| Saturday, 12 July 2003 | ||
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| Lots of dogs this morning at La Bergamote. Sam is off to brunch with an Evangelical Concerned friend of his and I'm waiting and reading. I'm waiting for morning Eucharist to end so that I can ready the Smart Classroom for their last class session. Waiting, too, for Mom and Dad to arrive. There was an elderly couple with a slight Scandinavian accent sitting next to me by the window, eating croissants and drinking coffee. They are gone now. One of those many dogs stopping outside the patisserie was an elderly Grate Dane. The women, excited and slight of speech, gushed about how beautiful the dog was, an elderly do, too, with grey fur around his face. He, the dog, had a hard time sitting. "A wonderful dog with such a sweat disposition. They look fierce, but are really such seat dogs," she said.
Waiting for Mom and Dad. This will be the first time I see Mom since my illness. She wants to see for herself that I am okay! I think it will be the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island today. We shall see. We shall certainly see. What do I really want to say on Sunday? We have to be open to God's truth no matter how it looks, how it challenges us, how it disrupts us, or how it changes us! The Kingdom of God is like an undiscovered country! Over time and through the influence of all new experience, we are changed slowly and surely into new creations, changed continually into the image of Christ - as we were created or destined to be. But, the choice is ours. We can remain as we are or we can become what God intended as we are reconciled to God in all things. We must decide, as is intended at confirmation, but for the majority of us we did not go through confirmation, so at some point we have to decide to take a step into this undiscovered country. In doing so, we lay everything on the line, and our reward is great. A primary concern for us is to know Truth, with a capital "T." Some believe there is such a thing as absolute Truth, which resides in God. Others do not, but we have to take the steps, continually, daily, to discover which it is. The problem is that too many of us do not lay everything on the line in order to live within God's kingdom, God's intended way of living. Too many of us honestly do not want to be challenged to change, even for the better. We do not bring ourselves to take those steps. That attitude can be seen in Jeraboam's command to Amos to stop preaching in Israel - go to Judah; what you say is too much for us. He did not want to hear God's prophet, or how they needed to change, how they needed to step out of "this world" and into God's way of living, which to them was an undiscovered way of living. Do we, as Christians, want God's will for our lives? Do we want God's Truth? Do we want to live a lesser life in "this world" or do we want to live as God intended life to be - whole, complete, and lacking nothing? How should we then live? As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, in the Way, how should we then live? To know, we need to be on the quest to know God's Truth! In God's Truth, we see things in the cognitive, in the affective, and in the physical domains, as they are, not as we want them or wish them to be. That is freedom. |
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