My devotion time this morning involved a lot of giving up. I found myself confessing and offering up to God a lot of my struggles: my stubborn insistence on self-determination; my fears about the future; my frustrations with circumstances and shortsighted people. God spoke, and I listened, but a lot of my time with Him today has been about giving up, and it's been a time of refreshing and renewing. I feel in so many ways like God is saying lately that it's okay to take the time to relax and rest in His arms, and I'm so blessed by that understanding!
As usual, I was reading while I ate lunch. (I sometimes finish an entire book during my lunch-hour. This has been a lifelong habit for me, reading while I eat if I'm alone. It seems to relax me, and reading always carries me away to somewhere beyond my current circumstances, so it's like a little mini-retreat in the middle of the day.) Sometimes I just read a magazine, usually about cooking or foreign culture. Today was weightier fare, but very enjoyable. It was about my eighth re-read of Dan Kimballs excellent book The Emerging Church. I've taken a couple of classes from Dan, and I have a lot of respect for his committment to understand the culture to which he has been called as a missionary. In many ways, the postmodern, postchristian culture of America today parallels the culture I've found in years of missions involvement in Europe. To most of us who've grown up in the modern church-age, the post-modern, post-Christian culture is as foreign as Borneo was to the British missionaries of the 1800's. Here is a smattering of the quotes Dan uses to illustrate the disconnect between the mindset of postmodern Americans and the context of the modern church:
I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
--Mahatma Gandhi
I believe in God. I just don't know if that God is Jehovah, Buddha or Allah.
--Actress Halle Berry
Eastern thought, Western mysticism. I really dig the whole Hindu pantheon. And I just pull from all kinds of different things. --Actress Meg Ryan
I go to synagogue, I study Hinduism...all paths lead to God.
--Madonna
One of the biggest mistakes we make is to believe that there is only one way. There are many diverse paths leading to God. --Oprah Winfrey
We are under siege from religious zealots and nuts...mostly Christians, so-called Christians. I'm talking about those hell-bent, holy rollers that sit around and try to control the country, the ones that are against abortion...Those nuts. Those wackos. --Howard Stern
Yes, there have always been objections to Christianity. Certainly, Jesus was anything but popular among most of the people of His own race! But, was He content to let them pass by? Did he command His followers to stay inside the churches and minister to whomever would come through the doors? No, Jesus met those who struggled with belief and He met them in the marketplace and around the well and at the city gates. He engaged the culture that didn't understand or want to understand. He refused to sequester Himself and wait for the world to come to Him. Rather, He took time to understand the circumstances of their lives and met them in the midst of them.
That's what I know God is calling us to: to be the people who see all the weirdness and the acting-out and the "diversity" (in the best and worst senses of that word) in modern culture and aren't content to just let those people walk on by, alone and unaware that God has designed them for a purpose and gifted them to serve Him.
What will tomorrow hold? I can only imagine! But, will God be there? He already is! Thank you for being there with me, and thank you in advance for your understanding and your support. I know that there will be a natural and normal process of grieving that will follow me as I move ahead in what God is leading us to. Kristi doesn't have the level of investment I have here, but I know she will be challenged as well, so please pray for her and support and encourage her as she does the same for me.
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