Please Permit Me the Pleasure of Rambling

Well, things have been flying by at breakneck speeds of late. There are things happening here in Lake Orion that I can only attribute to the work of God breaking into the creation. Because of all that is going on, my head is spinning, so much so that it has been nearly impossible to find time to sit down and put my thoughts into some coherent picture of what is happening in our church family. Please, do not get me wrong. This post is in no way an attempt to do that. I am no Luke, trying to piece together on “orderly account of the events that have been [happening] among us.” This post will more likely be an MTV-worthy collision of little thoughts and snippets of what has been happening in front of my eyes.

Last night we spent our time with the teens looking at the Chronicler’s account of the reign of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. Let me just say that our kids thought that was a great story, king following the way of the Lord, sending out Levites and priests to do catechesis with the people on the Law, prophets in cat fights, deceiving spirits sent by the Lord, Ahab getting hit by a “magic bullet”-like arrow. Brilliant stuff. Before the night was over, they were ready to write the screenplay.

Two things on this text: First, something semi-serious, I love the inclusio the Chronicler uses to describe the impact of Jehoshaphat’s reign. In both 17:10 and 20:29-30, the Chronicler notes how “the fear of the Lord fell on all of the kingdoms of the lands around Judah.” The former is just after the officials had been catecheticizing the people of Judah. The latter is after the Lord delivers Judah from the onslaught of the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Meunites. For the Chronicler, Jehoshaphat’s reign helps Judah become the “blessing to all nations” that God envisioned during the Abrahamic promise in Genesis 12. Great text.

Second, I have to get back to the cat fighting prophets. (WARNING: This is going to be a HUGE, HORRIBLE stretch of the text. Forgive me. I am just getting used to being slapped right now. Read on for more.…) Now, this was a long time ago, but no galaxy far, far away. If so, we might have had prophets dancing around light sabers instead of slapping each other across the face. After Micaiah reveals the nature of the deceptive spirit that has spoken through the mouths of Ahab’s prophets, “Zedekiah son of Chenaanah came up to Micaiah, slapped him on the cheek, and said, ‘Which way did the spirit of the Lord pass from me to speak to you?’” You have got to love the prophetic throw downs.

Here is where this hits home (and where I really start to stretch this text in horrible ways). Now, it seems as though our church family here is getting slapped on the face by the Spirit of God. We have spent months talking about what it means to be the church in our community, how to go about living out our Christian identity, how to be a redemptive presence and build redemptive relationships with those around us. Well, the Spirit of God has been moving ahead of us, preparing the hearts of the hurting and broken, of the destitute and needy, right in front of us. Yet, we have been spending our time talking about how to do this work. The Spirit of God has been slapping us in the face, crying out for us to join in the work that God is already doing in the lives of people. It is crying out for us to be a blessing to the families of the earth, to be a conduit through which the kingdom of God continues to break into the Lake Orion community.

Recently, Natalie and I have been leading the teens through a study of 2 Corinthians. This Tuesday we looked at 2 Cor. 4. We are simple, clay vessels, pots which should be broken, but yet are held together by the mysterious supernatural epoxy of the resurrecting power of God. Who knows? Maybe the cracks and fissures actually allow the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” to shine through and illuminate a dark world. Even the Jesus retained the scars of his death after the resurrection. They were a sign of the reality of death and the resurrecting power of God. Maybe the scars of our ministries and lives of faith actually bears witness, sometimes physically, of the resurrecting power that is working within us, renewing us day by day, transforming us into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

New beginnings. If Christian spirituality is about anything, is it not about that? Three weeks ago a man found us in the Yellow Pages and came to visit us. One of the first things he told me is that he is in need of a new beginning. He is looking for the new him. He had not set foot in a church building for thirty years, but he looked in the phonebook, found us, and came. As of this past weekend he has been sober for 28 days. His wife recently left him. His life choices have put him through the ringer.

Two months ago a young woman named Jenny called to the building to see if we knew someone who would be willing to pick up her 9 year old brother and her 7 year old daughter (that’s not a typo) for church. Natalie and I have been picking them up periodically since then and are trying to develop a relationship with Jenny.

I already introduced you to Johnny (see below). A church member and I accompanied him to court a week ago. We are trying to help introduce him to some godly men in this congregation who can help mentor him in the ways of fatherhood and responsibility. Of course, that mentoring journey is intimately tied to what it means to be a father of faith, so hopefully those connections will prove to breathe new life and new possibility into this boy-father’s world.

Things are happening around us. While we are shelled up in our comfortable church building, the Spirit of God is pouring out of the place and actually bidding people to come to us, to call our number, to walk through our doors, to ask us for help. I pray that we use this spiritual slap in the face to turn our focus outward and be a redeeming and transformative presence here in our community.

Alright, I have rambled for long enough. If only there were more time to tell you more of the stories of these men and women who are on journeys of faith. As it says in The Motorcycle Diaries, “This is a story of two friends who traveled together for a time.” Maybe their story will be written more fully into God’s story soon, maybe they will make his grand story their own. We pray that they do.