Living Icons

“We seldom celebrate enough the fact that healingness and newness are inborn in the human person, and we can release them into the world in creative and redemptive ways.  We are perhaps too frozen in the notion that we are faithful if we are obedient.  We are moral if we play it safe.  We are virtuous if we ask God to do stuff for us.  Slowly and not often enough do we learn that God is not one who bails us out, or one who nags and supervises what is entrusted to us.  The good news is a glorious but demanding affirmation that we are trusted by God to live a new kind of life.”      - Walter Brueggemann

You are one of God’s icons; designed to reflect his very nature.

Goodness.

Mercy.

Justice.

Love.    

Do not wait for God…he is waiting for you.  You have been trusted to act, to move in ways that promote wholeness, restoration and peace.

Today, and each moment within its confines, you have opportunity to live out what has been hard wired into you.  Do not listen to the voice that says, “not good enough”, “forgotten”, “washed up”, “unqualified”, “fool”.  Instead listen as the Author of All sends you forward with new words:

“Chosen”, “Esteemed”, “Friend”, “Daughter”, “Son”...

"Image bearer".

Hashing It Out

Who would argue with God?  Those that love him.

Why would God bother arguing with us?  Because of his love.

Strange, but our arguments and disagreements with God are indicators of an intimate relationship.  We wrestle with those we love over matters that are important to us and so to find ourselves in a quarrel with the Divine is movement towards oneness.

Walter Brueggemann writes, “Hassling with God, which Israel did with a passion, is an act of faith.  It is a covenantal way of life, for it means that the two parties to the hassling do indeed take each other seriously and know that on their own they must come to terms with each other”.

Arguing with God is part of our mutual “working out” the relationship.  This is not merely “my” relationship with God, but rather the one we share in together (us and the Divine).  Heated dialogue reveals our passion and that which we hold close…whom better to reveal those things than to the One who placed them within our souls?

Do not refrain from questioning God on things you do not understand because of some false notion of piety.  Do not shy away from a slug-fest with the Lion of Judah because the tune “Jesus Loves Me” prances in your thoughts.  Instead…

Unleash your fear.  Scream your apprehension.  Let the furry of your frustration fly.  Be relentless with your interrogation.  

Tell the Father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob what you really think.  Argue with vibrato and veracity because the relationship matters and love is worth it.

Prophets and Poets

"The world does not believe in newness.  It believes that things must remain as they are.  Shalom affirms that in a world of kings, prophets must be heard and taken seriously; that in the world of technicians, the voice of the poet is essential for the humanness of our world.  That is where the church might take its stand.  We are in danger of silencing the prophets domesticating the poets, and squeezing out the sources of newness among us.  This danger implies an agenda for the church.
Obviously it is easier to state such an agenda than to bring it off.  But that is the hard place where the crucifixion-resurrection people have always been called to be.  It is the tension between those who dream about what is yet to be given in God's promises and those who manage what is already possessed.  And surely that is what our best Reformation heritage is about: that we do not live by what is possessed but by what is promised."

- Walter Brueggemann, Peace p.133

The Brickyard

I’m not sure what kind of work you are in.  Maybe you are a school teacher, marketing exec, contract laborer, professional athlete or stay-at-home parent.  Regardless of vocation we all experience the trappings of the Brickyard.

The Brickyard is the monotonous place of production without realization or gratification.  The Brickyard is focused on maintaining the status quo for sake of the bottom line.  There is no need to be creative within the Brickyard for our role is already laid out, planned, and neatly organized (no need for free-thinking beings in the highly regulated brickyard).  The Brickyard gives the allure of safety but steals our individual identity.  Demands and quotas are the only incentives in the Brickyard. 

In the Brickyard, industry thrives at the expense of our humanness.

The myth of the Brickyard is that if we work hard enough, complete the latest project, or do as we are told it will finally pay off.  Yet it never does.  There are always more bricks to make and more walls to construct.

Walter Brueggemann writes, “the brickyard is a place of hopelessness.  Not only must we produce for the others, but there is no prospect, not in our wildest imagination, that things are ever going to change.  There will never be enough bricks to meet the quota”.

Sadness and despair set in where we lose our creative imagination for what life may bring.  Life is viewed as “the daily grind” - something we try to get through and survive, rather than a gift that is anticipated and received.

Stepping outside of the Brickyard takes courage and faith.  Courage to stand up against the managers and systems that relish in holding to the company line and faith, that when reach out in trust, the Divine reaches back.  The choice for you and I is simple:  choose between those who say, “Make more bricks” or the God who says, “Let my people go”.