Purposeful Faith

I believe reading, studying and meditating on Scripture, is like sitting at the feet of Christ longingly listening to everything He has to say.  Is there a more devoted act than actually, lovingly wanting to be with someone?  I wonder in the great scheme of things if that one devotion will supersede all other acts of our faith including evangelism?

Mary and Martha by
He Qi.  This artist is now featured
in Union's Art Gallery

   

Fighting To Save

Red To Black To Blue

Christ was so engaged with humans and in his earthly ministry right up until he was betrayed but after that he became passively disengaged.  In fact, if you read a red-letter edition of the Bible the text goes from mostly red to mostly black.  Everyone else in the event is very engaged, pitiless mostly, some out of fear, most out of the heartlessness of the fall.  Christ just selflessly gave himself over to the fall for each of us.  We are still mostly pitiless, fallen, heartless, given over to our self-promotions, while politicians and the media fan our heartless flames.  I was reminded of the harshness of heartlessness this morning, how everyone and everything is mired in the fall and is groaning under its weight.  Our bluebird box, which we have anxiously watched for days because it held five little pale blue eggs, was set upon overnight by a heartless force.  There was a war in the box, blue feathers, nest, and one lone egg was all that was left from the violent encounter, something killing, something fighting to save.  I walked away down to the river and stood looking out over the earth praying that me and mine will always be fighting to save, red to black to blue—To Light.   

The Old Old Story

Our Family Reunion

Betty and I found Gordon and Florence Queen, my great grandfather and grandmother’s gravestone yesterday located in Oak Grove Church Cemetery in Morganton Georgia.  It was a beautiful afternoon, mild, sunny and the church lay up a mountain ridge in the woods and graveyard stretching on behind.  It dawned on me that church members take up a lot more room in the graveyard than they did in the church; there is a lesson there somewhere.  They died old, both in the 1980s.  I was married with children and helped carry Granny Queen's casket up the hill to where we buried her.  I remember laboring under the load; another lesson there.  One thing that haunts me this morning is how little I knew about these people even though I had met them many times, slept in their home, ate at their table. I didn’t even know their first names until seeing it on the stone, knowing them only as Granny and Pappy Queen.  I long to know them now, their hopes and dreams, favorite food, greatest tragedy, longings, and loves but I only know their gravesite.  When we were leaving I told Betty I guessed this is what old people do, prepping for our time.  They had 10 children, my grandmother Claudella Gentry along with the other nine names carved on their stone.  All but one of their sons was buried with them, one a baby barely a month old, another 21, murdered and never found, marked only by a small stone.  The lone son is buried in a military gravesite I know not where.  I will take my family out there this evening, we will sit around the stone and I’ll tell the “old, old story…” of our family long gone and of the family now and our hopes for the Family Benson to come and all grafted into the Great Family of God and “…of Jesus and His love.”     

An Ancient Clan

We are buried deep in Appalachia, ancient mountains and culture, brought together by family blood and reunion.  There’s plenty of blood, 17 of us from the marital union of two.  There’s also plenty of us buried roundabout, our great ancients awaiting resurrection, planted in plots barely seeing the sun, scratched out between hills that would only grow resuscitated bodies.  This is our country; for decades we prayed a living out of these hills until we got smart enough to find easier ways than moving boulders to plant a bit of hope.  I remember when I was young my dad drew down on a rabbit for supper and God pulled his finger from the trigger assuring him his needs where now being provided by the faith he was given.  So here I am, deep inside my hills, huddled in a corner of an old log cabin looking out over these ancient peaks thinking kindly of Their Maker; ridge upon smoky ridge, great waves of green eon, like distant stars shining light from the Eden earth sent forth by The Ancient of Days.  I was tied to these hills by my kin as I am tying my kin, we are the ancient tribes, an old and dear band, a family with roots in garden graves still pushing up blood and strong bone making up an ancient clan; The Family Benson. 

Be Careful Who You Rub Up Against

I was reading today about the women with the ongoing issue of blood who touched Jesus to be healed.  The problem was that the Old Testament had proclaimed her to be unclean and anyone she touched to be unclean as well.  That is the way with humans, any time we touch another human we are in danger of being made unclean or passing on our uncleanliness.  Have we ever smeared more uncleanliness around than we are doing today?  When she and Jesus touched, uncleanliness came up against Ultimate Clean, no uncleanliness could pass from her to Him.  The beauty of the story is that because of her faith something Magical could occur, His cleanliness could be passed from Him to her, and did.  Jesus offers all of us this cleanliness, first eternally in salvation but then daily as we quietly meet with Him and sincerely desire his Spirit to live in us.  That gives us the ability to rub up against uncleanliness and instead of passing on our own natural, vengeful, uncleanliness, we can instead allow Him to flow from us, in cleansing forgiveness to the world we are commanded to love.

Note:  I think this is only good for a day, at most, before we are in desperate need to be re-cleaned again.