What if a revolution was started that was not about power, not about taking power from a person or group that has power so another group can have it instead, but a revolution that is about weakness and humility and service? What about a revolution that goes in the opposite spirit of how revolutions typically go? A revolution that finds good in being the last and the least of these? Would such a revolution be stamped out in a few minutes and forgotten? Or would such a revolution be irresistible?
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I’m presently reading through the Gospel of Mark, one of the four accounts of the life of Jesus in the Bible. The author of Mark – whether is was or was not Mark – really liked to use the word εὐθύς, an adverb in Greek meaning either
immediately or
then. The English Standard Version of the Bible translates this word as
immediately in every occurrence in Mark. This makes for very interesting (and repetitive) reading of what Jesus is up to according to Mark (or whoever). Jesus calls people and they come immediately. He immediately enters synagogues on the Sabbath and teaches. He touches sick people and they are immediately made well. The pace in Mark is not slow. And the word immediate is pregnant with meaning of action and not passiveness. Jesus is a man of quick action. In a very true aspect Mark was using a word to create flow in the narrative and to show the reader where a new sentence was starting (there were no handy things like spaces or punctuation for them…), but he does so with an adverb that expresses Jesus is acting in the world with directness.
So if this Jesus is risen and alive like I believe he is, and he is still the same, in what ways is he acting in my life with immediacy? What is he wanting to do immediately in your life?
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War DanceWooden xylophone ringing with
organic timbre, singing at the hand
of a lost African boy longing
for his innocence back.
chop chop hackof machetes swinging, arching, biting, hacking
rattatat bang rattat tatof guns machining for fake power
haha ha he hahaheof children losing childhood to
stolen heads of once father, mother,
person, whole person. Heads in pots
rather than in clouds
imagining solutions to poverty or
string theory.
There is dancing in spite of war and death
and suffering and displacement
and those who listen can
see that perhaps what the Rebels
fight for, that war is a dance
and destruction
chop chop rattat haha chopbut instead the dance of war
is singing and beating drums and
wooden xylophones
and believing the spirit cannot be killed.
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The beginning of Genesis is a poem about the creation of heaven and earth and everything by the God of the Hebrews. In the poem the creation is broken up into six different “days.”
The first day light is made,
and God separates light from darkness
and names light day and dark night.
The second day an expanse between
waters – um, yeah – is made
resulting in ocean and clouds and
sky.
Day three brings land
to hang out in the seas
and the land gets houseplants
as a house warming gift.
The next day God made
the sun and stars and –
wait, a “day” is measured
respective to the sun.
How was there a “day”
on the first day?
Ummmmm….
Is there something more going down in the beginning Genesis poem?
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Disclaimer: I am not writing this for pity or any selfish reason. (God, please let that be true!) I am writing this as witness to the truth that God is doing something big… and somehow I get to be part of it.
I met a man last week who knew I often feel lonely, and how I believe no one cares about me and I am alone. His name is Peni Patu. I have never met this man in my life. The PhotoGenX staff gave him a list of the names of the people in our DTS, but nothing else. No information about us. Nothing. I haven’t told anyone here about those feelings anyway, so no one could have snitched. Peni spent hours and hours praying for us and preparing for his week of teaching, and part of the time he spent was asking God to give him a personal word to give to each student in PhotoGenX. Some very personal, very unknown things were in each letter.
I have prayed and asked God to give me a word of encouragement to give to specific people, and He has spoken to me. Nothing as clear as these letters Peni wrote for everyone, but I’ve experienced this myself.
My point is God, my Father, shared my biggest, deepest, longest running insecurity with this stranger, and then I had to read that letter out loud to everyone in the group and reveal my biggest fear to the people I’m spending the next five months with. God must have a sick sense of humor. (I’m just kidding. I love His sense of humor.)
But seriously, why loneliness and other people caring about me? And why now? I’m thinking and worrying about more specific, more pressing matters. And why did He have to speak this to someone I don’t know and who doesn’t know me and make me tell everyone what I feel in the darkest recesses of my heart?
I thought those other, more pressing things were something new, and I have been slowly realizing God simply got right to the main problem. If Mark were writing about Jesus and me, it would read something like, “And immediately Jesus cut to the chase of what is holding Christopher back.” But loneliness is completely the root of so much crap in my life. You know what my Daddy got to say to me, because someone asked what God thought of me and listened?
“I am here for you, my son. I want you to come and fellowship with me whenever you need. I long for your full attention, my son, not just part of it.”
God wants to fellowship with me as His son! How cool is that?
But what if it’s not just me God wants, but everyone? And what if God is wanting and trying to speak these life giving words to us or anyone who will listen, but we are unwilling to hear the truth about ourselves, and we don’t ask to be God’s voice to our friends (or even to strangers).
What if this started changing, with more and more people choosing to listen and speak?
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Until then, grace and peace,
Chris
