faith

My Deepest Awareness

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, ‘A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.’

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours not by right but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. While there is much we may have earned–our degree and our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite and a good night’s sleep–all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. We have been given God in our souls and Christ in our flesh. We have the power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift; it is not reward for our faithfulness, our generous disposition, or our heroic life of prayer. Even our fidelity is a gift, ‘If we but turn to God,’ said St. Augustine, ‘that itself is a gift of God.’

My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it” (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out).

Occasionally, I like to bring in special guest writers. By that, I mean that I am too tired (and/or lazy) to do my own writing and I quote from a writer who expresses my own thoughts better than I ever could ( with the lone exception about having an incredible capacity for beer, which I do not). This is why I named by blog The Ragamuffin Gospel.

Feeding the Multitudes: Inspired by Tonight’s Kairos Message

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

999635

Jesus said something that struck me as a bit odd during the account of the first feeding of the 5,000. When the disciples asked how they were to feed all the multitudes who had followed Jesus, Jesus said to them, “You feed them.”

On the surface, it seems strange that Jesus should ask such a monumental task of 12 men to feed what probably amounted to 20,000 people (counting women and children). Why would Jesus ask that?

I think what Jesus wanted was their willingness to sacrifice whatever they held in their hands for the work of Jesus. In this case, it was two fishes and five loaves given to them by a small boy. It was at the same time a sacrifice and a confession of woeful inadequacy.

That was what Jesus blessed and multiplied to minister to the many.

In this day and age, many of us are praying for peace. We ask that Jesus step in and make peace by bringing unity to the racial tensions and strife.

Jesus says to us in turn, “You go and make peace.”

“How?” we ask.

“What do you have in your hand?” Jesus asks us.

“Not much. Not nearly enough to accomplish reconciliation. But whatever I have is Yours. I give it to You.”

What Jesus is looking for in us isn’t extraordinary ability but unconditional availability. What He asks from us isn’t great acts or passionate speeches. What He asks for from us is our very selves.

That’s where the miracle begins.

 

I Just Can’t People Today

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

So, the low-grade fever is back. I still feel blah (but nowhere near death’s door). I still managed to get in all my Wednesday activities (before I was aware of The Return of the Fever).

I participated in the Summer Singles Series at The Church at Avenue South. Afterward, some of us went out to eat at Las Palmas. It wasn’t the best meal I’ve ever had, but that really wasn’t the point. It was being around people.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t people very well today. I’ve been in brain fuzz mode all day long. My mental capacity is about at the level of “Fire bad. Tree pretty” (those who know what TV show I’m referencing are awesome).

I spent most of my mental energy keeping my eyes open. I felt like that pug in the videos who is fighting vainly to stay awake in the middle of the day. It’s the pug life, fo’ reals, y’all.

Anyway, some days it’s okay not to be the most social person in the world. Sometimes it’s okay to be alone with your thoughts. Introversion (or just slightly less extreme extroversion) is not a sin. Some of the best minds have been introverts. Especially when they could keep their eyes open.

As I mentioned previously, if this is as bad as I’m going to feel, I’m okay. I can still function (just not without the aid of much, much coffee) and I can still fulfill all my adult obligations.

The key, as always, is to be thankful for being alive and still in mostly good health. The rest is still gravy.

 

I’m Sick

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

It’s official. I have a fever and I feel bad. I’m sick.

As much as I like to think that I am brave and stoic in the face of illness, I’m not. Actually, I’m a bit of an overdramatic martyr, truth be told. In my own passive aggressive way, I want everyone around me to be aware of the agony I’m in so they can feel appropriately sorry for me and buy me nice things and do nice things for me.

I regaled more than one person with the thrilling tale of how I drove from work with the A/C off and the vent on because of the chills. It was brutal. I didn’t even sweat one drop the whole way, even though I normally would have been perspiring like the pig that’s about to be bacon.

I made sure that people saw how I was shaking and shivering under all that nasty air conditioning when I was clearly not well. Anyone should have been able to tell that just by looking at my poor miserable face.

Yet here I am, sick. Honestly, I’ve felt much crummier and if this is the worst experience I go through, I’m doing alright.

I know several who are worse off than I. I have a friend who has been to doctor after doctor trying to diagnose and lingering illness that causes her to be extremely fatigued and with a weak immune system to fight off infection. I know several who are fighting courageous battles with cancer, including one who recently lost his battle.

Viewed the right way, illness can be an opportunity rather than solely a burden. You can always serve those who are worse off than you (and if you can’t physically serve, you can send encouraging notes or texts letting them know you are thinking and praying for them. Encouraging words tend to have the same effect on those who write them as with those who receive them.

You can use illness as a means to stand in solidarity with those around the world who suffer daily from hunger, malnourishment, disease, and abuse. You can use your aches and pains as a reminder to pray to the Healing God for those everywhere who live daily with chronic pain and diseases.

This just in. I’m not at death’s door just yet. I’ll probably be right as rain in a day or two with hardly a memory of all my dire suffering.

 

The Fasting and the Feast

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

“When the fast, the death, the sacrifice of the gospel is omitted from the Christian life, then it isn’t Christian at all. Not only that its boring. If I just want to feel good or get self-help, I’ll buy a $12 book from Borders and join a gym. The church the Bible described is exciting and adventurous and wrought with sacrifice. It costs believers everything and they still came. It was good news to the poor and stumped its enemies. The church was patterned after a Savior who had no place to lay his head and voluntarily died a brutal death, even knowing we would reduce the gospel to a self-serving personal improvement program where people were encouraged to make a truce with their Maker and stop sinning and join the church, when in fact the gospel does not call for a truce but a complete surrender.
Jesus said the kingdom was like a treasure hidden in a field, and once someone truly finds it, he will happily sell everything he owns to possess that field. a perfect description of the fasting and the feast. It will cost everything, but it is a treasure and an unfathomable joy. This is the balance of the kingdom; to live we must die, to be lifted we bow, to gain we must lose. There is no alternative definition, no path of least resistance, no treasure in the field without the sacrifice of everything else” (Jen Hatmaker, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Access).

So I finished reading the book 7. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s tired of the same old same old and is looking for something fresh and different. It’s for those who are weary of the prevalence of consumeristic Christianity that has overtaken much of America’s churches, along with a definite trend toward style over substance.

Most of what passes for the gospel these days is either some form of sin management, self-help program, or a variation of the “I’m okay, you’re okay, everyone’s okay.” The Apostle Paul said very clearly more than once that even if he or an angel should proclaim any other kind of gospel other than the gospel of Jesus as presented and expounded upon in the writings of Paul, let him (or her) be condemned.

I was convicted in several areas about my own excesses and my bouts of self-centeredness in opposition to serving others. We in this country have the means to alleviate a lot of the world’s suffering, but we choose rather to spend on lavish buildings   with the latest technologies and comforts. In other words, we’d rather spend it on ourselves.

So I’m telling you to run to your local bookstore (or your local laptop and your local amazon website) to get this book. You will not regret it.

 

Even You

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

35779f32786fd9078cd20a87ad325575

If you’re not a hipster, this is for you.

If you’re not a high I, type A, socially outgoing person who is always the life of the party who everyone wants to be around all the time, this is for you.

If you’re socially awkward at times and what’s in your head isn’t always what comes out of your mouth (including a long list of word you desperately wish you could take back), this is for you.

If you are an outsider, an outcast, a freak, a pariah, a loner, a loser, or just feeling unwanted and unknown and undesirable, this is for you.

When Jesus comes to your town looking for followers, He sees you hiding up in that tree like wee little Zaccheus. He sees you inching toward the back of the crowd, certain that Jesus will choose the popular and attractive people to be on His team.

He’s headed your way. You wonder if He’s about to tell you that you don’t belong here. That only the more successful more put-together, more upwardly-mobile people need apply.

But that’s not what He’s approaching you for.

He points to you. He calls you by name. Not one of the names given to you by all those who trample over you on their way to the top. Not one of the names by those who have deeply wounded your soul over the years. Not even on of the names you call yourself late at night when your defenses are down and your mind is unfiltered.

Jesus calls you by a name that you’ve never known before but know you could be. He calls out something better in you than you thought you could be. Jesus call you and tells you to follow.

“Even me?” you ask.

“Especially you,” Jesus replies. “Always you.”

Generosity Without Limits

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Do not withhold good from those who need it,
when you have the ability to help” (Proverbs 3:27, New English Translation).

This verse came to mind earlier when I saw a man holding up a sign on a busy street. Basically, the gist of the sign was that the man needed money.

You can always debate whether or not to give money to people like this guy. There will always be people on both sides of the issue of who is really deserving of generosity, who is legitimately in need of monetary help, and who is not.

As I sat in my car, the refrain “do not withhold good from those who need it, when you have the ability to help” kept playing in my head. For me, it wasn’t a matter of deserving.

I probably could have rationalized myself out of giving any money. But I couldn’t get that verse out of my head. I might have gone on my way and eventually forgotten about the whole incident. But I would know that I passed on an opportunity to do good that would never present itself to me in the same way ever again.

I’m not here to tell you that you should always give money to everyone holding up a sign and claiming to be homeless and in desperate need of financial assistance. That is a matter between you and God.

I can only tell you that I rolled down my window and gave that particular man some money because I felt at that moment not to give would have been directly violating what I strongly believe God was telling me to do. I don’t say it to boast because I very nearly kept my window rolled up and drove past to where I was going with all my money still in my wallet.

One word of advice: I recommend buying people meals instead of giving cash when possible.

More than that, I recommend the next time God lays it on your heart to be generous to someone, do it. Trust that God can take paltry offerings, like those fishes and loaves from a small boy, and multiply them beyond your wildest dreams to accomplish more than you could possibly imagine.

Your job is simply to give.

 

My Prayer for You

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

 “It is for this reason that I bow my knees before the Father, after whom all families in heaven above and on earth below receive their names, and pray:

Father, out of Your honorable and glorious riches, strengthen Your people. Fill their souls with the power of Your Spirit so that through faith the Anointed One will reside in their hearts. May love be the rich soil where their lives take root. May it be the bedrock where their lives are founded so that together with all of Your people they will have the power to understand that the love of the Anointed is infinitely long, wide, high, and deep, surpassing everything anyone previously experienced. God, may Your fullness flood through their entire beings” (Ephesians 3:14-19, The Voice).

This is my prayer for all of you tonight, as originally prayed by the Apostle Paul.

While You’re Here

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

I heard something tonight at Kairos that got me thinking.

Basically, the main speaker, Chris Brooks, was speaking of relationships and said something to the effect that one of the things a woman should look for in a man is how he is investing in his friends and giving himself away for those he loves. Chris said that true love doesn’t wait in the sense that you don’t wait until you’ve found that special someone to become the right person.

Maybe that applies to more than just relationships.

Perhaps you’re in a job that’s not your dream job. Work as though it were your dream job and give your absolute best every single day, and maybe one day a door will open for you to find your dream job.

Maybe you’re in a season of life that isn’t where you thought you would have been in by now. Learn to embrace your circumstances and find the joys in each day of living– including the ultimate gift of being alive.

Don’t mark time while you wait the next phase of life. Be the best possible you, trust God as fully as you know how, and leave the results to Him. Do everything in your power to make the small world around you, and the people in it, better for your having been there.

There is no rewind on the remote control of life. You don’t ever get to go back and relive a moment once it’s gone. The key is to live each moment while it’s still in the present rather than looking ahead to what may be or looking back to what might have been.

In the Bible, Ruth didn’t waste time chasing down her Boaz. She was faithful where she was to the one she was with– her mother-in-law. She loved and served  the person right in front of her with everything she had.

I can think of no better example of how to live in a season of waiting.