What Is Your Dream?

“False dreams interfere with honest living.” (Run with The Horses p.147)

I wrote this quote, for an Idea for a blog, some days ago.  But after watching the U. S. Open Men’s Final last night it promoted some profound thoughts in my mind this morning.

Getting older does not mean that we can’t live into our dreams.

Some dream of being famous; becoming the best in a particular field or sport.  

Nadal’s humble response to his amazing, and hard fought, win was refreshing to watch.

He was clear that age takes it toll; and he isn’t able to play like a teen-ager anymore.  However he is able to make the necessary adjustment to play well with what he has been bless with today. 

He is very clear that it isn’t the trophies, and popularity that matter, but the joy of playing a game he loves. 

He is also clear that it is the ways of this day, and only this day, that counts.  It is not the glory that matters.  It is the way we live in the moment (my paraphrase of his words).

My dream, for this chronically extended life I have been blessed with, is to persistently continue to trust in a most awe-inspiring God who has been so extraordinarily gracious and providing in my long life; and in our world.  

My dream is to live until the age of, at least, 85 with a cognitive mind and a body that works well enough to move about without help.   

My ultimate dream is to live that life sharing God’s love and grace with all I met where ever I am — however I am meant to do that.

And  lastly to live by faith without letting, the strangling feeling of, worry consume me.

How Might We Hear The Word "Judgment?"

There is one thing that never fails to amaze me about my theological journey.  That one thing is always finding new understanding in words.

The word for this morning is the over used, and misused, word judgment.

One can easily assume, when hearing the term judgment, that God is harsh and unbending.   Some might say: “mean.”

Judgment is a word that has never been a popular topic with me.  Mostly because I have come to experience it as a form of self-righteous accusation — a charge of guilt — often thought of as ‘unfair.’

This take, on the word judgment, comes with years of listening to others try to shame someone because they don’t believe the way “they should.”

That judgment is then meant to keep others inline by using a certain way of interpreting God and Scripture.

Well, this morning, as I read some more from the pages of, ‘Run with the Horses’ (Eugene Peterson), my mind slipped into a new understanding of what God’s judgment might be interpreted as.  

So I did a bit of research from the Theological Dictionary.

“God’s law is an order of life the cannot be changed or challenged….His ways are right; they thus give us life and security.” (p. 168)

To make judgment is to: “decide, assess, to determine…God law seeks justice in order to resolve, restore and value….God is the know all and see all and restores all.  Which comes as a means of grace and mercy…to help the weak,..

In Jeremiah 30-31 “It offers hope…which will cancel sin and set up the covenant afresh.(p.469)

That study brought a lightness to my understanding.

And then this memory popped to my mind: 

                                             “This hurts me more than it’s going to hurt you."   

How many of us didn’t hear those words, come out of our parents mouths, when we were young?

That is the epiphany I heard as I read this passage from Jeremiah today. He was trying to bring hope in the darkest time in Israel’s history.  

He gives them God’s message of hope:

41 “‘Oh how I’ll rejoice in them! Oh how I’ll delight in doing good things for them! Heart and soul, I’ll plant them in this country and keep them here!’ (Jere. 32)

When you think of the entire message of the Bible -- without picking out the stories where God is using discipline to help people to understand where they have messed up -- it is a message of a loving and gracious God who wants the best for us.

I an wondering if our more conservative sisters and brothers have missed how Jeremiah handles — verbalized — the consequences of the people’s actions?

He does not point a finger of accusation. 

He doesn’t stand before them and tell them that they are going to hell; or that God doesn’t love or care about them. 

Rather, he persistently proclaims a message of hope.

And by the way, centuries later Jesus came to bring the exact message. 

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3)

9 And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. ¹⁰I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales….¹⁵For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

16 After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord, saying: ¹⁷Ah Lord God! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. …²⁴See, the siege-ramps have been cast up against the city to take it, and the city, faced with sword, famine, and pestilence, has been given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it. What you spoke has happened, as you yourself can see. ²⁵Yet you, O Lord God, have said to me, ‘Buy the field for money and get witnesses’—though the city has been given into the hands of the Chaldeans….

26 The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ²⁷See, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too hard for me?….. ³⁸They shall be my people, and I will be their God. ³⁹I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them. ⁴⁰I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me. ⁴¹I will rejoice in doing good to them, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul…..42 For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them. ⁴³Fields shall be bought in this land of which you are saying, It is a desolation, without human beings or animals; it has been given into the hands of the Chaldeans….for I will restore their fortunes, says the Lord. (Jeremiah 32 NRSV)

God Just Keeps Reworking Our Clay

7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. ⁸We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; ⁹persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; ¹⁰always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. (2 Cor. 4) 

The theme of the Potter and the clay plays its truth throughout scripture.  

We live our lives thinking that  we are our own person. 

We are convinced that we make of ourselves whatever we choose to be.

We think we are self-sufficient and earn our way by working for what we have.  

We live as independent intellectuals who function on intellect, logic, reason and a certain physical realities.

We blame and take blame.

We succeed and fail seemingly on our own. 

Thinking we are in complete charge of our lives.

However there is another hypothesis about this life we live.  

I use the word Hypothesis because it assumes more proof.  It is “a proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.”

Faith is always a form of hypothesis; because we can never prove its truth with the tools of reason, logic or further information. 

However the search for its truth has been in existence for centuries.  

When we live by faith, and not by reason or logic, we look beyond what is, to what God might be doing in the lives of those who believe in his possibilities.

I personally am convinced that God takes our imperfect clay beings and is continually reshaping us as we move from birth to death.

Just like we use the eraser to remove mistakes from our papers; God uses the reshaping of our clay to remove flaws and unfortunate behavior.

God know, as well as we know, that we will never be perfect.  That we will always need to be altered. and reformed, from time to time.  

The good news is that God never throws away the well used clay.  He just keeps the potter’s wheel moving as our lives progress. 

What we would be wise to understand is the our vessels — our bodies; are meant to be conduits, channels, through which God’s grace, love and forgiveness are meant to flow.

In order to be that kind of vessel, we must constantly be remade by the gentle hands of our maker.

⁸ Yet, O Lord, you are our Father;

  we are the clay, and you are our potter;

   we are all the work of your hand.(Isaiah 64)