Today’s thoughts are from Julia:
Of the devotionals Jason led, I was most impacted by the one where we put our hands face up or face down. I had done this sort of thing before, and had forgotten how quickly the Spirit moved in me to rid me of negative emotions and thoughts and fill me with positive ones. It was good to have a kind of refresher course on one of the practices I could have been using for years, but had simply forgotten about. Since that devotional I have used that method again and it has been very good for me.
I was also highly impacted by the quote he put on the page about being lost in pride or emptiness, depending upon whether one spends too much time with people or alone:
“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone….Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I feel like I have experienced these two extremes and the emptiness that comes with them. It is a fine line to walk, the line of being in community in a healthy way. But it is essential to our spiritual well-being. This, too, was a good reminder. I tend towards solitude, but, in excess, it does seem to lead directly to pride (and mental illness, really). So I thank God that He used Jason to remind me of these things.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Jason
Showing posts with label emptiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emptiness. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Friday, October 31, 2008
The mystery of the hole
Here is the next devotional thought. I bet you guys are getting more country every day. So here is a country story with some merit.
The Mystery of the Hole
An old country preacher was out visiting one day, and he decided to stop by a ladies house around lunch time because he knew she could cook. And indeed, she was just starting to make something when he "happened by". She was putting all the ingredients in a bowl and began stirring when he came up and after some small talk, she took the dough and began cutting it out into small round looking cakes. She had a big pot over the fire with lard boiling in it. She began to carefully place each small pastry in the lard and then waited. After each was taken out, she gave the preacher one of the doughnuts and they were some GOOD doughnuts.
The preacher raved about the homemade delight, and then said, "These doughnuts are great. But what is the point of cutting out the hole? It just seems like there would be more goodness to this doughnut, or at least one more bite, if you just left the hole out and kept the doughnut in."
She said, "Some people are never content with the goodness they have before them. People complain all the time about the goodness they think is not there. You would be a fool to leave the hole in for this reason. You could cook it with the hole in until the outside is hard as a rock, but the inside would still be nothing but dough. It is like Ephraim in Hosea 7:8: "A cake half turned is a cake not cooked."
The preacher decided to ponder on the holes we have in our life. The pain that is caused by the holes can be debilitating. The empty spaces in human life and the desolation of the vacancies. But, without the hole, we wouldn't have a place for God to come in. He discussed all his thoughts with the cook and she said, "I don't really understand all the reasons why, because the hole in my heart aches sometimes to the point of surrender. But, a person who doesn’t use the good things he has and complains to God for what he lacks, is like a person who would reject a doughnut because he doesn't understand the mystery of the hole."
May God bless you with everything you need today. And grant you peace too.
Jeremy
The Mystery of the Hole
An old country preacher was out visiting one day, and he decided to stop by a ladies house around lunch time because he knew she could cook. And indeed, she was just starting to make something when he "happened by". She was putting all the ingredients in a bowl and began stirring when he came up and after some small talk, she took the dough and began cutting it out into small round looking cakes. She had a big pot over the fire with lard boiling in it. She began to carefully place each small pastry in the lard and then waited. After each was taken out, she gave the preacher one of the doughnuts and they were some GOOD doughnuts.
The preacher raved about the homemade delight, and then said, "These doughnuts are great. But what is the point of cutting out the hole? It just seems like there would be more goodness to this doughnut, or at least one more bite, if you just left the hole out and kept the doughnut in."
She said, "Some people are never content with the goodness they have before them. People complain all the time about the goodness they think is not there. You would be a fool to leave the hole in for this reason. You could cook it with the hole in until the outside is hard as a rock, but the inside would still be nothing but dough. It is like Ephraim in Hosea 7:8: "A cake half turned is a cake not cooked."
The preacher decided to ponder on the holes we have in our life. The pain that is caused by the holes can be debilitating. The empty spaces in human life and the desolation of the vacancies. But, without the hole, we wouldn't have a place for God to come in. He discussed all his thoughts with the cook and she said, "I don't really understand all the reasons why, because the hole in my heart aches sometimes to the point of surrender. But, a person who doesn’t use the good things he has and complains to God for what he lacks, is like a person who would reject a doughnut because he doesn't understand the mystery of the hole."
May God bless you with everything you need today. And grant you peace too.
Jeremy
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Pale turnips and empty pitchers
Today’s words from Jeremy:
To further extend our country boy wisdom, here is a saying that is a qualifier for yesterday's devo thought of giving more. "You can't squeeze blood from a turnip". The wisdom in this saying is simple. If you don't have anything to give, you can't give it.
I love the idea of us all being water pitchers. We can pour out what we have into other's pitchers when they need to be refilled. But we have to go to the source of the living water to be refilled and refreshed.
We hear this verse all the time about renewal, Isaiah 40:31
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.
Yesterday I said to keep pouring out what you have to give to others who are in need. Today here is the answer on what to do when we have no more blood in our turnip. We wait. The NIV says we hope. The Lord will come and He will refill us and take care of our emptiness. It won't be easy, it doesn't always feel good, it doesn't always come when we tell it to, but...it comes. And when it comes, it is constant renewal. We can run without getting tired. We can do everything we need to because God will take care of us. He will refill us and make sure we are full enough to be taken care of, but not too full so we are not "full of ourselves".
When you feel like Dracula has attacked your spiritual vegetable patch, give it up to God for a while and be patient. It will come and your strength will be complete again so you can handle what comes your way.
May God bless you today with whatever you need. And grant you peace, too, while you wait.
Jeremy
To further extend our country boy wisdom, here is a saying that is a qualifier for yesterday's devo thought of giving more. "You can't squeeze blood from a turnip". The wisdom in this saying is simple. If you don't have anything to give, you can't give it.
I love the idea of us all being water pitchers. We can pour out what we have into other's pitchers when they need to be refilled. But we have to go to the source of the living water to be refilled and refreshed.
We hear this verse all the time about renewal, Isaiah 40:31
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.
Yesterday I said to keep pouring out what you have to give to others who are in need. Today here is the answer on what to do when we have no more blood in our turnip. We wait. The NIV says we hope. The Lord will come and He will refill us and take care of our emptiness. It won't be easy, it doesn't always feel good, it doesn't always come when we tell it to, but...it comes. And when it comes, it is constant renewal. We can run without getting tired. We can do everything we need to because God will take care of us. He will refill us and make sure we are full enough to be taken care of, but not too full so we are not "full of ourselves".
When you feel like Dracula has attacked your spiritual vegetable patch, give it up to God for a while and be patient. It will come and your strength will be complete again so you can handle what comes your way.
May God bless you today with whatever you need. And grant you peace, too, while you wait.
Jeremy
Friday, August 29, 2008
Once more into the breach
Today we will work our way toward Psalm 81:
A friend of mine, Charles Siburt, has said that “Ministry is grief management.” Some people have disagreed with him, but I wonder if that is because they believe instead that ministry is preaching, and the preacher’s job is to fill the silence with the sound of his voice. Although I think that preaching has its place, I don’t think that it does any good to break the silence unless our words heal the holes in people’s hearts. Consider these words:
I’ve said before that every craftsman
searches for what’s not there
to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole
where the roof caved in. A water carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint
of emptiness, which they then
start to fill. Their hope, though,
is for emptiness, so don’t think
you must avoid it. It contains
what you need!
- Jellaludin Rumin, 13th century Persian mystic
God has made a habit of rushing to the emptiness; God knew that Adam and Eve would experience the emptiness of hunger, so he filled a garden with fruit.
God foresaw that a world covered with water would become a perverse kind of emptiness, a weird lifeless desert, so he had a man build an ark of life, a floating bridge, a place of providence for a world starved of hope, drowned with death, and covered with chaos.
God understood that a people fleeing from oppression would need safety. When this people came to a sea of trouble, a hole that threatened to swallow them whole, God build a bridge down through the water. He bridged the emptiness, and then he allowed the enemies of his beloved to be swallowed by that same emptiness.
Isn't this is what the psalmist celebrates in the 81st Psalm?
Sing aloud to God our strength;
shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
Raise a song, sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our festal day.
For it is a statute for Israel,
an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
He made it a decree in Joseph,
when he went out over the land of Egypt.
I hear a voice I had not known:
"I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I rescued you;
I answered you in the secret place of thunder;
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
Selah
Hear, O my people, while I admonish you;
O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
Oh, if Israel will only hear, then they will open their empty mouths and God will fill them with what they need: manna and quail and water. Again and again, God jumps into the breach until finally, he sends his Son to show us how to do this for each other.
Jesus steps up to the biggest abyss of them all. Death. Time after time he walks to the edge and calls people up out of the life-swallowing chasm, the trap that has never before yielded anything. Death is disoriented. There are no toe-holds in its pit. There is no rope to reach the bottom of it. Rattled but reassured, death designs its revenge. And it seems all too easy, because Jesus literally seems to run at death. Darkness comes. The grave gapes and swallows. Death celebrates its ultimate banquet; the death of the one who made the tree of life. Too late, Death discovers that God in the flesh has build a bridge down through death to life that need never fear emptiness again. Death will have to swallow itself, and so be done.
He [Jesus] who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things. The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (Eph 4:10-14)
He fills us with gifts, not so we can hear the sound of our voice in the silence, but so that we can throw ourselves in the breach, so that we can use the gifts that he has given us to heal the holes in the spiritual hearts of the wounded. He would have them brought to wholeness again. He would have us minister by daring to work with the grief of those who surround us. God grant us the courage to do this.
Grace and peace,
Ron
A friend of mine, Charles Siburt, has said that “Ministry is grief management.” Some people have disagreed with him, but I wonder if that is because they believe instead that ministry is preaching, and the preacher’s job is to fill the silence with the sound of his voice. Although I think that preaching has its place, I don’t think that it does any good to break the silence unless our words heal the holes in people’s hearts. Consider these words:
I’ve said before that every craftsman
searches for what’s not there
to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole
where the roof caved in. A water carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint
of emptiness, which they then
start to fill. Their hope, though,
is for emptiness, so don’t think
you must avoid it. It contains
what you need!
- Jellaludin Rumin, 13th century Persian mystic
God has made a habit of rushing to the emptiness; God knew that Adam and Eve would experience the emptiness of hunger, so he filled a garden with fruit.
God foresaw that a world covered with water would become a perverse kind of emptiness, a weird lifeless desert, so he had a man build an ark of life, a floating bridge, a place of providence for a world starved of hope, drowned with death, and covered with chaos.
God understood that a people fleeing from oppression would need safety. When this people came to a sea of trouble, a hole that threatened to swallow them whole, God build a bridge down through the water. He bridged the emptiness, and then he allowed the enemies of his beloved to be swallowed by that same emptiness.
Isn't this is what the psalmist celebrates in the 81st Psalm?
Sing aloud to God our strength;
shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
Raise a song, sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our festal day.
For it is a statute for Israel,
an ordinance of the God of Jacob.
He made it a decree in Joseph,
when he went out over the land of Egypt.
I hear a voice I had not known:
"I relieved your shoulder of the burden;
your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress you called, and I rescued you;
I answered you in the secret place of thunder;
I tested you at the waters of Meribah.
Selah
Hear, O my people, while I admonish you;
O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
There shall be no strange god among you;
you shall not bow down to a foreign god.
I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
Oh, if Israel will only hear, then they will open their empty mouths and God will fill them with what they need: manna and quail and water. Again and again, God jumps into the breach until finally, he sends his Son to show us how to do this for each other.
Jesus steps up to the biggest abyss of them all. Death. Time after time he walks to the edge and calls people up out of the life-swallowing chasm, the trap that has never before yielded anything. Death is disoriented. There are no toe-holds in its pit. There is no rope to reach the bottom of it. Rattled but reassured, death designs its revenge. And it seems all too easy, because Jesus literally seems to run at death. Darkness comes. The grave gapes and swallows. Death celebrates its ultimate banquet; the death of the one who made the tree of life. Too late, Death discovers that God in the flesh has build a bridge down through death to life that need never fear emptiness again. Death will have to swallow itself, and so be done.
He [Jesus] who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things. The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (Eph 4:10-14)
He fills us with gifts, not so we can hear the sound of our voice in the silence, but so that we can throw ourselves in the breach, so that we can use the gifts that he has given us to heal the holes in the spiritual hearts of the wounded. He would have them brought to wholeness again. He would have us minister by daring to work with the grief of those who surround us. God grant us the courage to do this.
Grace and peace,
Ron
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)