If you have read (assuming I have readers) my blog for any period of time, you know that I too read Oswald Chambers. What an oracle!
After reading November 22, I am no longer sure about my attempts at writing, maybe they are symptomatic of my “spiritual prigness” ? If writing is an assumption on my part that I have something profound to say, these symptoms are definitely telling.
Maybe owning up to the fact that I have no answers is appropriate here? By dialogue however, I had hoped that I might at least discern the right questions.
One of my readers recently inquired by email as to what I thought was happening in my life, giving the new website look and apparent change in my message…less negativity than found earlier. I hope that the negative edge was in fact a part of my then message to the church, I have said it and this is now.
I do seem to be going through a life transition of sorts as I reflect on the transitions of my past in my attempts at writing the next book, Judah, The Journey to Delight.
Interestingly the book seems to have better defined my understanding of pain and suffering, creating a spectrum of definition from the pain brought own early in my Christian life by the “righteous” indignation of my new found zeal, encouraged by evangelicals; then a new pain, that of learning how ineffective that is long-term (many of you think I am still there) and finally now being willing to share in the sufferings of Christ , even to count it all joy. You now have insight into my next writing or my spirtual prigness?
I am appreciating even more the allegory of the Ark, the box made of wood (humanity) covered inside and out with gold (divinity) and carried on long poles by servant leaders (priests) who dare not touch what God is doing!
In fact, I am (strong words by the way) and you “am” the ark! We, humanity, God’s most treasured creation, represent hollow boxes at best, fully open to His will and His spirit…if anything good and lasting is to come from our lives. Humble boxes, carried on the shoulders of others and even at times carrying the weight of other “boxes” on our own shoulders. Ironically we are both the boxes and the servants.
At best, the church should be full of both, sacred boxes and servant leaders. Leaders who fear touching, or in any way disrespecting the “ark” that is their brother’s life. In spirit, they are much like those after Uzzah’s death in II Samuel 6:6, where he put forth his hand with all good intentions to make right the ark, and it cost him his life. The next time the ark was moved, the poles were so long that when back in the new temple, they extended beyond the curtains once prescribed to cover the ark and all its paraphernalia. Long poles, like good fences help us set emotional and spiritual boundaries for our broken lives.
The lives of those around us are sacred, and though at times they appear to be like the stiff-necked of Moses’ day, they actually are the once stoney hearts softened by the suffering of His Son, upon which God has written his precepts, tablets now carried in those hearts. Life is sacred, we dare not touch or destroy His Temple nor tamper with the Ark of others.
I too am the ark, He carries me on the shoulders of my brothers and nurtures my life with their gifts. The true value of this “box” is not in the wood of which it is made, but in the Spirit that resides within it and the divinity that wraps it in love.
Spiritual Prig or fearful servant? The latter I hope.
May I be put to death in Christ, by Christ, for Christ so that it is no longer I that lives, but Christ that lives in me.
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