I believe that He always meant to make an array of different people groups to display his creative diversity.

Therefore culture isn't completely holy but it should be redeemed and allowed to be an expression of the God's character and desire to reveal the intricate complexity and diversity of his Self revelation to all flesh. Therefore I assume that God's glory is latent or at least truncated and unexpressed as freely as it could be as of yet in the life, language and culture of unreached people groups. As a result, when we go out on mission, we are actually going to uncover aspects of God's prismic glory as the Gospel uncovers and unleashes it in the people groups it encounters. The call of the prophet Isaiah demonstrates this in Isaiah 6 where God proclaims that His glory fills the whole earth.

I hope this makes sense. I want to write on this and it fits with what you wrote to me about seeing the glory of the nations in order to love them. That glory I believe was given to them by God so that it could be unraveled and unleashed through redeemed human connections and an encounter with the Word of God, the life of Christ and the Spirit in the life of a community. Blessings!

Blessed to be a blessing,
Nathan Smith

Returning

I’d rather eat crumbs at your table
Than feast at their plate.

When will the lost come in?
They say come before it’s too late

I’d rather beat drums of my ancestors
Than play that piano of hate

When will our hearts break for them?
They say it has to be their fate.

We’re all hungry for world peace
But they’d rather hold onto the pie
Instead of just their own piece.

I see brokenness everywhere
The stench of a painful wound that’s bare
I see beauty in somebody else’s hair
But beauty is not plenty enough to share.

I’d rather eat crumbs at your table
Than feast at their plate of fable

When will the lost come in?
“I wish we’d all been ready”
Sounds more like a manipulation

I want to go down with this ship
I’m not the captain but you created it
It’s a lie to think that we can leave
Just because we’re regenerate

When will our hearts break for the breaking of it?
Because mountains are hearing the voice of the eagle returning

The sand hears the stream that’s yearning
The well has the wealth of a sky’s sharp burning

And they say that’s it a good time
Because the eagles, they’re returning

I’d rather eat the crumbs from your table
Than feast at the plate of our fable
Because the eagles they’re returning

Written by Nathan (sort of)

explanacion

Greetings to readers!

My latest posts have been heavy as a friend has pointed out and though my friend doesn't think that it's wrong to write, my friend did say that I should write something a little more lighter next time. I don't think about how light or heavy the stuff I write is - I just have been writing from my heart lately and even though it may not be agreeable to some, I'm figuring it all out. I only ask that you do not be patient with me, patronize me or pass it off as a rebellious phase that never got to grow up. If any of those are true or needed, it will become clear eventually. I am committed to following a man who used cynicism with harshness and abusive language, loving language and kindness with truth and it was all with a profound wisdom that knew there was a time for everything under the sun. More than anything else it was his words that got him nailed to the cross. I don't ever want to project my image of Christ as having more to do with me than actually who he is, but as we all do at times, I know I have and I know I will. It's part of our identification with him and is a necessary process in order to find the true Christ and our true selves. John Calvin said in the introduction to his Institutes, that as we discover who God is, we discover ourselves and vice versa - the two cannot be separated - they happen organically together at the same time. So as I search my self out and find out who this guy is through the years and search out the person of the Trinity, Christ will help me see more of who I really am and who He is. That's a messy process but I'd rather get as far along in the process and deal with the mess openly than hide it than follow a worn path of security that leads in circles around myself. I want to break trail and take each step onto the soil of my soul, soil that has never been traversed or touched and yet has an anxious longing groan to be discovered, waiting for me to be revealed to me and to the world.

That's a metaphor but with where I feel like God is taking me, I can't know where it will be next, therefore metaphors help me explain something I don't know much about, but it is more real to me than most things are. I just know that I need to leave a lot of where I came from to find it and like a man who searches - his first home is never really his home anymore - he needs to make a new home.

I will write lightly at times, but it will never be forced or from pressure on the outside or inside. I am writing...and will continue to do so. If what I write resonates with you, please be careful with how resonation raptures the conscience with the soul at times, but it's your soul and your conscience, no one elses. If what I write offends you, there are a lot of blogs out there but if you don't mind the offense, please write to me and let me know why, but only if you truly want to hear back from me. If you'd rather just unload upon me - I understand - but one person can't absorb that much anger - spread it out, see a counselor (I do, it's pretty helpful), talk to your friends, write a book, but please don't unload on one person - we're not made with the constitution to absorb that much - only Christ is.

Thank you for your visit and please come again - but please know that this isn't a McBlog - It isn't a franchise and there's very little predictability, though there is nothing wrong with ritual, tradition and fixed expectations as long as they bow out to what they can't account for or control, not bow down to, just bow out to. The stage belongs to the world.

Sincerely and sorrowfully,
Nathan Smith

To take a knee (careful this one has bad words and images in it)

When asked by a very smart and moral theologian what I believe and how I can back it up, I said,


“I claim the 5th and ignorance - except that stupid people are really intelligence masked behind the carnival mirror of innocence and the projection screen of Naivetéwood - the place where dreams come true, magic is made and the little man can become the big man only to realize that those dreams and that magic are really just stupid and that “I didn’t know [hm, hm, hm] would be so small” and “being big doesn’t matter” – because “that’s what she said...”

Big pimpin,’
Nathancito

p.s. because what the world needs now is love, loads of it, craploads of it and we think we is dah only ones who can get it, give it and then own it because we is it?.... It is really weird when a human puts the #@$& from a bull in their mouth and then like wants you to ignore the smell and just put a close pin on your nose while they sling their feces of faith on your face and on your clothes - like you wanted to be there to begin with. Somebody hand me a napkin and give that dude a breath mint... oh crap, I was speaking metaphors and forgot to remember that we all need to carry napkins and breath mints, so pick your favorite flavor because you got it for life, just ask your wife and don’t forget to listen to what “she said.”

Remember that it’s not really size of the rudder but the motion in the ocean that gets the boat to the udder side. So when He says "let's go to the other side", He really means, "wake me up when we get there." So I guess we don’t really need “bigger” people – just more people who love big, no matter how big you is. That’s what she said – mother Theresa that is, but she said it because He said it – Jesus that is, oh we of little faith. Some say "Go big or go home," but Jesus says, "go big until I bring you home and don't worry, I ain't really sleepin'."

WWJD – tell you to take the #@&$ out of your mouth, make some fuel for your foreign friends without faces. Feces can actually be useful when it doesn’t come out of my mouth or your mouth – it’s disgusting to picture that but it’s even more disgusting that it’s true, but you're right, I have no right to hate the playa or the game, I just want us to stop playing games. Sorry for the obvious digression – it just helps me to recognize our oblivious oppression and as Jay-z pleads, “Lord, forgive me for my brash delivery, but I remember vividly what these streets did to me, so picture me, let these clowns knitpick at me, paint me like a picaney...” – what’s a pickaney, I don’t know, but I do know that when we all confess and finally take a knee, the top of your head will be level with everybody as well as me, and everybody means everybody – not just eazin'-jello-coal Christianity. Please, quit acting like the referee, it's time to take a knee, look up and see that the only one left standing is the Coach.


written by Nathan (sort of)



“The Best way to waste your life... is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for details. Report.. Don’t participate...”
-Chuck Palahniuk

“The neurosis in which the search for safety takes its clearest form is in the compulsive-obsessive neurosis. Compulsive-obsessive to frantically order and stabilize the world so that no unmanageable, unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear.”
-Abraham Maslow

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”
-mother Theresa

"Right, birds can fly so high and they can #$%@ on your head, yeah, they can almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared but when you look at them and you see that they’re beautiful, that’s how I feel about you."
-Kate Nash

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Carl W. Buechner

“What you perceive, your observations, feelings, interpretations, are all your truth. Your truth is important. Yet it is not the Truth.”
-Linda Ellinor

"What you have done unto the least of these, you have done it unto me!"
-Jesus

What is it like to follow Jesus - part 3?

Now the tax collectors

(back-stabbing SOB's - so cold-hearted. They'd foreclose on a widow with 10 kids and make her live on the street and then hire her as a prostitute just a week later.)

and the sinners

(filth of society, prostitutes, trashy, homos, transvestites, porn stars, the porn industry - you know - those people - at least they're honest at how filthy they really are.)

were all gathering around to hear him.


But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered,

(such proper men who have such good morals. The opposite of sin is morals and they want to purify our society. We need moral police don't we? If we follow them then we will have a better life won't we? We should learn from them and meet with them to find out what's next for us. They are wonderful men)

"This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."

(Jesus would rather spend time with sinners and tax collectors than with the Pharisees and teachers of the law - that's weird - well at least I don't have to do that - like I always say, "I’d rather spend time with a wicked righteous person than a righteous wicked person")

Luke 15:1-2

What is it like to follow Jesus - part 2?

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor

-Jesus

What is it like to follow Jesus?

Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless;

(provide security)

maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.

(govern and judge rightly and with equity)

Rescue the weak and needy;

(intervention)

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

(redeem freedom's cause)



Psalm 82:3-4

To follow Jesus...

"There is more absence of God that the saints experience than presence."

- Dr. VanGemeren

For whom the Pendulum swings - an Overdue Underduck

There are many pendulums swinging at the same time. Some swing farther than others and take much longer to return from their climb. Some are louder than others and make more noise. History is the swing of the pendulum and the spiral of the conundrum and it’s not written by he who has the most toys. It is a complex ongoing system of swinging and spiraling upward, backward, forward and downward. This process looks more like the movements within a matrix and spectrums of light dancing on the walls from a crystal hung in the window.

Life moves forward but much like change it can move two steps forward but one step back, three steps forward then four steps back, then 3 steps forward and 1 step back – but it is always continuously moving forward like a sanctification scale. There are many pendulum swings and the emergent Church corrective is one long overdue underduck that’s been swinging one direction for too long. Some have tried (Rauschenbusch, Gutierrez and others) to bring it back the other way, but they got over hauled and over stepped and maybe stepped on in their day. Maybe now their corrective efforts can be attained but still within the vision of Jesus Christ having lordship in the external and internal world, on the noumenal and the phenomenal planes of reality, in the hearts of humanity as well as in their lives, relationships, social contexts, ethnicities, languages and everywhere that God has planned for redemption to reach.

So pick a pendulum or two and swing, maybe subversively, maybe subserviently, maybe as a sage, maybe submissively and maybe all of them or none at all but maybe in your own way.

Only remember to listen, learn, laugh a lot and discern. Enjoy the highs and lows, but be committed to Christ at every level and in every conversation know that you carry a shovel.

Commit yourself to Christ more than you are committed to your ideals, your community, your tradition, your theology, your context and condition, even to your holy Writ which is really your interpretation of it, and let the ride take you higher than you’ve gone before with people you’ve never ridden with, people who may not share your core and as the pendulum swings as in the days of yore, consider the lilies and that one day you’ll see clearly what’s been in store - in the place and time where we won’t strive, cry or toil anymore. These pendulums will be history when we finally reach that Pilgrim shore so remember not to forget that we are not masters of the swing – the pendulum is not our chore.

God in His sovereignty is the same today as He was yesterday – the pendulum doesn’t move Zion’s mountain or lock the Temple door. So please, will you lay down your quill, come shake my hand, and with an Overdue Underduck, we'll swing into forevermore.

Written by Nathan Smith (kind of)

Well done my good and faithful Servant!

In the early days of Canada – the goal was to get to the Western shore and make it a country from shore to shore. This would give Canada sovereignty between two oceans. They compromised though on the Westcoast with the trading company by breaking their own laws to establish coast to coast sovereignty in diminishing the size of the tracts of land that they gave the Native people in order to appease the trading company that owned that portion of the new world and had their vested interest there. The tracts of land in the east are much larger because the government followed their own laws but the farther west they got – the lesser importance to virtue, law and ethics was important because they wanted to gain sovereignty – God never diminishes Creation's dignity and value in order to gain sovereignty - He does so by giving sacrificially even to the point of giving His Son and by tearing the Trinity apart. The early settlers ignored this aspect of God to the degree that they ignored the whole person and dignity of the Native community and tore their dignity to pieces instead of what God tears - Himself. All of this -to gain “manifest destiny’s” destiny, but nobody wants to hear that.


They paved over the ancient paths and erected the “civilized” secure barns of gratuity over the “savage” sacred burial grounds ( the wealthy man in the parable who builds barns and then eats and drinks and is merry)– all for greed, pride and power. They didn’t want Russia, the US or anyone else to get it so they cut a deal that compromised their very laws in order to get the west coast under the banner of that flag with a red maple leaf and red bars – in some ways it might as well be drenched in blood for the color we call red, but nobody wants to hear that.

I grew up in that part of Canada with the Indians and my house was situated 300 ft above the river that was used to discover the west coast – the Fraser River. Little did I realize that the canoes that passed my home hundreds of years ago with my ancestors in them would spurn a genocide of land grabbing and the destructive forces that ripped dignity and identity from a chosen people. I didn’t choose to exist in a day where others like me would forget that and live as if it had never happened, but sovereignly I was put there. Will we all enjoy the benefits of our ancestor’s efficient business transactions and continue to own land that was stolen, maybe we thought they would foreclose anyways. Land that cries out like the Creation groans and the cry that is as fresh as the blood of Abel which still flows and forms wet clay under our feet from the sacred dirt we callous with our imperial shoes – unable to know that it’s still wet with blood and to trod the injustice under our feet and at the same time – right under our nose. We get mad at the mud from the dirt and the blood that we carry into our homes. Then Mr. Clean sparkles our domesticated heart-wood floors. We look for the sun to the east from our western, heartless but "necessary" chores, longing for more settlers with warm words - only to comfort and assail our conscience with good news from other shores.


Were we called to follow a Savior that crushes the clod - or the head of a serpent? Were we called not to suffer at our own expense and our own dignity if we chose to follow a limping Savior from a Serpent’s snare?

It’s too political they say –
I wonder if Yahweh applauds that
and also turns his eyes away?

“It’s too far removed from us they say, it’s not our responsibility – that was our forefathers – why should we have to concern ourselves with what they did wrong? Don’t the Indians (post-savages) have a better life now anyway – now that we’re here?”

Ohhh, if we could only read the Holy Writ again and see that God favors a people who know oppression and not the privilege of a lawmaker's pen. Privilege gained by oppression has a price – and though you spend all day in the store stealing, the sun will go down and disappear and closing time will arrive, anticipating the dawn. At that point – you still have to walk out the door with what is hidden in your pockets – now is the time to put it back upon the shelf and realize that you’ve have been recorded – your every move. Will you seek forgiveness only and empty your pockets at the door or will you Restock redemptively and breathe the very air of forgiveness today while it is still called today – some by the skin of their teeth and others not – who will you be at the door?

The sovereignty of God doesn’t require us to ignore and override the “other” – it actually calls us to the "other" because the “other” represents a portion of God’s desire to reveal Himself to us. If we ignore the “other” we are ignoring an aspect of God. If we assume superiority or sovereignty and ignorance over the "other" we are doing that to a royal and sovereign God. “Do unto the least of these and you will do it unto me.” If we override them – we get what we want but we have to realize openly that we have been rapacious in the process, that we have been fallacious and carelessly uncautious - that we have raped royalty – that we are rapists. If we can be okay with that – then march on, if not then sit down and listen and wait, weep and wander around in your heart, mind and life story – ask myself and yourself, and ourselves what it would be like to live life rightly instead of efficiently, to be gracious and gratuitous, to be graced royally, to be gracists and not racists. Efficiency is not wrong but we do use it as a virtue when it’s actually an excuse? And though our lives soar upward in success, our hearts plummet to the earth awaiting sure death, but we dont' want to hear that breath breathe those words - deathhhh

Is there hope? Yes, but hope can only have it’s proper and effectual power when it can rise up against its enemy. Our hearts and lives are called to then embrace that reality so that hope has a clear voice against the noise that booms in our ears that resonates in our eyesight - though at one time it was not seen, not heard, and not a bother, and only now we have heard, only now we have seen. Awaken, listen, search the pockets of your soul for what your life has stolen and then ask yourself - who you will be at the door?

Written by Nathan Smith (kind of)

A passive aggressive postmodern - Part 2 (a cynics rant?)

Just because I’m not becoming you
Doesn’t mean that you can’t help me become me.
Hey modernity – it ain’t easy being postmodernity.

Hey modernity – maybe implicity I’m angry in my verbage to thee
and that anger in my heart now written, might to seem to be for my mommy and daddy

True or not,I guess is that wrong for me?
And when did you start liking psychology?

But you formed them after they created you
What should I do with a parent that doesn’t want to be reformed
By the misunderstood people that they created too?

Modernity, we’re no longer just ideas
Postmodernity is now an identity

Hey Modernity - why not ask Somebody else what’s going on
Instead of telling us “there’s nothing new under the sun”

I guess Aristotle understood the theory of relativity
And that our forefathers really did need slaves

Should I defer to that which doesn’t see me as different
Or to that which may hear my logos but not its pathos?

I may sound angry and it’s because I am
But my emotions don’t belong in a closed system

You may not be able to control them
but could they have been predicted?

Hey Modernity – thanks for listening…