Whatever He Says

I followed my friends out to the sunporch to say goodnight, but before they stepped out into the summer evening, I remembered a funny story. One of them had called me the week before, disturbed by the message on a church sign. But when she told me what it said, I didn't interpret it in the way she did. When I told my husband, Paul, he saw it differently to either of us. Later on, I told my friend Susan about it, and she had yet another take on it the sign. As did her husband, Ron. That 's five different perspectives on an eleven-word sign, which said: If you want holy water, boil the hell out of it The many interpretations of the meaning of the sign illustrate why communication is fraught with potential pitfalls. Our personal filters and many other factors influence what we "hear." Then, the sun-porch became a confessional,  I said that I felt terrible about judging people's words and ideas when they're talking to me. Maybe "evaluating" is a kin...

Saturday dawned. The washing machine slish-sloshed the first of several loads.  It was golden, warm and sunny and on my agenda I had Friendship Sunday invitations-- six of them! The thought of that sent me to my basket of devotional reading for a few minutes of spiritual muscle building. There is nothing like a leap out of your comfort zone to bring you to your knees, and going out into the neighbourhood with six invitations, qualified. As I read, I found a prescription for inspiration in a short sermon of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's, delivered on January 1, 1934 in London.  January 1st, that universal day of good intentions!  Bonhoeffer wrote: So a new beginning is not something one can do for oneself. One can only pray for it to happen... But we can pray only when we have realized that there is something we cannot do for ourselves, that we have reached our limit, that someone else must be the one to begin. And he went on to speak from his text, Luke ...

" Doing Christianity is a lot harder than being Christian. We admire the good Samaritan but think him slightly odd," said my friend Dave, in a comment on  yesterday's post.   This morning I turned to a sermon in  a collection of Dietrich Boenhoeffer's  sermons. There was a prophet in Berlin in 1932 and his name was Boenhoeffer.  Boenhoeffer wrote in a certain historical context that is explained in interesting detail in this treasure of a book. It had great significance to what he said, but he could also be speaking to any church and anyone who calls themselves a Christian today. His text was Colossians 3: 1-4, and he spoke about what those disturbing words might mean to his congregation; about the dangerous God, who disturbs our lives and and challenges our worldview; the "cup of nothingness" that is chosen when we think that any government or other system is the answer to the problems, brokenness and disillusionment of the world. Compellingly he s...