Monday Morning Mentations
It’s not Monday, it’s Tuesday. I could cheat and postdate this and everyone would think I wrote it on Monday but they didn’t read it until Tuesday and then they would be confused for the rest of the week. No. I will be honest and post it today.
I am excited that I came up with a “title” for my Monday Morning post. I love alliteration and considered Monday Morning Musings but, I don’t know … musings can be so overused, especially in blog post titles. I had to have something different, more unique. Yeah, yeah, I know you aren’t surprised. I love words and love to play with words and oh, just as I wrote that I remembered one of my favorite words … magnanimous. oooh, lovely! I discovered that word while reading aloud Johnny Tremain to my children years ago. It just rolls off the tongue and OH, it is a “M” word so I could use it in my title. No. it doesn’t really fit. So, back to the title. Monday Morning Mentations. Mentation is the process of using your mind to consider something carefully … I like it that WordWeb links it to out-of-the-box thinking.
And now, on to those mentations.
Chris and I are taking a class at church. Oh goodness, there we go. As soon as I start typing going in one direction, my mind starts taking me on a quick detour. Do you remember when I wrote What Would Jesus Do With the Church?
I never came back to post a follow up on what I planned to do … to visit the churches I had left behind, to walk in forgiveness, to move forward in search of a church to go to. It is a long post, for another time, but I did visit those places again and I did move forward. We are attending a services at a United Methodist church now. There is still much that I am working through and I am not willing to call myself a Methodist anymore than I am willing to call myself a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Pentecostal. I am simply someone who loves God, who wants to model my life after Jesus and who attends a Methodist church.
So, back on track here. Chris and I are taking a class at church about social justice. Our homework from last week was to come this week with an issue that we are concerned about. AN issue?!?! Oh my goodness. I don’t just have AN issue; I have issues! Immigration. Poverty. The War in Iraq. The environment. Health care. Gender issues. Sex slave trade… abroad and here. Modern day slavery. Racism. Clean Water. On and on. The thing is that I didn’t used to care. Now that sounds harsh but it is true. I’d like to say that I was just busy, caught up in raising up of lots of little ones. That’s not an accurate picture though. The church, the teaching, taught me not to care; those things weren’t important. What was important was preaching the truth, living a holy life and telling people to repent.
One day I began to wake up from that slumber. My eyes were opened to the suffering in the world and to the apathy I sensed in those who should care the most. I found great hypocrisy in the focus that we just needed to get people saved but left them hungry, thirsty, naked, used, abused, lonely. For awhile, that hypocrisy caused me to run hard and fast away from the church as I knew it. It caused me to doubt my faith in this God that had been demonstrated to me.
Finally, God’s Spirit began to awaken in me and to show me God’s heart toward these matters that I couldn’t ignore any longer. God’s heart is love and that is a difficult thing for most people to grasp. In most of the world, we have diluted the word to the point there is no meaning in it. In other parts of the world, there isn’t even a word in their language to use to describe that love. What do we do? I think we live it. We show it. We actively, boldly, demonstrate it.
I am grateful that God doesn’t leave me where I am at any given point. I want to care. I want to be living sacrifice to God’s will, to God’s heart toward his creation, toward humanity. Sometimes, I wonder why this burden for the suffering is not overwhelming. Instead of feeling despair, I feel hopeful and invigorated to do what I can and to let God multiply my limited efforts. Slowly, God is bringing me back to even the least that I can do, which is to pray. The one thing I did lose complete belief is was prayer. Again, the hypocrisy of praying and doing nothing was just too much. I long to struggle, to wrestle in prayer again.
How do I end the ramblings in my mind where one thing just leads to another to another. To just stop seems so abrupt but I cannot go on forever. Well, I could but I shouldn’t. The day is waiting to be greeted with exuberance.
~~ Grace and Peace ~~
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Cynthia,
I have had a very similar experience to yours. I spent the last 25 years raising children and planting churches but largely ingnored the vast suffering that was going on around me. It’s not that I didnt love people. Many, many people came through our church that were on the edge and I found it easy to hep and care for them.
But those were isolated instances. And my heart didn’t break. I think somehow, deep in my heart, I blamed the victims. Surely they can make a way out for themselves. Surely it’s not that bad.
It is embarrassing to see it in print.
During those years, I believe I was following God, but my middle class existence (enough money, nice house, great family, mainstream evangelical background)somehow kept me insulated. Unfortunately, it took a huge crisis in my life for my eyes to be opened and for my heart to break over the injustice.
I am a late bloomer in this area. My desire is that I don’t waste a minute of the rest of my life caring about the things that are close to God’s heart.
Thanks for the thoughts!!
“I am a late bloomer in this area. My desire is that I don’t waste a minute of the rest of my life caring about the things that are close to God’s heart.”
I feel like I am a late bloomer in all the areas. I, too, don’t want to waste another minute and my deepest desire is that I would pass THIS legacy on to my children. I still have children at home, being raised … my youngest is 8.
It’s encouraging to have fellow travelers … I am glad I found you as a new friend!