Their Different God

Their God was different. He gave as well as took. It was sharing, not a one way traffic. Other gods demanded. They thundered and threatened. They required statues with angry faces and bodied modeled on our own. But their God cared. He loved them and they shared in a specialness the sharing created. He had no need of sacrifice. It added nothing to him, and he had meaning apart from their response. He needed no cajoling, no groveling. He hadn't to threaten and so they could learn he was real.

Conflict

Frustrated by truths that conflict with belief we cling to the safer of the two.

Forgiveness

Can we forgive God for the stupidity of death? Have we a choice?

Church's Youth

The Church is very young. It is still in its infancy and like all infants it is trying to know who and what it is, and where it is going in a world it does not yet understand. So it has to try and fail and guess and grope but it has time and in time it will learn.

Shades

Jesus is black, yellow, brown and red. He comes in more shades than "basic white."

Poverty

Today we buried someone who was poor, so poor the family had to beg for a grave. And because of their poverty some thought they had no right to their grief and sorrow. They thought instead they should be grateful and nothing more.

It is symptomatic of so much thought that excludes from humanity those who do not, or cannot, attain or what have not, for whatever reason, conformed to what seems a norm. The poor are excluded more than most. Their human-ness is denied, and in denial of it we are denying our own.

Benefits of Belief

People without belief have no one to be mad at when terrible things happen.

Indefinite

A number of things have to stay indefinite. Exactness would destroy them.

Activity

She defines herself in terms of activity and when not doing something she ceases to be.

Mom - 26 years

Stateless

God is without nationality and bound to bless the bombs of no one.

Hiding Humanity

Institutions and images challenge and confront one another. Ideologies and opinions come into conflict. But behind the image is a person. The institution is ultimately flesh and blood. The opinion conceals who stands behind it, nor do ideologies live apart from their disciples. Nothing survives as an idea. It must be sustained in the mind and heart of the believer. However, it is far easier, so much safer, to hide humanity in a movement. To be a something attaching a something else is as secure as it is impersonal.

Interest

He seems to have lost interest in living. Not that dying has any appeal, but there is so little vitality in a life that cannot be shared. It doesn't seem worth the effort.

Unspoken

Unspoken words sometimes say more, but can also hurt more.

The Prodigal's Brother

What about the son who stayed home, the prodigal's brother? What can we say about him? He did not leave. He did what he thought he'd been told. He had, in fact, every right to feel righteous and I think he did. He was faithful, but at the expense of growth and maybe he hid in his constancy. He did not change.

The prodigal who went out was not the same as the one who returned. He had taken a chance and so became different. He lost everything, but maybe in losing he found as well. Maybe he found himself. Not so his brother. He stayed in the womb that was his home, not knowing there was a need to look beyond. He stayed where there was no searching, no losing, no danger. Maybe that is why he never became someone about whom a parable might be told. Maybe it is too why he could not understand.

Because he never asked a question he was unable to see an answer. He played it too safe and so ceased to be anything more than right, and just a bit dull. He never grew, though he may have thought he did, and maybe at the end his story was seen to be a tragedy, a history of what might have been.

Small Circle

We have control only over the small circle in which we stand. This is so even if we wish, or act as though, we had control over others or were influenced by them so that choices we made could not be our own. We decide about us. It is a power we cannot cede, a right we cannot take even when it is offered.