Godgrown

Updates from January, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Mark 8:28 am on January 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  God is an Opportunist 

  At the heart of every crisis is the seed of an opportunity.

  The Jews have been exiled from their homeland, the temple destroyed, and now after 70 years away from their homeland, some of the Israelites are returning home under the watch of the Persian King Cyrus.  The year is approximately 516 BCE, and the Temple of the LORD is slowly being reconstructed under the watch of Nehemiah.  We’re also seeing a proliferation of other prophetic voices now in the land of Judea (as its now called), with the ministries of Haggai and Zechariah.

  These were heavily transitional times – and it was a critical time for Jewish identity.

  What is a Jew if it is not about the land one lives on? The exile squashed their initial interpretation of God’s promise to give them a permanent home here on earth, and now a vast majority of the Jews lived abroad.

  What is a Jew if the Temple is not the center of worship? While they were rebuilding a “temple” it had nothing of the splendor of Solomon’s first construction hundreds of years ago.

  This is when the Jews truly became “People of the Book” – a book religion, as we know them today.  The Law became central to the Jewish religion, and with a Diaspora covering the Persian…then Roman Empire… it paved the way for a Christian revolution to spread across the land like wildfire.

  But first God had something to say to the nations. Even in this time of fragile rebuilding, with the walls of Jerusalem still in shambles, God sees this as his moment to turn the self-obsessed ship of the Jews around, and re-center them on his initial mission – to be a blessing to all nations.

  56:3 “Don’t let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say,

  ‘The Lord will never let me be part of his people.’

  And don’t let the eunuchs say,

  7 I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem

  and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer.

  I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices,

  because my Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

  ‘I’m a dried-up tree with no children and no future.’

  8 For the Sovereign Lord,

  who brings back the outcasts of Israel, says:

  I will bring others, too,

  besides my people Israel.”

  God finds a way to use what the Jews see as a setback, and reorients it into the greatest advance in his ultimate mission he’s gone for in several hundred years!  There is no one on earth that Yahweh is not desperately trying to connect with and adopt into his family.  It is not about the calamity of the Jewish identity – for God, it is about the restoration of Creation under his fatherhood, and everyone has the grace-filled privilege of becoming a son or daughter of God.

  
   

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  Mark 9:50 am on January 9, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  What Keeps You in Zion 

  There is a great scene in the Matrix movies (one of the sequels, can’t remember which…) where Neo is standing alone with one of the elders of Zion.  They go into some sort of boiler room and look up at the machines that are pumping hot air around the underground city.  The elder explains that while they are fighting the war with the deadly machines on the surface, the humans think they are protected and independent from technology down underground.

  “The truth is,” the elder explains, “We are dependent on each other.  We need machines, and they need us.”

  He couldn’t be more right.

  The things we trust in, the things we invest in…they need us to trust in them, need us to keep investing.  Think of the stock market.  While we might have a deep trust in the market, ultimately, it has to trust us that we will continue to trust in it – otherwise the whole thing just goes dark.

  As the Israelites were being hauled away from Jerusalem, as they were taken away from everything they had known and trusted, along for the ride to exile were all the idols that had filled the homes of the so many of “God’s people.”

  2 Both the idols and their owners are bowed down.

  The gods cannot protect the people,

  and the people cannot protect the gods.

  They go off into captivity together.

  Suddenly it was dawning on them.  As they trudged through the desert with hooks in their noses being led on like slaves, watching as their gods were tossed in carts and like mindless statues that they were, rolled across the landscape indifferent to the exile…

  The idols in your life only have the power you gave them, and they will not be able to protect you in the end.  Find what can.

  
   
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  Mark 9:21 am on January 6, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Ashes to Ashes, god to Dust 

  One of the key principles in the spiritual life is learning to pay attention.

  In Isaiah 44, the prophet describes a scene where an idol maker, regarded as a highly spiritual person, is making an idol out of wood and iron.  He sculpts and crafts an image made in human likeness out of the best wood, then takes the excess wood from his divine project and uses it to start a fire and cook up some food after a long day’s work.  In humor and in irony, Isaiah reveals the pathetic existence of someone who worships the same wood he uses to cook his dinner.

  There were ancient incantations in that day where a idol-craftsman would finish his carving, then wash the eyes, mouth and ears of the sculpture to “bring it to life.”  This was a highly spiritual practice.  Isaiah mocks the ritual and mocks the idea that the creator would worship the creation… he calls the craftsmen blind, deaf, and mute (eyes, ears and mouth).

  Learning to pay attention…

  19 The person who made the idol never stops to reflect, “Why, it’s just a block of wood! I burned half of it for heat and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat. How can the rest of it be a god? Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?”

  20 The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes. He trusts something that can’t help him at all. Yet he cannot bring himself to ask, “Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?”

  21 “Pay attention, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I, the Lord, made you, and I will not forget you.

  ‘Pay attention…I…made you.’

  God is calling us to wake up to reality.

  We are his wooden statues, come to life.

  Paying attention means sniffing out the systematic implications of our actions. What do we control, yet worship as if it controls us?  At what point does the TV remote control in your hand become a your leash?  When does your job slip from being a joy to being a form of slavery?  When does eating go from healthy to destructive?  Pick your poison.

  Paying attention means remembering that you are in control of the things that enter into you – through your mind, ears, and eyes.  Letting go of that awareness makes you lose control, and quickly you become the stiff wooden idol worth no more than the wood tossed in the fire.  Stop and reflect on what has control of you in this life.  With the help of God, break free of the chains and live in freedom!