With Ray Waddle Today & Glimmers of Hope Yesterday

Ray Waddle, freelance writer and former Religion Writer for The Tennessean newspaper has always been a favorite short article writer. That is probably because he seems to think like me a lot!  :-)  He spoke at a senior adult luncheon at First Baptist today and kind of rambled, mostly about his new book, Undistorted God, from Abingdon Press. I bought one and had him autograph it and look forward to reading it. Not tonight though. It is time for The Roosevelts by Ken Burns!



Yesterday the Sunday school class discussion kind of confirmed my belief that we need to depend on God and trust Him to provide for us in every situation which is what I'm doing on this overseas move thing. Then in worship Pastor Frank continued his series on the Lord's Prayer,

Your kingdom come.Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:10 HCSB  -  Which again confirmed my strong feelings that "His Kingdom" is really in us or happening by us as we are incarnate with Jesus acting through us in our daily lives. It is to me more about how we live our lives following Jesus than some future earthly kingdom or heaven. And this is what I want to happen with my life in a new country, regardless of which fellowship of believers I find to relate to. "God help me to be your kingdom that your will may be done in me on earth.  Amen"

Where Am I Spiritually?

Sometimes I don't know. Going to church now-a-days I often feel like a third thumb, not really a part of things beyond being a greeter and usher which younger people are generally not interested in. This empty-nest mid-life church crises for older people is very well described in this online Christianity Today article:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/september/midlife-church-crisis.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=12017377&utm_content=299016903&utm_campaign=2013

All of the above makes me so much more open to a totally new spiritual adventure if I move to Costa Rica. Who knows what kind of church or fellowship or channels of service? And my love of nature and how it puts me right beside God in so many ways was partially spoken to by my favorite newspaper religion writer, Ray Waddle, in today's Tennessean:


Earth saves room for human delights

For The Tennessean

Last week in Montana, my wife and friends and I encountered three grizzly bears walking across our narrow trail, hardly 40 feet away. My group was naturally thrilled. I naturally worried: We could be killed. It was a mother grizz and two cubs. The scene would turn bad if mama bear felt threatened.

Human domination of nature suddenly meant nothing. We were at the bear’s mercy. But she had other things on her mind — raising a family, getting home. We weren’t worth a second thought. She disappeared with her cubs into the brush without a trace, ignoring our cameras and good intentions.

Immersion in a mountainous wilderness (in this case, Glacier National Park) reveals the silent prehistoric earth as it was before human commentary, sacred texts or gasoline. Out there, it’s hard to see how we fit in, except as disrupters.

Scripture says we were made to rule over Earth’s creatures. So we assume we came along early enough to name everything and organize the place, and it’s been our plantation ever since.

Yet science (for the moment) says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and homo sapiens are maybe 200,000 years old, and we got civilized (started writing) about 5,000 years ago. Which means we arrived late to the banquet. How did God get along without us for 4 billion years? Did God put us on the map only recently because there’s no way we could inhabit the planet for billions of years without destroying it? That’s my guess.

The secret complaint against evolutionary science, I suspect, is not the science but the insult to human ego that a Creator could manage for so long without our companionship. Seen from geologic time, God’s intentions are a bottomless enigma. Yet a miracle abides: our capacity for the poetry of belief, words knitted together against time and chaos in order to bring us closer to the divine spirit. This gift is laid at our doorstep every morning in the golden sunrise.

On this trip I read poet William Stafford, whose verse suggests nature is always watching and waiting, ready to reveal its mind, its balanced economy, its implacable will, its majestic creatures. “The slow current of the life below tugs at me all day,” he once wrote. “When I dream at night, they save a place for me.”

Fierce and patient Earth saves room for human delights — a Tennessee stream, a Kansas plain, a Connecticut autumn, a Montana bear and her cubs, watched from a safe distance.

Columnist Ray Waddle is a former Tennessean religion editor and author of a new book, “ Undistorted God” (Abingdon Press). Reach him at ray@raywaddle.com.

Spiritual Not Religious?

I must admit I have said that a few times and like most people it was a subtle slap at the church. So I welcomed Ray Waddle's column in the Tennessean today. It reminded me of two or three important things. The "Spiritual Not Religious" people never organize to help people during disasters nor send missionaries to serve so many people around the world. Pastor Frank one time said that you cannot separate following Christ from relating to people and that is what the church is all about with it's core being spiritual.

I could add to Ray's words with the fact that Christ called the church his bride and that we become one with Him to do his ministry in this world. Even the incarnation ministry of Christ in us works best through the church and her channels and with fellow believers. I still have problems with my denomination and only occasionally with my local church, but its imperfect nature allows us imperfect people to relate to hurting people in love and see that God only works with and through us broken and imperfect people. Yes, Ray, I agree that the phrase I have even used myself, "Spiritual Not Religious" rings hollow in the real world. I am thankful for my imperfect church.

The photo of tulips I just recently found on my computer and decided I love. I made it at Falls Mill, Belvedere, TN in April 2008.

Following Jesus - The Will Campbell Way

A Middle Tennessee minister/philosopher/activist, Will Campbell, cut to the chase when it came to following Jesus and would be as good a role model for me as anyone in contemporary times. He died June 3. In today's Tennessean our religion columnists Ray Waddle wrote an excellent column in remembering Will Campbell titled "Jesus movement cut across all political mandates."

Hopefully the full article above will stay online for a long time, but just in case I want to copy a few passages of the column that particularly spoke to me as the way I would like to follow Jesus. The headings are my addition (not their words/opinion) as I try to summarize the writings of both men:

REJECT POWER & MONEY 

Those are hard things. Probably the hardest is rejecting power, since all well-intended solutions (and egos) depend on accumulations of political influence and institutional muscle. But Campbell warned:

“True soul freedom can never be found in any institution. If they will pay you, let them. I did it, too. But never trust them. Never bow the knee to them. They are all after your soul. All of them. Jesus was a radical! And his grace abounds.”

REPLACE DOCTRINE WITH INCARNATION OF CHRIST

For him, the Jesus movement revealed a path that cut across all political mandates. Visit prisoners. Be a friend to the forgotten. Be also a friend to racists. Put no faith in any ideology. Be the incarnation of Jesus in this world. . .

 . . . The God of the Bible is too enigmatic for well-rounded theological statements. Will Campbell relied on his own wits and the subversion of grace, summarizing a biblical command: “We must obey God rather than man. He is our only sovereign. He is our God. Him will we serve.” . . .

 “Given a hearing, Will can describe a Christianity that is scandalous and objectionable, shockingly exhilarating and frighteningly attractive,” writes Richard Goode, a history professor at Lipscomb University . . . 

I HAVE NO MINISTRY - JUST A LIFE LIVED

. . . Speaking to a group of Baptist brethren in 1995 he said: “As the sands of time run out on me, I do not consider that I have had a ministry at all, except in the sense that all believers are priests. I have had a life. As to how well I have conducted it I am willing to leave to the One so mysterious, so elusive and evasive, so hidden as to say to Moses from the burning bush, I AM WHO I AM, to be the sole judge. I can only exult that grace abounds …” 

It is so exciting to find someone's words that express what I have been thinking and trying to say and live. I have just not been able to communicate it like Will Campbell and Ray Waddle! I thank you guys!