tagged 
Bible, Incarnation, scripture
Bible, Incarnation, scripture Monday's Meditation: The Distance Between Me and God (Part Two)
Monday, January 10, 2011 at 11:25AM 
This weekend I was arrested by a tiny word. It caused me to put down the book and worship with a fresh heart. My cup of wonder, amazement and gratitude was dripping from the rim again. I was reading along at the beginning of John’s gospel and a two-letter word rocked my world. Perhaps it will mean nothing to you, but for me the lightning flashed, the thunder followed when I read the word, “he.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The Word, the Life, the Light is also “Him.” Alive and personal.
It’s risky to share your personal response to scripture. Huh? Others say. Yeah, so, what’s the big deal?
Like so many passages in the Bible, I am tempted to think I already know the truth: until the truth breaks into the room and becomes alive. What was only in my head came and sat by my side. The ink on the page is a mere cipher, a code devised by the cunning of men. The true word was spoken and the universe began to spin. There was no air to carry the sound. There were no ears to hear the command. There was simply the Word. And the Word was a Person. Personal. Real. Relational. Alive.
The big deal, for me, is the amazing metamorphosis from Word to Person. Too often what passes for faith lives only in my head--the paltry collection of thoughts from (honestly) a bear of very little brain. Yet the Word became flesh, and lived among us in part, I suspect, to reinforce that brains have very little to do with life, but people--a Person--”he” is the source of life.
Monday’s Meditation for me (and my prayer for you) is that whatever passage of scripture you choose, the Truth will come and sit by your side. Grace to you, and peace.
A Confrontation of Grace
Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 11:29AM 
What is the distance between you and God? Monday’s Meditation suggested it’s not nearly as far as we might think. Paul, speaking to a group of people in Athens who were completely alienated from God, told them God was not far from any of them. Where did he get such an idea? I’d like to suggest that Paul got this idea from his personal experience and the history of his people.
If there was ever a candidate for the wrath of God, Paul’s your man: a Jew who had missed the Messiah; a religious cop bent on dragging apostate Hebrews back to Jerusalem to face the music. Jesus took Paul’s persecution of the people of the church personally: asking, “Why have you persecuted me?” Yet when Jesus confronted Paul on the road to Damascus it was a confrontation of grace, not judgment. The good shepherd has left the ninety-nine and gone after the one who had wandered away.
Imagine Paul, struck blind, sitting alone in a strange city, forced to re-think his religious convictions. He had given his life to study the Hebrew scriptures. He was considered a rising star in Judaism. He had been taught by the best and put his faith into action as an orthodox bounty-hunter. Then, after encountering Jesus personally, he sat in darkness and wrestled with one thought: everything know is wrong. Years later, as Paul stood at the marketplace of ideas in Athens, he suggested that God is close at hand to each of us: the sensual, the cerebral, the religious, the skeptic, the clueless and the pagan. I suspect Paul could make such a statement because he had experienced the reality.
All it takes is one real encounter with Jesus to make us re-think our ideas about God. Not religious argument or philosophical persuasion, but encounter. I suspect that in the Damascus darkness Paul also began to re-interpret the history of his people as revealed in the Old Testament:
- After Adam and Eve choose to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil they discovered their nakedness and tried to hide from God. Far from rejecting them, God himself went searching for them.
- When Cain was angry with his brother, it was Yahweh who tried to talk him down from the ledge. Even after the murder of Abel, Yahweh not only heard the voice of the victim, he placed a mark of protection on the oppressor.
- When Jacob cheated his brother and lied to his father, God did not reject him--though it would have been understandable. Instead, God revealed Himself at Bethel and said, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go . . . I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:15)
The story of Israel goes on and on: each chapter reveals that God himself is the seeker, and his people are the sought. King David, who abused the privilege and grace of God as much as any modern politician, discovered a Faithfulness beyond human reasoning, a Presence not far from any one of us:
You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
His amazing song asked:
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
David came to the conclusion:
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139)
By the time Paul had re-calibrated his understanding of God, he was able to celebrate God’s goodness and affections: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39) Paul, the legalist, had become the Apostle--not only of God’s grace--but of his presence and goodness as well.
Paul had discovered that the Father has always wanted to be among us, and he will not allow anything to get in the way. If sin separated us from the Father, then the Father provided a remedy. It’s more than a legal transaction: the record shows that God will go to any length to be with us. If, as Isaiah says, “your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you,” (Isaiah 59: 2) it is because we are the ones in hiding. He has not gone anywhere. He is still “not far from any one of us.”
I wonder now how many of us need time and space to re-calibrate our view of the Father. How many of the events in our personal history would point to God’s desire to be with us, if only the scales would fall from our eyes? I’m determined to find out, and you’re invited on the journey, too.
Monday's Meditation: The Distance Between Me and God
Monday, January 3, 2011 at 12:28PM 
"God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’" (Acts 17: 22-29)
At the start of this new year these words are ringing in my ears, “he is not far from any one of us.” What is the distance between you and God? Not far. So many of us have been told of the chasm between Holy God and sinful man, and I’m sure that’s true in some respect. Yet Paul spoke these words to people who did not care whether Paul’s God was real or not. He spoke to pagans with no regard for the holiness of God and no awareness of their own sin. He told them that God was behind the events and identities of their lives and pulling the levers in order to encourage people to turn his direction.
What is the distance between you and God? How far do we have to go to connect with him? Not far. It turns out that each day we live, we move, we take our steps, breath our breaths, we run our errands and do our jobs and live our lives--and all the while he is not far from any one of us. Do I know this? Do I feel it? (Or in the words of my friend Kristin Tennant, do I make space for him?) If he is not far, how much space do I need?
How can we make space for him? John Wesley was one of 19 children; his mother, Susannah, made space for God by pulling her apron over her head and taking a moment to pray. How can we make space for him? I have a friend who takes a ten-minute retreat from everything, including his own thoughts, just to sit in silence with God. I have another friend who uses his a different scripture reference as his computer’s password; each time he logs on he recites the verse and asks for God’s help in his work. Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel church in Redding, CA suggests, “Since you can't imagine a place where He isn't, you might as well imagine Him with you.”
Whatever we may think the distance is, the testimony of the scripture is that he is not far from us. No one is excluded. How far do we need to turn? In the coming year perhaps we can learn that the answer is, “Not far.”
Most Popular Posts vs My Favorites (I Lose)
Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 12:28AM 
Apparently, gentle readers, we don’t always see things eye to eye, you and I. On Monday I listed my twelve favorites posts of 2010. Today, as I list the five most-visited posts, only one of them was among my favorites.
Students of Jesus welcomed readers from 105 countries on all five inhabited continents. Next year I'm hoping the penguins in Antarctica get wi-fi. And Students of Jesus reached all 50 of these United States. I'm particularly grateful to that one guy in Cheyenne for putting Wyoming on the map (I hope he comes back next year as well).
The final week of the year is the traditional time for retrospectives, and I’m nothing if not traditional. So, in the continued spirit of all-about-me narcissism, here are Students of Jesus' most-visited posts of 2010.
When Famous Christians are Gay When Christian singer Jennifer Knapp came out as a lesbian (with simultaneous interviews in The Advocate and Christianity Today) I ventured away from the center of Students of Jesus and gave my opinions on the church, on sin, and on the abuse of scripture. Not surprisingly, my views satisfied no one--not even myself. This post generated 25 times the normal traffic to my blog, but it wandered away from the premise of Students of Jesus by commenting on current events and the church at large. I’ve learned that such posts generate a lot of heat and almost no light.
Monday’s Meditation: Sex, Celebrity and Discipleship Just four days later, shocked at the traffic that flooded my little dog and pony show, I tried to get back to the core of my concerns (I'm actually quite proud of this post). I commented on why issues of sex and celebrity draw an audience 25 times larger than the issue of discipleship. Really? Sex and celebrity garners more attention than following Jesus? Who knew? A crazy side effect of this post is that because the title contains the words sex and celebrity it draws traffic every week from search engines around the world. I feel sorry for the people who eagerly click on the link. The average length of a visit to this post? Less than two seconds.
The Great Fall of Wisdom This is the only overlap between my top twelve and the most-visited posts. I suggested that an omniscient God isn’t impressed with how smart we are. I also suspect that the reason it was visited so often is that 22.6% of Reformed-theology seminary students came to laugh at my reasoning (I made that last statistic up, but I stand by it nonetheless). I still like this post, and I would appreciated if all four of my regular readers would email it to Zondervan, Lifeway, and Thomas Nelson.
Monday’s Meditation: Three Important Questions I’m not going to tell you what the three questions are, but believe me, they’re important. This post also generated the most comments of any post all year, but only because I shamelessly ended the article with these pathetic words: “I’m begging: tell me what you think.”
Monday’s Meditation: Indigenous Worship (dot com) I thrilled this post was well received because my dearest friends launched a website dedicated to songwriting and creativity in the local church. It’s an awesome site, and you should definitely check it out, but you should always do so by going to Students of Jesus first and then following the link to their site. Then they might buy me lunch.
One glimmer of hope for people who search the InterWeb is that the sixth-place post was actually written in February of 2009. Somehow, among the millions of people using Google-dot-antichrist, several hundred found their way to Students of Jesus by searching “How Can We Humble Ourselves.” That just provides just enough hope for me to keep writing another year.
That’s it, friends. 2010 is in the books, and my prayer for all four of you is that you will experience God’s richest blessings in the year to come. And hey, what would you like to read about in the coming year, I’m begging: tell me what you think!
tagged Sex, Top Posts, celebrity, discipleship
Sex, Top Posts, celebrity, discipleship Call me 'Narcissus.' These are my top twelve posts for 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010 at 12:03AM 
January: Is obedience possible? ~ Why would he command the impossible?
February: Why His Humanity Matters ~ Because doctrine divorced from flesh and blood is just plain dangerous.
March: Guys Like Us ~ For all of us who have trouble seeing ourselves in the Scripture.
April: Provoking God's Mercy ~ Don't be fooled just because it sounds "nice." Humility is a big freakin' deal.
May: The Discipline of the Present Moment ~ Philosophical, yes, but it's really changed my life.
June: Leaving the Church ~ The cool kids hated this post because I suggest leaving the church is a really bad idea.
July: Josue de La Cruz Saved My Life ~ In honor of the firefighter who saved my life.
August: The Great Fall of Wisdom ~ Why I am sick of smart people.
September: The Limits of Doubt ~ My take on what doubt can--and cannot--do.
October: Everyone’s Entitled to My Opinion: Under The Tuscan Sun ~ In which I surrender my Man-card.
November: Our True Destination ~ I'm still working on this one but I really think I'm on to something.
December: Christmas: God’s Tutorial on Hearing His Voice ~ Actually, I'm not sure I wrote anything all that good in December, but I had to pick something.
Thank you for giving me an excuse to stare into the mirror for hours on end. I feel a little bit like Jenna Maroney on 30 Rock, who fell in love with a female impersonator who impersonates . . . her. (Gross. I know.) And on Thursday, everyone, let's talk about your reactions to--me!