A Fresh Perspective

The sacred storywriter tells us that Moses prays, “Show me your ways, so that I may know you.” This is, I believe, the universal longing of the human heart. One ancient interpreter of the faith said, “The heart of man is restless until it finds its rest in God.”   Of course, not everyone would identify this existential angst, this missing element in our lives as a longing for God. In fact, it’s usually disguised as something else. We might think that the something that is missing is something in our marriage or our vocational career or in our friendships. We might think of something physical or material or emotional – rather than spiritual. And I’m sure there are things missing in those areas of our lives, because none of us have it all together do we? So I am not suggesting that every need, every longing, every bit of angst we experience is spiritual. But all these other longings and needs are echoes of our greatest need of all, which is spiritual. It is the need to consciously c...

A pastor I know tells about a Bible study group in a church that he served a number of years ago that decided to study the book of Jonah. They got hung up on the whale scene. They read the story not as a parable, but as a historical narrative. T hey concluded that Jonah must have been swallowed by a sea grouper because a whale’s mouth is not large enough to ingest a human. They even asked the pastor to make an announcement to the church about their findings. Well, the pastor got around it by telling them that he didn’t want to take credit for their research, and they should find some other way to share their conclusions. I don’t know, but I have a notion that these folks probably missed the whole point of the story of Jonah. A Native American was talking to a group about his tribe and before telling them a story he said, “I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true.” A story can be true whether it actually happened or not. This is a parable with a...

As we mature in our discipleship to Christ, our world should expand and grow larger too. As we grow spiritually, we will move into a larger sphere of reality while staying connected to our faith community and tradition. Imagine living on a Great River and being part of a community that lives in one of the inlets. In that community there are certain guidelines and boundaries necessary to sustain a healthy community. In the community we form deep friendships. We provide and receive services. But we are not confined to that community. We navigate on the Big River and may be away for extended periods of time, but we always come back to our community. We need our community, but think how limited life would be if we were confined to that inlet and never navigated the Great River . Unfortunately, many Christians remain locked into their little communities and faith traditions, never venturing out onto the Great River . They get bogged down in meticulously defining life in ...