shalom

I'm munching on almonds and raisins for lunch as I write - part of my latest attempt to fuel my body with more "whole" foods. The concept of "whole" has captured me this week. "Whole" foods. "Whole" skincare. "Whole" people. The "whole" story.

Let's be honest, no one likes to send ill news home; so I simply don't. I make it a practice of not broadcasting my struggles living in the house.

I censor.

But the theme of my week is wholeness; so here we are.


It's always difficult returning home after going away for a weekend, be it for business or pleasure. Don't misread, I love coming back to the physical place of home. Less welcomed is the wave of daily life stressors held at bay during my absence that comes rolling at me like the ocean before a hurricane.


"Two houses down a lady was taken at gunpoint and raped in an abandoned garage. It's happened several times in the neighborhood this week."

Welcome home.

I like to think of myself as a pretty bold little camper. I'm not overly fearful, except when it comes to spiders, cave crickets and parasites.

And, apparently, serial rapists.

Truly, fear of man does not come from God. But it still comes.

Last night, I drove around town just on the outskirts of our end of the city for twenty minutes until I was certain Ben would be home from work to walk me into the house. "What a wuss..." I mumbled to myself.

(Negative self-talk is an issue too, since we're telling the whole story)

Today, I needed to go to the pharmacy down the street. My stomach knotted up at the thought of the quick jaunt to and from my car that this would require. Midmorning nightmares flashed up their horrible "what if?" images on the silver screen of my fear-ridden mind. So I resolved I would just wait and go to the pharmacy tomorrow, when Ben could go too. That was, until a neighbor knocked on our door.

She was sick and needed a ride to the bank and then to the pharmacy. Compassion won out over fear, and calling conquered common sense.

As I waited in the car at the bank I found myself considering how essential my neighbor was to me, a new thought for sure. I moved here because I wanted to help people, but today, I found myself being helped. Too afraid to venture to the pharmacy alone, the person I moved here to serve lifted me up and walked into the store with me.

Shalom.

Wholeness in the neighborhood. I need the people around me just as much as my own self-righteous heart would like to think they need me.

It means peace.

It's this idea of wholeness that the Jewish people understood to be something that emerged from living and working together, and being real with each other.

It's being okay with fearing more than just cave crickets and parasites, because together we can make it through anything.

Shalom.

Demo days

Many of you know that we just bought a new building for our church – but it needs a lot of work. We have scheduled a demolition day for Saturday June 4^th as our first step to remodel and restore this space – we are pretty excited about it. But then I hear news this week, news that is pretty wide spread, that the world is coming to an end on May 21^st. Bummer. So demo days is off?

Every so often some group claims they know when the end of the world is coming, apparently this has been going on for some time since Jesus even fielded such a question. His response, “I’m not sure…don’t worry about it.” But we kinda do worry about it, don’t we. I’m not ready to poke fun at these people saying the end is coming on Saturday because I’m reminded of a story in Genesis about a dude building a big boat. The end really did come for a lot of people then. But I’m also not ready to buy into this new end of the world scenario because this scenario, like many of its predecessors, tells us that God is going to get the “righteous” people out of this mess of a world (in this case 2% of the population) and leave the “bad” people to burn and suffer. Here’s my issue: this is just not consistent with the theme and flow of Scripture. God doesn’t usually “get people out.” Rather, time and time and time again He calls His people to stay in the midst of the mess, the suffering, the pain – and many times to suffer with others and even sometimes to die in the midst of this pain and suffering. In the Biblical message, God’s people don’t “get out” – they “get to be in.” And this “being in” is exactly how God works in the world.

God’s message to His people, the church: Stay. Engage. Love. Suffer alongside. And I will be right there beside you and within you. I'm not pulling you out, I'm putting you in.

God doesn’t call us to “get out.” He calls us to “be in.”

So maybe we’ll have demo days. Maybe we'll get to continue the restoration project after all. I sure hope so.

Hoopin'

Sometime last spring a bunch of the kids in the neighborhood were talking about how they wanted a good hoop to play basketball on. At that time the kids had few options. Some of the kids tried to play at Washington High School, where there were so many kids playing that they would have to wait to get in a game. Some of the kids were too young to join in with the older kids that played there and others weren’t always allowed to go there to play anyway. The only other option was playing on an old, beat up hoop, so bent that it was better to shoot line drives through rather than giving your shot some arc.

The kids wanted a good hoop that would be easily accessible to them. So I began to ask questions about how much a hoop costs, and where they could get that money. The overwhelming majority thought that selling candy bars was going to get them the money to get a hoop. We set up a deal where I would buy the candy bars, and walk with them around the neighborhood to sell them. They would pay me back out of the money they made, and anything above that would go towards buying a hoop. After the kids learned that eating the candy bars wouldn’t help them make money, we started making progress. We sold a lot of candy bars. And we had one very unsuccessful lemonade stand. It took awhile, but eventually we had some money for a hoop. But then it started getting cold. Winter came, and I told the kids to wait until spring and we would get a hoop.

About a month ago I went out and bought the hoop and a few days after that we started putting it together. Despite the adversity of Tim coming by and seeding the backyard and thus watering us as much as the backyard, we got the hoop up.

Now the hoop is being used constantly. Everyday someone will come over and ask me to “take out the court.” It has been used almost every day from after school until dark, and all day on the weekends. The kids love having a good hoop they can play on. They are taking ownership of it too. They are keeping an eye on it and making sure that it is being taken care of, and put away safely at night. This is the hoop that they worked for.

Love and Justice

Leslie Newbigin is one the most influential voices in the area of missiology (the study and practice of mission). I was reading over some of his work in "the Open Secret" and again was amazed by the quote below. It is something the church needs to hear again and again.

I once heard someone say, "If we cannot hear the cry of the oppressed then we are probably the oppressors." The work of the church - whether local or international must be centered around the work of Christ's love for the world and God's desire for restorative justice. Salvation is only complete when the two held together like a double helix.

How can we hold these two together today in our context?

"Any talk of salvation apart from action for the liberation of the exploited is false. It is part of a false theology that is determined by an idealist philosophy and not by the revelation of God as he is the in the Bible. Wherever we look in the Old Testament we find that the prophets and psalmists speak of salvation in terms of actual historic happenings: deliverance from famine, sickness, danger, enemies, and oppression. Therefore, for the biblical writers, to “know the Lord” is not a matter of intellectual contemplation or mystical union; it is a matter of doing justice and mercy in concrete situations. When Jeremiah comments sarcastically on the kings’ building program, he contrasts the king’s conduct with that of the king’s father and says: “He [the father] judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? Says the Lord (Jer 22:16). Those who claim to know the Lord but do evil are deceived. They are far from God. And the same teaching is given in the New Testament. There is no knowledge of God apart from the love of God, and there is no love of God apart from the love of the neighbor. “He who does not love does not know God.” Love and justice are distinct concepts, but where justice is denied love is certainly denied. If the economic order is such that the owners of land and capital can and do exploit and oppress the workers, then the commandment of love must mean more than marginal acts of personal charity; it must mean action to end exploitation. It must mean actions for liberation of which the Exodus is the model, and this must mean taking the side of the exploited and fighting against the exploiter. Fundamental to the theology of liberation is the refusal to allow a separation between truth and actions."

Leslie Newbigin “The Open Secret” p. 97