Caught in the middle

Have you ever been a place where you know that you have moved on but you still find yourself looking back? Have you ever felt like you have grown out of something but can't seem to drag yourself away from that place? That's kinda how I'm feeling at the moment. I guess as we journey through life there are things that were big parts of our lives before that no longer seem to have the same influence or sway. I guess I lost faith in some things, in some people and in some ways of doing things, but I still linger there in the hope of resurrecting a purpose and value in the time spent there.

Think its time to leave the certainty of the past behind for the uncertainty of the future.

3am ramblings in no particular order...

Are you willing to leave behind all that you have acquired in the pursuit of something that transcends material possessions.

Is that what is God is asking?

For some they melt down all that they have - remould it and reset it. They give it a new name and bow down before it.

But is less more?

Is there something of the promised land in the wilderness?

Do we have to lay down before we can pick up? Do we have to swap what we have to pursue what we don't have? Is the something beyond worth pursuing?

More blessed is the man then who has nothing he calls his own.

Blessed are the poor...
Blessed are those who mourn...
Blessed are the meek....
Blessed are those who hunger
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness...

There is the danger for those of us who have many riches to our name, that we become fearful of losing all that we have acquired and built up. Often that fear permeates every aspect of our life and our life becomes inhibited and prescriptive. We can focus all our energies on preservation, maintaining all that we have.

For those not governed by fear, they can live truthfully and spontaneously. And once they pass the hedonistic first impulses of this existence they find the need to focus on something more wider and permanent. It is from hear we begin to reach for the impossible - to those things that we thought we could never achieve.

Identity

Been thinking about identity and who we are as individual people. Much like the old adage about never stepping in the same river twice, we are not the same person we were yesterday and we are not the same person we were when we were younger. We are different mentally, physically, and spiritually.

The only thing that connects with who we were yesterday is the memory of it. But how does salvation relate to this - I've heard so many people that your salvation is secured and that you don't need to worry about it. I like the Catholic understanding of salvation. That we are saved, that we continue to be saved and that we will be saved.

The moment of our salvation becomes a memory - a moment in our past. And each day we can choose to make that moment our most significant. It influences the choices we make, and informs who we are on this day. Each day we have the opportunity to choose to be identified either by our past successes or our past failures. We have the opportunity to be defined by our salvation or our past brokenness.

It does also means that we can leave our sin behind, we don't need to carry it in to the next day. It was who we were but not who we are.

Quite possibly the best thing ever

Kingdom of God, Insurgency of God, Party of God, The Eco-system of God, The government of God, the dance of God...

Jesus is born into a context of Roman occupation and the responses of the various groups such as the Pharisees, Essenes, Herodians and Zealots. Jesus offers a new way that he calls 'The Kingdom of God'. Jesus invites everyone into this group and doesn't isolate like each of the other groups.

*Jesus is baptised by John who was an Essene and also interacts with John's disciples.

*Jesus meets and interacts with Zachaeus, a tax collector working for Roman government (Herodian). Jesus brings the kingdom of transformation to this mans life.

*In John Jesus speaks with Nicodemus, a leader of the Jewish group the Pharisees. Jesus teaches him about the Kingdom of God and the need to be born again. Nicodemus was eager to learn. When he didn't understand, he kept asking questions until he did reach some kind of understanding. He needed to question his own pre-existing beliefs and thoughts.

*In his group of follows Jesus has a Roman collaborator in Matthew and a zealot in Simon.



Jesus' life should give us an example for how to do church. How do we live out the Kindom of God? How do we interact with those who we disagree with and those we keep our distance from? (And those are just the Christians!)As we live in this way the Kindom of God begins to increase.

But what if we broaden our horizons? How do we interact with...

Relationship between the church and the world

In his book Generous Orthodoxy Brian McLaren discusses the historical development of the Methodist church movement. In unpacking the development, McLaren suggests that the Methodist church develops into an us and them approach with the religious on the high plateau and the non-religious on the low ground. There are many similarities with the times that we are now in with a divide between religious and non-religious. However I believe that the divide between those in the church and those outside is not static as is depicted in McLaren's model.




I have outlined 2 potential improvements to the model.

World in continuous progress

World in continuous decline

Where is God?

“We have not answered the question ‘where is God?’ But we have suggested how to go about answering the question. Seek and you will find. But be careful. If God was at the touch of a button, would you dare click it?”



Where is God?
Newspaper clippings from today’s news with barbed wire. My way of symbolising war and suffering for the world. In the top left there’s a big tear in the fabric; underneath is bright gold. This is where I think God is, forever growing larger in the world and in our hearts, biding his time to cover the whole image in gold.
Nicky, 14



Where is God?
In this slate-grey 3-D corridor a hunched red plasticine figure sits. Meredith (12) expresses an experience. The words say:
“There was a man who suffered every day and every night. His sadness radiated from him and his anger burned like fire. He sat in the dark at the end of the corridor. He asked ‘is there a God? If there is, why does he let me suffer? No answer came, only silence. He curled up and cried.”



God – He Lies In You
I believe that every one of us possesses Him. I have titled my design “God: He Lies In You”. I have included a mirror: when one looks at this artwork, symbolizing God, they see their own face. The image will be broken, because it is hard to see that God is part of each one of us. 
It is a very personal thing. I am sure that not everyone agrees with my opinion. This design has deep meanings; everything from the colour to the shapes used symbolizes something. I will not explain what I intend everything to mean, because I think this is what discovering the painting is about.
Jennie, 14