Poll du Jour

The Christianity Today website has several interesting polls during the week. Follow this link to see the latest poll and the results of the previous poll http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/features/poll.html .

Coffee Talk Redux #19 - Peace in Community

Coffee Talk Redux is a reflection on things God is teaching me. In some cases the ideas for these topics come from the Coffee Talk group that I meet with weekly at the Vintage Coffee Bistro located in Lambertville, Michigan. At other times the Redux topic may arise from some conversation I may have had with someone, or a thought that crossed my mind, or perhaps something I read somewhere, or maybe a combination of all of these. In any case think of this as a discussion on what God is teaching us to help us grow in our understanding of His will.

So last night at Coffee Talk we were weaving together the themes of peace, humility, community, and experiencing God in the NOW. To experience God in the NOW one must realize that all of these themes are related. To be an effective church means a community, the Body of Christ. To make the Body of Christ work requires that there be a community that is Christ-like.

But folks that belong to a church community also belong to other communities outside the church, for example their work, their neighborhood, their friends, and their family. Much of what is done outside the church is focused on making a living and satisfying these other interests. In today’s world making it means being focused on things in the future, acquiring more stuff, paying for the stuff, planning for this and that, over scheduling one’s life and kids, and perhaps regretting the things of the past, that is what has happened or should have happened. In our world today there is no time for the NOW since every moment is focused on what we are going to do next. To become more spiritual and experience God each day of our lives and not just for an hour on Sunday morning means that we have to focus on the NOW. We only experience and can know God in the NOW, we can only pray to God in the NOW, not in the past or in the future, but NOW. But focusing on the NOW means that we have to stop thinking of ourselves and think less about competing with the outside. By thinking less about everything else we begin to think more about God and begin to experience Him in the NOW.

But life for many just ends up being a competition of having and wanting more and more and chasing one’s tail for that illusion of a life that is better than others. This need to compete is driven by pride and one man’s pride is in direct competition with the other man’s pride. The need to impose our will on others rather than to let God’s will be done. The competition is in trying to be richer, better-looking, having better and more talented kids, and being smarter and more successful than everyone else. This prideful state is what leads one away from God just as in the Fall of Adam and Eve and in the fall of the angel that resulted in Satan.

The danger is that this pride and our own sense of superiority is then brought into the church community because with pride in its midst the Body of Christ cannot be effective. Worship is no longer directed towards the Gospel message but is directed towards an imaginary god that serves our own self-centered interests.  We cannot focus on the needs of others but see others as the means to our own ends. To enter the church one must empty themselves and leave their pride and their ego at the door. The opposite of pride is humility and when we empty ourselves of our ego and our pride and all the trash and the competitiveness of the outside world there will be peace in the community and the starting place for carrying this throughout the world begins right within the church.  If we can take this first step when we enter church we can transform our own lives and the lives of others as well. Christ showed us how to do this, for as Paul says in Phillipians 2:5-8, “Have this in mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a Cross.” A church works as the Body of Christ when its members have emptied themselves of their pride and become humble servants of Christ working together towards the common good and in this way as community they experience God in the NOW.

© Ronald L. Fournier - 2008

In the News - Bibles for Soldiers

Follow this link to an interesting story about a group’s effforts to provide copies of the Bible for our soldiers. “The initial, ambitious goal of Operation Worship was to ‘deploy’ 100,000 Bibles in 100 days to U.S. soldiers around the world. The project began June 1 and already organizers are being forced to revise their plans because they exceed their goal in 30 days.” Follow this link to read more http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080719/NEWS10/963444729/-1/NEWS .

A Meditation - How Shall We Repay the Lord for all His Goodness to Us?

by St. Basil who was born at Caesarea in Cappadocia in 330 and who died in 379. St. Basil fought against the Arians and is well regarded for his scholarly work and his monastic rule that is still followed by Eastern monks.

What words can adequately describe God’s gifts? They are so numerous that they defy enumeration. They are so great that any one of them demands our total gratitude in response.

Yet even though we cannot speak of it worthily, there is one gift which no thoughtful man can pass over in silence. God fashioned man in His own image and likeness; He gave him knowledge of Himself; He endowed him with the ability to think which raised him above all living creatures; He permitted him to delight in unimaginaable beauties of paradise, and gave him dominion over everything upon earth.

Then, when man was deceived by the serpent and fell into sin, which led to death and to all the sufferings associated with death, God still did not forsake him. He first gave man the law to help him; He set angels over him to guard him; He sent the prophets to denounce vice and to teach virtue; He restrained man’s evil impulses by warnings and roused his desire for virtue by promises. Frequently, by way of warning, God showed him the respective ends of virtue and of vice in the lives of other men. Moreover, when man continued in disobedience even after He had done all this, God did not desert him.

No, we were not abandoned by the goodness of the Lord. Even the insult we offered to our Benefactor by despising His gifts did not destroy His love for us. On the contrary, although we were dead, our Lord Jesus Christ restored us to life again, and in a way even more amazing than the fact itself, for His state was divine, yet He did not cling to equality with God, but emptied Himself to assume the condition of a slave.

He bore our infirmities and endured our sorrows. He was wounded for our sake so that by His wounds we might be healed. He redeemed us from the the curse by becoming a curse for our sake, and He submitted to the most ignominious death in order to exalt us to the life of glory. Nor was He content merely to summon us back from death to life; He also bestowed on us the dignity of His own divine nature and prepared for us a place of eternal rest where there will be joy so intense as to surpass all human imagination.

How, then, shall we repay the Lord for all His goodness to us? He is so good that He asks no recompense except our love: that is the only payment He desires. To confess my personal feelings, when I reflect on all these blessings I am overcome by a kind of dread and numbness at the very possibility of ceasing to love God and of bringing shame upon Christ because of my lack of recollection and my preoccupation with trivialities. (from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours)

A Book Recommendation - Spiritual Life: A Journal of Contemporary Spirituality

 Well not quite a book recommendation but a recommendation for a great quarterly journal Spiritual Life: A Journal of Contemporary  Spirtuality” which is published by the Washington D.C. Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars. Quoting from their first issue wherein it says, the greatest need today is for men and women to know God better than by hearsay. Spiritual Life is an attempt to do something about it.” Each issue has about a half dozen or so articles and reflections on Christian spirituality and how to live a more spiritual life. This journal through its writings seeks to translate the timeless wisdom of recognized masters of the spiritual life into a contemporary message. This is an excellent journal and I highly recommend it. The U.S. cost delivered to your door by USPS is only $22 and if you keep your eyes open you may even see copies of each issue around your church. For more info and ordering online follow this link to their home page http://www.spiritual-life.org/ .

Theophilus Cafe #21

Theophilus Cafe is a place where we can have a running dialogue based on a question or  issue that I post. Think of the Cafe as a virtual coffee house where you can gather with your friends and discuss the posted topic or just reflect on it.  Please post your thoughts or response on this topic in the comments. So the question today is: So who is your god? Or what are you most trying to give up?

In the News - Fiction for the Faith-Starved

Follow this link for a review of The Shack by Christianity Today http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/julyweb-only/128-41.0.html .

Poll du Jour

The Christianity Today website has several interesting polls during the week. Follow this link to see the latest poll and the results of the previous poll http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/features/poll.html .

A Meditation - With You is the Source of Life

by St. Bonaventure who was born around 1218 at Bagnorea in Tuscany. He studied philosophy and theology in Paris and he is known for his writings on these subjects.

Take thought now, redeemed man, and consider how great and worthy is He who hangs on the Cross for you. His death brings the dead to life, but at His passing heaven and earth are plunged into mourning and hard rocks are split asunder.

It was a divine decree that permitted one of the soldiers to open His sacred side with a lance. This was done so that the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as He slept the sleep of death on the Cross, and so that the Scripture might be fulfilled: They shall look on Him whom they pierced. The blood and water which poured out at that moment were the price of our salvation. Flowing from the secret abyss of our Lord’s heart as from a fountain, this stream gave the sacraments of the Church the power to confer the life of grace, while for those already living in Christ it became a spring of living water welling up to life everlasting.

Arise, then, beloved of Christ! Imitate the dove that nests in a hole in the cliff,  keeping watch at the entrance like the sparrow that finds a home. There like the turtledove hide your little ones, the fruit of your chaste love. Press your lips to the fountain, draw water from the wells of your Savior; for this is the spring flowing out of the middle of paradise, dividing into four rivers, inundating devout hearts, watering the whole earth and making it fertile.

Run with eager desire to this source of life and light, all you who are vowed to God’s service. Come, whoever you may be, and cry out to Him with all the strength of your heart. O indescribable beauty of the most high God and purest radiance of eternal light! Life that gives life, light that is the source of every other light, preserving in everlasting splendor the myriad flames that have shone before the throne of your divinity from the dawn of time! Eternal and inaccessible fountain, clear and sweet stream flowing from a hidden spring, unseen by mortal eye! None can fathom your depths nor survey your boundaries, none can measure your breadth, nothing can sully your purity. From you flows the river which gladdens the city of God and makes us cry out with joy and thanksgiving in hymns and praise to you, for we know by our own experience that with you is the source of life, and in your light we see light. (from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours)

Podcast #20 - Mere Christianity, Part 1

podcast-merechristianity-1 (L click to play, R click to download)

I started a class back in June with some of our high school students and we are reading together C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. We will be meeting about six times over the summer to discuss this book so my plan for this and the next five podcasts is to give you some idea of what Lewis is talking about in his book and some of the issues being discussed in the class with my high school students.