The View from the West Mesa

My God, my God!  Why have I forsaken Thee? Beaten, haggard, bloodied, raw; For me your loving arms extended To draw me home into your life; You hang on that cross for me. Painful, painful, painful day! When I at last can see My sin, my part, your agony. You say forgive because I do not know; But God, today I do! Your love, your care For me it hurts To see you there upon that curse; To know that I have done my work That holds you there with nail and wood. Today I pray that you will grant A few more days of gracious space For me to meet your gaze from there. And with your eyes to lift me up To die with you and wait For Life to dawn with mercy’s light. A life of love; a heart of grace Craft in my soul to see your face. In furtive hope I grasp at you To feel your arms no longer pinned But wrapped me round and firmly gripped. Brought to and into you at once And molded sure like your own love; Patient and kind despite my sin Welcome and hold me safe within. My Lord! My Lord, forgive you ...

While surfing the net looking for churches, I came across a widely known church's website. Very well done graphics and organization for the most part. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find anything that described what they believed except for an oft-repeated refrain, "It's all about Jesus." Not very helpful really. I mean, that's like motherhood and apple pie, right? Is it really all about Jesus? I know that at first blush, who could argue with such a statement? And I admit that as far as it goes, it's an OK statement. But not in the absence of any amplifying descriptions. As some of you may have noticed, I get a little concerned when folks want me to believe it's all about anything, and this is no exception. Let's get the obligatory disclaimers out of the way up front. I am a disciple, I accept Jesus as the divine Son of God and savior of the world. I understand that his coming and death were pre-ordained by God. I understand the expectation...

One more observation from Sunday. I have kept this a separate observation because it's implications are so far reaching. Our speaker Sunday made the observation, I think, or maybe he just recalled this to mind for me, that there is no secular existence. We Christians often get bogged down in church doctrinal discussions because we want to make a distinction between our "regular lives," and our "church lives." This is a problem because it belies the realization that we don't really buy into this Christian faith as fully as we say we do. You've heard this before, but we seem to forget it when we leave the church property. We live as though there is a difference between our church existence and our weekly existence. We run the risk in making the same mistake that the People of God have made repetitively through history. We forget that we are his people in his creation for his purposes. We are his people every moment of our lives whether we are at ...

Our speaker on Sunday, aside from what I observed in my previous post, did have some good, positive and on-topic things to say. The most important thing is that salvation has never really been about getting to Heaven. We aren't called to be baptized and then go to church hoping to not sin to the point of being excluded from Paradise. We are called to a salvation life now, right here, right now. Some people refer to this as our baptized life or even living into our baptism, a phrase I like because it parallels the idea of living into the likeness in which we are made.  If salvation isn't about getting to Heaven, then what is it about? If you read my previous post, you already know that it's about transformation; about coming to actually be the image of God in it's finer details. We take on the character of God as our character; it becomes the warp and woof of our very existence. This is not a mere learning do be nice, although we will be. It isn't about learning...

Today we were told that "relationship trumps doctrine," and that "it [the Gospel] is all about relationships." The problem of course, is that neither of those are correct. More correctly, they are both less than complete. I understand that when giving a class, it is often difficult to tie the topic up in a bow in one session, relying on subsequent sessions to clarify and bound the initial "hook." Unfortunately, our speaker only had today to launch into this discussion. When you are confronted with that challenge, a speaker should figure out a way to bound his statements or pick a topic that is more restrictive and more easily explained. It isn't as though our speaker was rushed for time, he had plenty of opportunity to clarify his statements so that they would represent the whole of Scripture rather than this tiny bit. He simply didn't. A moment's reflection will reveal that relationship does not in fact trump doctrine in an absolute ...

Last night I was exploring the web and came across what appears to be the Christian version of The Onion. The website offers a Word of God for Today and yesterday’s was taken from Isaiah 1.15a: “No matter how much you pray, I won’t listen….” (CEV). So you get the idea of the website. When I mentioned this Word of God to a few friends, the immediate responses included appeals to God's eventual relenting, his compassion, and other soft and warm concepts about God and our relationship to him. This is common among Christians, emphasizing the goodness and graciousness of God rather than his wrath (with some notable exceptions in the popular media). God is good, and patient, and compassionate no doubt. However, the God in Isaiah is the same God in John. This seems like it may be a problem with us Christians from time to time. We get comfortable living our lives, secure in the idea that either God doesn’t notice or that we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing. We go to churc...

God loves you, he knows you are human, and he knows you are imperfect. He can live with that because he wants you to be transformed into his likeness. God knows that being transformed is a process that occurs over time. If God wants a people who live in his image; in the way they are made (and he does), then he is able in his patience to wait for you and to cover you with grace while you make mistakes. Scripture in fact tells us just that. God is patient not just with his people, but with the world. Just as God wants you to be transformed, he also wants all people to come to him. His patience and covering grace is part and parcel of the process he is willing to allow for you to grow more perfectly into his likeness. The implications of this are huge. Primarily this means that you aren’t damned just because you aren’t perfect. You aren’t automatically lost if you sin. Just the opposite in fact – your imperfection is the result of training and shaping. Your failure in any given...