Faith Venture

A small group I attend when I’m in town has been studying “The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem” by Adam Hamilton. The book and accompanying video are an attempt to connect us with the locations where the events surrounding Jesus’ birth occurred.

Sometimes I think writers will stretch things a little to make a good story (there are times I suspect Paul did that, too). This is worth considering.

Hamilton considers the “manger” (one group member noted that if you read that word in French, it means “to eat”) where Jesus was placed as in a crib (don’t know if they had cribs back then). Anyway, take this tour of logic–manger, a place to eat; Bethlehem, literal meaning “house of bread”; Jesus said “I am the bread of life”; his next to last day, this bread represents my body. He tries to tie it all together.

Early Christians placed great importance on experiencing Jesus. He was in their midst when they met to sing, pray and study. It wasn’t until about 340 AD that the church decided that doctrine took precedence over experience. That is a struggle that we still face today among many Christian groups.

As for me, I place precedence with experience. Sometimes the experience of Jesus just breaks through the fog with shining light and clarity. Sometimes it’s a little bit at a time that comes through Spiritual practice–serving others, studying when a breakthrough occurs, worship when the songs and prayers penetrate your fog.

May Jesus be your Bread of Life.

We’re in the last week before we celebrate Jesus’ birth and his coming into the world and coming into our lives. This is a great time to hone those spiritual practices–be a servant to someone; meditate on the word; pray for God’s guidance; worship with praise and thanks.

Are you a good person? I’m an optimist most of the time. I tend to see people as good unless they prove me wrong. There are people who are the opposite. They are suspicious or cynical about people and expect the worst unless proven otherwise. And even then they aren’t sure.

In fact, none of us are truly good. We struggle with emotions, desires, actions that are not good. The apostle Paul’s starting point in his discussions of people is that we are not good to begin with.

So how do we get on the path toward being a good person?

I just finished John Ortberg’s latest book, Who Is This Man?. He said, “Because of Jesus’ emphasis on the heart, goodness does not begin with right behavior. It begins with openness to the truth about the mess in my inner being.”

This is not really a new thought. Ancient wisdom taught that first we must know ourselves. Or as the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, “O, wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us!”

To do that requires hard work on our part. We must sit in contemplation and step away from ourselves in our mind and observe ourselves. This also works if you are out somewhere, say in a queue at a market or airport ticket counter. You sort of project your mind out and observe yourself dispassionately as you act. I’ll tell you, that exercise has prevented me from foolishness on occasion.

The cool thing about the church calendar is that it prompts us to remember certain things with regularity. We are in Advent. Remembering the coming of Jesus. This is a good time for us to look within and see where we are harboring guilt, anger, greed, self-centeredness, and the like.

By being open to this, we can then prepare our hearts for Jesus to enter our lives to help us put those behind us and begin to approach living a good life with him.

I like to play around with words. Yesterday I was asked to help come up with a title for a Webcast (you can catch me live on the Web on January 31st moderating a panel discussion about software). My method is to come up with a phrase that I think captures the important points. Then I  start a list. I’ll play around with the verbs. Then the nouns. Consider a variety of adjectives. And write down the subsequent phrases until something seems to click.

Thing is, I write so often to areas where English is a second language, that I worry about being clear. So, I try not to use puns or plays on words.

But a friend posted on her Facebook page about my post on Being Blessed that I thought about the other usage of the word. Instead of receiving a blessing, say from God, some people are a blessing. That’s what I thought when she said yes she is blessed and give me more. I thought, she is a blessing–at least to me.

Think about your relationships and people you know or who have come into your life. So many are a blessing to you. Maybe just because when you see them they bring such joy and happiness as one friend, or peace as another friend does.

Maybe while we contemplate the great blessing from God that we celebrate this time of year we can also be more aware of our own being a blessing to people we meet.

That is a Spiritual practice I wish everyone would bring into their lives. Consider how great a world filled with blessing would be.

My last post talked about the idea that knowledge without experience is not sufficient for us to live a life with-God. But experienced can be pursued and gained in the spiritual life.

Experience as I’m thinking about it goes beyond just living through things. It requires first of all awareness. Many people live unaware of their environment, the people around them, their impact upon others. God can provide all manner of experience opportunities, but if you are not aware of what is happening, they will all pass you by. Be alert–like 007 James Bond who is always observing and evaluating.

I once saw a quote, “Some things must be believed to be seen.” Expectation is a key ingredient. Mary, mother of Jesus, probably prayed the Jewish woman’s prayer about becoming the mother of the Messiah. There was surely a bit of expectation in her life. But also, it had never happened before. So, we can expect God to act in our lives, but we may still be shocked at what He provides for us.

So, the question remains, what can we do to gain experience with God? Here are some tips.

Meditation on the Word. Read the Bible. Then stop and meditate on the passage. Go there in your imagination. Be part of the crowd around Jesus. Be part of a congregation where Paul is preaching. March with Joshua. Meditate with expectation that God will lead you to deeper knowledge.

Worship. Gathering with others in worship is a great way to open yourself to the reality of God.

Celebration. Once again, being with others while singing songs and praising will help you focus on God and lift your spirits making you open to God’s Spirit moving within you.

Confession. Pausing once–or many–times daily to tell God that you have fallen short of the type of life He desires. God will calm you.

Service. Sometimes there are no better ways to experience God in your life than to “be God” in the lives of others. Doing things for other people for God’s sake, not yours, will bring you closer to God.

I’m sure there are more. Open yourself to the possibility that God wants you to live in the fullness of a relationship just like Adam and Eve walked with him before they rebelled.

I just wrote about discontent. That seems to be the psychological condition of our time. Perhaps you suffer from that, too. At least occasionally.

Modern psychologists have researched emotions, conditions and responses. But ancient people had already figured out how we can respond to and conquer discontent. Brain science has merely confirmed what people knew back then – you can change the way you think, you can change the way you feel.

Paul shows us the way. He is always giving thanks. Our pastor used the phrase Sunday, “Gratitude leads to attitude.” As we focus on giving thanks for what we have, we establish in our minds the attitude of thankfulness instead of the attitude of neediness.

This is a great spiritual practice–to begin each day as part of your meditation to focus for a few minutes on all the blessings you have received. Then you’ll be prepared when you continue your day with the daily newspaper that tries to persuade you through editorial and advertising how much you need something else. Or television advertising, or magazines, or billboards, or every other way that marketers try to reach you with the message of discontent–if only you had this, you’d be satisfied.

Stop now and thank God.

The quote from Albert Einstein was too good to pass up:

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Einstein surely lived through an age where human stupidity certainly looked infinite. But today doesn’t look much better. Look at all the fighting and misery occurring in the Middle East right now. It’s not limited to there. There is a lot of hatred in America right now–we just haven’t pulled out all our guns and started shooting each other, yet. Africa is a mess. There are problems throughout Asia.

Among my spiritual disciplines is the discipline to turn off TV news. I scan news from a few trusted sources (which I constantly evaluate to assure that they should be trusted) and then turn it off. It does no good to dwell on all of this. Or the political messes over which I have no influence or control.

Certainly we have known for thousands of years about human stupidity. Check out Proverbs 26.

“Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool.”

“A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a rod for the back of fools.”

It is like binding a stone in a sling to give honor to a fool.”

Then he hits on lazy people.

Yoda from Star Wars, one of my favorite philosophers, perhaps because he used few words and was straight to the point, said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

I think we are witnessing an awful lot of that. Fear and anger. These are emotions we must all conquer within us. How? The answer is simple and hard–just like all of the Scripture teachings. Ground yourself in a life with God. What then is there to fear if you are with God? And God can quiet your anger.

The Spiritual Disciplines exist to help us focus each day on God. That’s why prayer, meditation and study are best done in the early morning. Then when you slip during the day, you can recall your foundation of the day and relax.

There are two types of people–no, wait, I already wrote about that. Actually, last week I was in a conversation with two friends. We got into the question, are people good or bad.

We could talk theology–all people are sinners (bad).

We could talk the wisdom of Carl Sandburg (American poet) who told a story of a farmer standing by his field who was approached by two strangers, one after the other, who asked what kind of people lived in the area. He asked how the people were where they came from. One described evil, contentious people; the other described good, fair, caring people. The farmer told them both, “Well, I suppose the people around here are pretty much like the people where you came from.”

Most of us would agree that in our normal lives most people we meet are good-hearted, kind people. Unless you work on Wall Street, I suppose. There do exist angry, aggressive or otherwise emotionally disturbed people whom you learn to avoid.

Then there is the wisdom found in the book of Proverbs. Today’s readings took me through chapter 26. It talks about fools. About the futility of talking with fools. About avoiding fools.

Then it occurred to me–discernment. 3,000 years ago, humans had already figured out that there are different types of people in the world. Learn to discern the types and then which ones to avoid.

Are people basically good or bad? Yes. You can choose which to foster relationships with.