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“Let the oppressed see it and be
glad; you who seek God let your hearts revive!” This is verse 32 from Psalm 69.
It holds quite a punch doesn't it? I haven't written a blog entry in quite some
time since I've been letting the Holy Spirit write my messages every Sunday
morning. This writing is not to be misconstrued as a sermon. This writing is
purely reflections on what it truly means to be alive in Christ.
One of the lines of Ministry of recently gotten involved
with the past few months has been hospice chaplaincy. Every single day that I
serve in this ministry, I am left to ponder with these three thoughts: how do I
continue to minister to people in understanding and clarity what is Body, Mind
and Spirit care? All three of them are needed for the wholeness of the person.
In particular, on this journey, becoming whole as the one who is preparing to
meet God… it also means becoming whole within your own family and within your
own life.
Now if this was a dish that I was putting together on a
stove top, that image should be on the back burner for now or getting warmed up
and then beginning to put oil in the wok. When you think of the shape of
that pan, it is in the shape of a bowl. We could take that a little bit further
and think of Our Lives as being in the loving and gracious hands of God. And
then perhaps our minds go wandering to become lost in many images and things
that are not seen.
Things that are not seen but are lived. This is what we
would like to call the mystery, amazement and magnificent power of the person
of the Holy Spirit within the very heart of the person. I have said in probably
many previous writings or messages that the heart is the Tabernacle of the Holy
Spirit. It is the Holy of Holies where Christ himself does work on our very
lives. How can someone, in this day and age, even wrap their mind around the
truth of the Holy Spirit?
I recently read a wonderful book: ‘Alive in Christ, The Dynamic
Process of Spiritual Formation;’ by Maxie Dunnam. I must confess, that it did
spur me enough to want to write some words, not only because I was chewing on
what her book was prayerfully, spiritually doing to me, but what does a faith
that can move mountains really, truthfully look like? We can come up with
myriads of examples such as Mother Theresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reformer
Martin Luther and so on. There are many people who have led extra-ordinary
lives when they allow that Holy Spirit the truly begin to shape their inner
personhood.
Shaping that entire personhood... we've been doing a lot of
shaping the last 300 years since the thoughts of the Enlightenment and ambers
of the Renaissance. Perhaps these great eras of human history have gotten us to
on one level, re-invent Adam and Eve to present "Apple 2.0" to the
world? The positive side of being “prodigal children” of the Enlightenment and beyond
in this 21st century can think of, is that when we open ourselves up enough to
see a personhood developing beyond the self, we then realize the true beautiful
indwelling of Christ himself teaching us to be “doers of the Word.”
Realizing the Holy Spirit in our very lives is not about
theology. It is not about intellectualism, more than it is thinking of what
just exactly is the nature of Life, the nature of the Soul? I have been blessed
within my journey into Ministry to read many beautiful things alongside the
scriptures of other disciples’ reflections on the nature, and the seat of the
Soul. The very foundation of the kingdom of God in His Infinite Wisdom is
planted within those very walls as the seed of the New Nature.
One of the things I have been enjoying moving back to the
Midwest, has been the seasons turning. When the leaves begin to think about
coming out of the branches. When the birds are grateful for the rain to rinse
their feathers and line their nests with a soft dew for their young to drink.
This is a part of tapping into being alive. This is what it means to be fully
flourishing, beginning to fully realize Christ within your very heart as the
person and power of the Holy Spirit.
What has been troubling with what has been going on
protecting ourselves during this horrible virus, covid-19, is how we are seeing
and hearing, too much despair. This disparity can come in forms of not being
able to be as social people. Truly realizing what it means to be isolating and
isolated. All these heavy things fall upon the heart in a burgeoning secular
world perhaps on the negative end teetering into godlessness. On the positive
ends, I have been finding that I'm listening more. I am listening deeply to
hear God over the evil one’s voice in my heart. Let me tell you, the world has
grown in a lot more colors more than this former artist painted on pieces of
paper and prepared wood.
God's timing is not our timing God's thoughts and God's
plans are not something that will be fully revealed to us. We do not have the
right or the place to presume and conclude. This has been a problem coming from
the Enlightenment era. Where God was cast far above into the heavens beyond and
we became Deists.... and the true bonding of the spirit from the early church has
been lost to an inward world that listens to other voices.
I love many of the terms that have gathered their own
understanding over the centuries of “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” the story
of Jesus, the Christ. Apostle is one of those wonderful words. We see them as
the sets of characters that were drawn, privileged and wonderfully illumined by being in the true
physical presence of the Son of God, Jesus.
One of my favorite contemporary Christian guitarist Phil
Keaggy, did a song and an album entitled: 'What a day.' This came out the year
I was 5 years old, in 1973. This came out during the era of the new wave of
Jesus’ movement that some have just rationalized away as perhaps being a
commentary towards the Vietnam War. Whether or not there may be an
inkling of truth to that ... we love to do what we need to stop ourselves in
our willful tracks from doing--this is to dismiss that the good aspects of who
we are, the seat of our soul, our personhood responds.
This reflection could probably turn into a giant book if I
had a 48-hour day and much better voice translating software to put to paper my
thoughts on what it means to be an apostle, today. Speaking straight from
my conversion experience some 17 years ago now. It was very real for me and
will always be that page that God turned in my life to become and reap, begin
thinking about the New Nature.... Change is a part of that shaping that God's
work within you seeks to accomplish. It is a transformation from a caterpillar
to a butterfly. It is a transcendence from being an ordinary person, oppressed to
be a label or category... into being an extra-ordinary person that can move
mountains not with just words from the heart but with faith-filled conviction
in action.
The gospel of the Holy Spirit is the Book of Acts, but who
are we to say that the Book of Acts stopped at a certain point? Does it end
simply with the initial 12? I don't think we have the right to say that, for I
think God is still makes apostles. He makes Apostles out of disciples. He turns
wolves into sheep, and He shepherds our hearts into a new direction especially
when we listen. The author of the book I just read, goes in-depth into talking
about the dying and rising process we are to do as Christians seeking and
willingly wanting true spiritual formation, to be alive in Christ.
This dying and rising aren’t just beautiful words that
flowed through the heart of St. Paul given to him by the Holy Spirit, at that
point in time, centuries ago, but it is a real thing. When we spend enough time
to look beyond our noses and stop navel gazing at our own little worlds… We can
begin to see everything experienced in our everyday as a lesson, a blessing, a
painful shaping element to keeping us on God's mission for His creation.
We have a hard time however, wanting to accept that dreams
can become a reality. That they are visions, words and plans said to us to
truly become a reality of our journey as disciples of Christ. If we can for a
moment, beyond the world's approval of who we are, adopt Groucho Marx statement:
“I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member..”
then we could see that our own Journeys with God need to be rebellious.
Rebellious towards the world and its worldliness and oppression. This is not being
rebellious against God and His Holy Spirit.
One of the statements I really love that my dad had penned years
ago was “never say never.” I have learned to see that since my conversion
experience and since my radical transformation as a disciple of Christ that
when the world says no, God always says yes. When He says yes, however, God is
seeking our response. It's beyond being a “doer of the Word,” it's being an
apostle in the world, but not of it. Service is something that is still a huge
part of the Christian message, but the service can't just be how we think of
service. Serving through Christ being truly alive within us, has to be fueled
by that love that we do not understand and that is agape love.
Agape love Is that unconditional love of God, that infinite
misunderstanding that we continue to try to grapple with as we live our
everyday lives. It is a fire in the heart. It is like that flame on top of the
Apostles’ heads on the day of Pentecost. It is that light that we see when we
close our eyes at the edge of our eye. It is an entry into some place that we
really don't know enough about, don't pay enough attention to.
God continues to try to open doors for us of understanding
but what He would really like us to do is to believe. Believing is beyond
what the word itself means for us of faith. It is to accept many things we do
not understand even though we want to have all the answers to everything. It is
to accept without question, the great mysteries of God, the lights of life in
our hearts and His Holy Spirit guiding us and the beauty of creation all
around us. We want to invent the next tree with greater forbidden apples
of knowledge and understanding. Unbelief is when we justify the self and
our actions over and above God and His Will and purposes for us.
Along with unbelief comes the fruits of the Old Nature that
become the doctrine of who the world thinks the human creatures should be and
do. Unbelief seeks great power and this power is only understood as greed and
indifference. Greed and indifference are the core stem to all sin. It is
avoiding that reality that we are, as Martin Luther once said, rot-gut sinners
but aspiring saints. When we become visionaries through listening to the
Holy Spirit speaking to us, this is placing our obedience in a beautiful trust
because we are blessed to be children of Grace and promise. We are freed by
grace and Christ's promise lives within us as the New Nature. This is when we
love God and we love neighbor fully and completely beyond ourselves through
service with compassion.
The very spark of life within us is the soul itself. And it
is not a poetic imaginary. It is a real thing, an element that we do not
understand, but in and through faith, we know it is to be shaped by God.
Through faith, we know that it was created by God and is a part of His glorious
creation, which He does call good. We are in the muck and mire of the world.
It's even beyond what I am during the week as a Hospice chaplain, being an
unspoken essential worker during this pandemic of Coronavirus.... I need to be
in touch with every aspect of my apostleship to God to Christ Jesus the Lord.
My whole self must bear witness, live witness truly ALIVE. I need to let the
Holy Spirit do His work. I need to listen. I need to grow, and I need to
change.
I will leave this reflection with one final thought: it is
often heard, especially from people who feel strong convictions from the wrong
place.... I do not need to change; it is the world that needs to change. What
part of that is my business? Why should I care? For the Christian Journey,
there is no staples’ “easy button,” there never was an easy button. And when we
reduce the cross to be our final answer, Jesus would expect us to realize what
it means to be a Resurrected people. Being and becoming a Resurrected people is
tapping into that ‘metanoia,’ which is a fancy word for change and even fancier
word for repentance. May we be the change in the world beyond the saying of
that. May it not be about us but be about our great Heavenly Father's plan. May
we live into the beauty that is being the attitude of Grace.
Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins
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