Colossians and the Story

Colossians 1:15-29 is a good example of the Story: Creation Fall Redemption Transformation Completion are all there:

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,

20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,

22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,

25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known,

26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.

27 To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

28 Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

So why do I exist (and the world in which I exist)? Through and for Christ. What has happened? Alienation then reconciliation, through death, the formation of a community of hope laboring in a painful world toward being telos.

My existence, and the world in which I exist, have a source. Today, as I start the week of 'to-do' lists and appointments and opportunities for success and failure... I frame my awareness with Christ.

The goodness of existence and opportunity is personal

Existence is from and for God

Psalms 100

1 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
2 Serve the LORD with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!
3 Know that the LORD, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
5 For the LORD is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.

MY world

I've been trying to straighten out my world. It gets stressful. I find it difficult to be an expert in cosmology, economics, politics, history and so on. But how else can I live in MY world unless I understand it all?

If a solution is not forthcoming to a problem, maybe the problem is with the problem. Maybe I am trying to answer the wrong questions. What do I do with MY world? The starting point isn't to understand and master it all, the starting point is to realize that I don't have a world. I have a body, mind and spirit, and that's it. My Soul (all of me) is not a world and does not have a world. I live in a world. The world I live in is not my own. I don't need to know how to justify and explain everything that is, I need to know how to be me in this world that is not my own.

God created me and I live in his greater creation. My life is about living wisely in HIS world by knowing Him and choosing how to live wisely in His world.

Psalms 24:1-2 The earth is the LORD's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, (2) for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.

Creation-good: The delight of Wisdom in the children of man

Proverbs 8:22-31 "The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. (23) Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. (24) When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. (25) Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, (26) before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. (27) When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, (28) when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, (29) when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, (30) then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, (31) rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.

There is good. A father loves his children; delights in them living out their lives. Likewise God delighted in Wisdom, working alongside in relationship of delight and diligence. The goodness I experience in seeing my kids work and exercise wisdom has a Source. The wise thing to do is to honor that Source; loving, delighting, rejoicing in God my creator.

Blessed is good

When an idiom is familiar enough we don't pay much attention to what it means, we just figure out when to use it.

"Would you like some more tea?"

"No, I'm good."

'I'm good'? Saying that in London could come off quite oddly. Perhaps it is a statement of superiority: 'you can't improve upon my already good condition, so don't even bother'. Or maybe it is a sad confession of grammatical deprivation: 'uh, I always get confused, 'well', 'good', 'fine'… whatever, the shorter the better'.

But what does it mean: "I'm good"? It basically means (though I doubt it is consciously noted): "I'm blessed". The message Jesus told his disciples when he sat them down on the mountainside began with an emphatic declaration that the most unusual mix of people and circumstances were actually 'blessed'. The poor in spirit? They're good. Those who mourn? They're good. The meek? They're good…

In Greek the word makarios means well off, in a good state. It is not something that is done to someone, as in to bless them, as much as a description of how they are. Like eating fresh vegetables, you do not get a 'blessing' from God for eating them. God has made it such that eating wisely is in itself blessed (good).

So does that strip the beatitudes of their spiritual dimension? Poor in spirit, mourning, meek, starving for right, merciful, pure hearted, peacemaking, picked on for loyalty to right… are all these like vegetables, just laden with passive blessing? Ultimately, no. The blessed repetitions in Matthew 5:3-10 are bookended by FOR THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. The details are unlocked further on, but essentially the 'blessed's/'good's are people who find their source of life transforming hope in God. When we effectively experience that we have the ultimate reason to say: it's fine, "I'm good."

Matthew 5:3-10

(3) "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

   (4) "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

      (5) "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

        (6) "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

        (7) "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

      (8) "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

   (9) "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

(10)"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

God’s gift to man (no, not a super-model)

I am supposed to teach wisdom. It sometimes feels like a burden. Why? Ultimately the closer I get to figuring something out the more distance I discover between me and the ideal. Arrggghhh.

When I do regular chores, all I can think about is life, and meaning and mystery. But when I actually get paid to think on these things, it's different. Then I have a half-baked idea of doing something more concrete, though I avoid the specifics (because that might ruin the delusion). Is it o.k. just to do honest work and be grateful to God even though you can't figure it all out? Actually… yeah.

Ecclesiastes 3:10-13 I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. (11) He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (12) I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; (13) also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil--this is God's gift to man.

• Busy = living amidst diverse beauties waiting to be revealed at the right time (could be anything)
• Eternity in the heart = can't escape dreaming about meaning and the ultimate.
• Cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end = can't solve the puzzle
• Nothing better = just remember God holds the missing pieces of the mystery and get on with living joyfully.

God's gifts are more common and familiar than we sometimes realize. There, I've cranked out some awareness of someone else's wisdom. Now can I join these guys for a nice meal at the pub?

TGIM

Monday starts a new week. Temptations toward depression for some: more work than they can keep up with, or conversely, not enough direction to feel useful.  Mondays are not universally welcomed.

Then again, Monday is a fresh reminder that we are alive, and even though life is not easy, good happens as we live. So the temptation toward depression needs to be resisted. Gratitude for goodness, and the hope of sharing it, should be my attitude. I'll have plenty of time to deal with problems and chaos and dissatisfaction… right now, I just need to breath in life.

Psalms 50:14-15 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, (15) and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."

photo:   http://www.maniacworld.com/three-bird-smiley-face.html

Ahh, just right!

Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, (25) for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Thinking deeply and all has its place… between episodes of regular life. I tend to get too caught up in the edges of knowledge and am invariably left unsatisfied. Some of the things I learn when I probe can be helpful, but for what? Life is lived in all the daily stuff. Work, meals, fun. I have been guilty, more than once, of being contemptuous of the 'mundane', but slowly I am coming back to the truth: wisdom is not just for its own sake, it is for guiding how we make the most of the mundane.

God is good and has made a good creation. With his wisdom used according to his purposes, I should and can have some enjoyment along the way. In fact, I will!

Back in the beginning; with God

Have you ever been to a skeptics support group? They have them. The purpose is to help people who are trying to live without reference to God. But why do they need help? They need help because there is this nagging pull toward wanting to believe in the divine and worship.

The basic answer from skeptics to the reluctant disbelief problem is socialization. Parents, friends, community in general have all implanted an expectation for God that shapes people. Skeptics need to counter-socialize so that people can live free of a need to worship and answer to the divine. But is it just socialization? Or does socialization mainly affect the form of perception of the divine? Do the various forms of spiritual socialization arise from the universal human longing for an actual divinity, because there actually is One?

The Christian story begins with God creating man and woman and relating directly to humanity. In this relationship God provides goodness; including purpose. The role of people was to worship and obey God, serving as priests over creation. The transcendent God (greater than his creation) is made accessible to his creation through those created in his image living in creation.

As humans, our souls carry the inherent longing for God the way our bodies crave food and water. It is how we are designed, and it is how we live.

"The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you" - Augustine

• Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights first Triptych

Work = Good

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." (27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Made in the image of God… so get to work. God is King, ruler, sovereign. He creates, loves, and chooses. To be made in God's image is to likewise have an ability and desire to wisely and lovingly be in charge of things. The difference is that our authority and glory is derived from our creator. Our creator's authority and glory are inherent. When we are in relation to him and serve out of love and gratitude to him, work is deeply satisfying. The challenge, of course, is in the way that we live in a world that is not naturally in submission to God's authority and glory. Then, work is different. (but that is for Tuesday).

Today, "not in spite of" but "because it is Monday" I am choosing to be grateful for work and to look for the good in it. I want to sense God's pleasure in me, using who he made me to be, diligently serving. I do not need to justify what field I am in if I have some confidence that God has provided it. All I need is gratitude and hopefulness that I can be faithful in this day to serve him and enjoy the 'ought-ness' of being productive.

Atheists Must Deal With the 'Problem of Good'

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/nicholas_t_wright/2006/12/reading_the_comments_on_this.html

by N. T. Wright
Reading the comments on this website, it’s clear there are some atheists out there who have even more of a mission to unconvert believers than most believers have to convert them!
I have often noticed – this isn’t an argument, merely an observation – that the people who are most vehemently angry against belief (whether Christian or otherwise) are people who are really anxious, sometimes even frightened, about the possibility that there might be a God, that Christianity might be true, or whatever.
Sometimes this is because they have been badly hurt in their upbringing by foolish or wicked people using religion as a mask for their own manipulative or abusive behaviour. Sometimes it’s because they moved from their traditional Catholic or Protestant (or Jewish, or whatever) home base at the same time as they discovered ‘the wider world’ (which usually means drink, sex and so forth), and are anxious that if they ‘admitted it was all true after all’ they’d have to go back to the beginning, admit that Mum and Dad were right after all, and become, in effect, a good little Sunday School child once more – a prospect too frightful to contemplate for any self-respecting adult. . .
Of course there are many, perhaps millions, of people who have simply drifted into unbelief, articulate or otherwise, without any such background. But mostly they don’t make a fuss about it, certainly not in my country.
Richard Dawkins’ shrill denunciation of religion in his new book tends to provoke sardonic smiles, rather than people saying ‘Oh, phew, that’s all right then, I was wondering whether I could go on being an atheist with intellectual credibility.’
Of course, in the USA (but hardly at all in the UK), fervent Christian belief has often been associated in recent years with a particular kind of politics, and atheism has looked increasingly an attractive option if belief looks as if it’s driving you towards neo-conservative political beliefs. This is a gross oversimplification, of course – there are Christians in all shades of politics, and Jim Wallis’ contributions great and small show that you can be a robust and intelligent Christian and reject the neo-con agenda root and branch. B ut I suspect there have been quite a few who have been only too happy to make the equation between belief and neo-conservatism and to be happy about rejecting both, and at the same time.
In fact, atheism has been the default mode for most Westerners for over a century now. When A. N. Wilson wrote a book called ‘God’s Funeral,’ he was describing the nineteenth century, not the twentieth. Not everyone has noticed, of course.
Productive conversation? Yes indeed, and I hope this website will be part of that – though not if people simply rant and shout. We might start with the age-old question: The Christian has to deal with ‘the problem of evil,’ but the atheist has to deal with ‘the problem of good’ – that is, if the world is completely random, a chance collocation of accidental atoms, why is there such a thing as beauty, as value? (A hint: Dawkins’ valiant attempt to say it’s all about selfish genes and memes and things really doesn’t answer the question.)
And the atheist needs to be invited to contemplate the negative results, as well as the apparently positive ones, of the great push towards atheism in the last two centuries: the French Revolution, as soon as it got rid of God, did quite a lot of killing, including of its own people – a funny thing, that, considering the Enlightenment was supposed to be a way of getting rid of religion and so getting rid of violence. See too, the massive negative results of the greatest experiments in atheism the world has ever seen – the USSR with its Gulag, and Mao’s China . . .
In addition, the atheist can be invited to join the debate about the nature of religious experience. The evidence assembled by Sir Alister Hardy (see www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/ahrerca.html) is truly remarkable, and can’t easily be wished away by the rhetoric of Dawkins and others. It is never ‘enough’, in rationalist terms, to ‘prove’ that there is a God – but then few Christians would want to say that it is.
In fact, the dialogue between believers and atheists (and please note that the nature of ‘belief’ itself changes according to which God it is you believe in – this is very important) needs to be as courteous, listening and careful as all other dialogues. I look forward to it and hope that this website will be a step on the way!

A Few of My Favorite Things

On Mondays I take a moment to reflect on the beginning: God is good and has created goodness. Whether it is the Sound of Music sentimental version, or Coltrane's dynamic jazz version, the idea of delighting in good is, well, good!

What are a few of your favorite things?

Thank you God for being good and sharing good in creation. As we enjoy goodness i pray we will remember to enjoy you as the ultimate source behind all that is good.

Ephesians 5:8-10 Walk as children of light (9) (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), (10) and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.

Good God, it’s Monday!!

Monday devotional discipline: Good in my world is real because God is good. My hope is in good and so I seek for God.

Philippians 4:8 (ESV) Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.about these things.

I am alive in this world. My body perceives things, my mind ponders them and my spirit/will decides what to do. This morning I decided to eat some more Christmas chocolate. It was good. 

I also tried to remember that "cocoa's antioxidants -- called flavonoids -- coax the body into making more nitric oxide, which relaxes the blood vessels."* 

That's good. Chocolate is good to taste and can be good for the heart. I could go into the problems of fat and sugar concoctions which help deliver those flavonoids, but it's Monday, so I'll just stick to observing the good!

 

Cocoa in chocolate is Good. God made cocoa. Thanks God!!!

* <http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20060118/why-cocoa-may-help-heart-health>