Being Incarnational

The other day (Sunday in fact) i was home spending some time with the family before heading out to load up for our worship gathering in the city. The phone rang and Kim picked it up. It was a member of our team who was heading to the hospital to visit a member of his meet-up board game night who had a stroke a few days earlier. He said that he probably wouldn't make it to the worship gathering that night as he needed to go and spend some time with this guy. He called a little while later (probably about 5:30 PM) and said that he had just gotten home and wasn't going to make it to Veritas. And I had absoutely no problem with it. I believe this is why Veritas exists. For followers of Jesus to be in relationship with people. To go and be with those who are hurting and needy and scared. This team member has lived it out with starting a meet up group around board games, and then when a part of that group ends up in the hospital, he goes and visits him.

I continue to feel that I need an outlet for being incarnational in the world. I need to find some ways to meet people I would never meet working in the church. I have been thinking about joining a gym in the area. Anyone have any suggestions. I don't have this thing nailed down but I hope that I will grow into being more incarnational as the days go by.

Gospel and Risk

I have been doing a lot of thinking and rethinking about what the Gospel is. In fact this would have to be my biggest shift theologically over the years. I used to think it was only about going to heaven after you die, but now I believe it is also about what Jesus talks about in Luke (freeing the oppressed, giving sight to the blind, proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor, building the Kingdom of God here and now, etc..) As I was thinking about this and about one of my last posts I took a book off my shelf (Exiles by Michael Frost) and came upon this long quote that I absolutely love and resonate with. Hopefully someone else will as well:

"Likewise, I want to hear a spoken word in the assembly that expresses danger, energy, possibility, and opening for newness. So much of our preaching is so overly concerned with the technical questions of getting the truth right that preachers have squeezed all the life out of the gospel. We have thought of the gospel as a fragile and precious object and have held it too tightly, rendering it shapeless and uninteresting. Much of what passes for gospel speech these days is not dramatic or artistic. It is bound by the reason of technique and overly concerned with concreteness. It seems stilted and mechanical. We believers hear it presented to us week in and week out, and by virtue of the very fact that we are believers, we put up with it. It is a truth greatly reduced, and it calls forth from us a faith greatly reduced also. Our struggle in the twenty first century will be the struggle to maintain our commitment to the teachings of Jesus and the revelation of the gospel in the New Testament while endeavoring to discover a robust, poetic faith that abandons certitude and inanity"

What a quote...
Lord don't let me have a greatly reduced faith...needs to be my prayer.