God's faith in us is always greater than our faith in God. Consider God's faith in us as yet another expression of God's immeasurable grace. What does this mean for our discipleship?
The Christmas narrative will remind us that God comes among us defenseless; in the Christ child, God's blessed future for the whole world is placed in our hands for our care. The baby is fragile enough to be crushed by human violence, to be set aside and abandoned, or to be received and nurtured to fullness of life. Let those metaphors resonate within you.
The birth narrative further stimulates our reflection:
1) The world's salvation is carried and born into the world by a vulnerable, unmarried, "unprepared" young woman who at first cannot imagine being God's favored one (Luke 1:26-38).
2) Her companion is scandalized by God's action and quietly seeks to excuse himself from the narrative, tempted to deny their connection on "reasonable" grounds. Instead, he responds to the divine invitation not to be bound by fear (Matthew 1:20) and commits himself more deeply to the emerging covenant.
3) In spite of outward appearances and worldly wisdom, this fragile birth carries the power to turn the world upside down! (Luke 1:47-55).
4) It is a harrowing (and thrilling) life or death story (Matthew 2) in which people from outside the traditional religious community--"foreigners"--play a critical role, embodying a faith that they were not taught in any Sunday School!
Relating to our recent Sunday conversation, this story is full of journeys. God's faithful people are always "on the Way." It is an awesome and peculiar privilege we have, one that is initiated by God's grace, rather than anything we muster for ourselves.
Mother Teresa wistfully said: "I wish He didn't trust me so much." But behold her life!
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What are the ramifications of God's faith in you?
Hope
The Awakening Mind
I was moved by Joe's sharing last time regarding his morning prayer. "I pray in the morning when my mind wakes up, before my eyes are open". Seeing is not always just seeing. The awakening of the mind is a level of consciousness that is only attained by focus and discipline. The literal and physical feeling of your mind waking up from sleep in the morning for me is euphoric. The cosmic feeling of your mind waking up spiritually is nirvana. We go through so much of our lives with what I call "mush-brain" that it's hard to even conceptualize that there is a higher level of consciousness. Awakening to Christ Consciousness is very refreshing but will not come without hard work. It is hard to hear the word of God through all the noise and turmoil of our normal daily lives. Through the practice of meditation I have been able to get in touch with my mind and focus it's energies on productive thoughts which are guided by God. I always say, "A mind wandering aimlessly is a dangerous thing".
The Buddhists call the awakening of the mind "enlightenment" of which there are two components, how and what. What do we awaken to and how do we do it? We as Christians awaken to the word of God through listening. We are "enlightened". Many times in the Bible we find Jesus going off by himself in the desert or wilderness to pray in the quiet. These seemed to be important times for Jesus to listen to the word of God. Do we create enough quiet time in our busy lives to really hear the word of God? Personally, I "go sit on my rock" in nature with no distractions or use my travel time in the car on long trips to reflect and listen. I try to practice daily meditation just to train my mind to be quiet and learn about it. When my mind is quiet is when I able to hear God most clearly.
The last few years have transformative for me but not without effort. My time spent with our church community has allowed me to "see" the world outside and inside me in a different light. Listen to God and follow the teachings of Jesus have been pivotal rules which I've followed that seem to be productive. I am grateful for the time spent together learning in Jesus 101. The journey along "The Way" has been a pleasure.
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