God and conflict

This morning, I find myself gathering with brothers and sisters preparing for General and Jurisdictional conferences. We are retreating to get to know one another better and to prepare our hearts and minds for the journey.

The first thing we started with today was to ask about where God has been present in history.  Our first instinct was to think about times and acts of reconciliation, love, compassion, and growth in knowledge.

But then our leader asked: what about conflict? Does God only act to bring blessing, or does God also shake things up?

The scriptures are FULL of conflict and tension... Between siblings, internal wrestling, prophets vs kings, Jesus vs the pharisees, Jews vs Christians, insiders and outsiders, clean and unclean, power and poverty, old ways and new ways... Sometimes that conflict is a result of our fallen nature... But sometimes, God is the instigator. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is moving. Sometimes chaos is introduced into our feeble attempts at order in order to move us back to faithfulness.

The hardest question we are going to face as the people of God is discerning what conflicts are based in our failings/sins/brokenness and which ones are prompted by God calling us to different ways. When are we speaking a prophetic word, and when are we only justifying our preconceived notions. When is the Holy Spirit moving and when are we falling into the base ways of the world.

May God grant us wisdom... And may the Holy Spirit keep moving among us.

twinkle, twinkle, little star #reverb10

Last night.... well, this morning... I drove home at 3:00am in the morning from a friend's party.  It was about four degrees outside and the sky was absolutley clear.  The air was crisp and clean and the stars were so bright and vivid that you felt you could reach out and literally pluck them from the sky. I almost had to pull over the car just to look and gaze upon the sight... but I knew if I stopped at that hour I would most certainly fall asleep!

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? (Author: Jeffrey Davis)

It has not been difficult in 2010 to really grasp a sense of wonder at this world.  Everywhere I look around me I see these miraculous and beatiful signs of God's power and the beauty of creation.

The other evening we had seven deer in my back yard eating acorns.  I stopped at the bathroom window and watched them with amazement for fifteen minutes instead of brushing my teeth.

I was driving to my parents house and I saw a bald eagle soaring through the air and in between the trees.  Good thing it was a straight road or I would have driven off it!

My nephew's little tiny smiles and giggles knock me over flat.  My neice's expressions stop my heart. The things my older nephew comes up with make me want to wrap him up in my arms and never let him go.

The sunset one evening as I walked around the local park was so spectacular that I pulled out my phone and captured it to remmeber forever.

The waves crashing in one after the other on the west side of Oahu absolutely stunned me. The sky was a brilliant blue, the sun was blazing and the white churning sea dazzled.  I could have sat there and watched them for hours.

The intense feeling of reconnection and the amazing discovery that I love spending time with my parents as an adult child and a friend.

The warmth of a cat's body curled up and nestled into yours when you are sick or sleeping, cold or lonely.

The thrill of a storm lurking on the horizon and the shades of gray and green that pass over the sky as the wind picks up and the rain starts to pour and the lightening streaks against the sky

You just have to look. 

You only have to pay attention.

There are so many things to wonder at in this world.

Theologically Worrisome

I'm procrastinating on my sermom fine-tuning by posting here, but it is something that has been troubling me. If people in my congregation are having thoughts that I feel are theologically worrisome, do I let them continue in them, or just keep telling them my own over and over?

Specifically, this is about interpreting the string of natural disasters that have hit our world as warnings from God. There is a strong sense that we are getting ever closer to the end times and these tragic events are reminders to straighten up and fly right. And everything within my cries "no." In the local UM pastors meeting, we talked about not judgment, not warning, but about God leading us throught the stormy waters, about the promise that the waters would not overcome, about Christ being the rock we cling to in these times...

it's really a question of theodicy and God's soverign power. Is God behind natural disasters, or not? Can God stop them? And if God can and doesn't, what does it mean? I reside much more in the mysteriousness of God's power and the reminder of God's promises... whereas, my congregation holds fast to God's power over all and unending desire to get us to obey... so we come out in different places. I'm gently urging them not to consider another person's disaster as an intentional means of God speaking to the world... especially when so much life has been destroyed - to me, that seems so counter to the God I know and love and follow. But I still struggle.