Form Like Voltron

Then the Spirit came upon Amasai, chief of the Thirty, and he said:
"We are yours, O David!
We are with you, O son of Jesse!
Success, success to you,
and success to those who help you,
for your God will help you."
So David received them and made them leaders of his raiding bands. – 1 Chronicles 12: 18

Today’s Reading: 1 Chronicles 10-12 John 6:45-71

I like how Chronicles goes back and gives a different perspective on the history of Israel. Here it is talking about how David got his fighting army.

What I like about this story is how the folks who joined him knew that he was a man of purpose… they wanted to be on the right team. They made that decision even though it meant that they had to leave the comfort and protection of Saul.

But that’s what happens when we follow our purpose. Other people take notice and want to be on your team. This is one way that God answers prayers for us. Many times the people that are attracted to our path are drawn in because they have a similar purpose. And by teaming up we are all able to help each other walk our paths.

Often times we look at people who are walking a similar path as competition. But that is not the case. There is more than enough for all of us if we remember that it isn’t about “us” anyway.

So don’t be afraid when folks want to be down with your team as you walk your path. Check them out, make sure they have the same values and foundation, and move forward as a team.

We can do more together than we can by ourselves.

My Mission Statement 1.0

Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. John 6:27

Today’s Reading: 1 Chronicles 7-9: John 6:22-44

This is an interesting challenge.

The question that

I see here is this: what is the focus of your life and what is that focus doing to further your purpose on this earth.

I had to ask myself that question yesterday.

Yesterday was the first day of orientation for a training program that I am doing at work. We talked about all of the tasks that we have to do over the next ten months and what we will hopefully learn through the process.

But the most interesting thing that we did involved taking a test to determine our strengths based on a program called Strengths Finder designed by Tom Rath. The test is from Gallup and they ask a battery of questions that seem to analyze your deepest concerns, desires and tendencies.

My results weren’t surprising at all. It revealed that I believe in a higher power through which all things in the world are connected. I spend a lot of energy and effort understanding the important individuals in my life and also that I have a healthy dose of competitive spirit.

True… true…

But the exercise that I found really intriguing was writing a mission statement based on these strengths.

At first this was hard. It actually took me back to the confusion that I had several years ago regarding what I am supposed to do with my life. I was pretty lost, and disconnected from God. As I mentioned before, this is what made me come back to the Bible.

I realized, the hard way, that my focus was not in line with my purpose. I knew this to be true even though I didn’t even know what my purpose was!

It is frustrating to live that way. You feel like a mouse on a wheel. No matter how fast you run you never get that cheese that’s dangling right in front of your mouth.

But when I got back into the Word all of the confusion disappeared. I received clarity. There are still a lot of question marks about what EXACTLY I am supposed to do but I did learn a whole lot about what makes me happy.

And I believe that the things that make us happy are in line with our purpose.

So as I was challenged to write my mission statement this time the shell of it came pretty easily.

My mission is to use my strengths to spread love to all of those around me, and by extension to the entire world.

This is what Jesus and Christianity are supposed to be all about anyway right? God is love. That’s why we were told to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Now the “how will I do this so that a brotha can EAT” part is still to be determined…. But in the meantime I can do this where I am by sharing who I am with those around me willing to lovingly receive me.

Once that next level of clarity comes I’ll let y’all know.

Question of the Day: What is the purpose of your life? If you don't know then what is the purpose right now? If you were to write a mission statement for your life what would it be?

Gotta Get Away

After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. John 6:14-15

Today’s Reading: 1 Chronicles 4-6; John 6:1-21

I’ve always enjoyed my personal, quiet time.

I wrote a post a while ago about one of my bus adventures. When I’m not talking to my guardian angel on the bus, the bus is one of my quiet sanctuaries.

But it is more than just the bus.

The bus stop is about an eight minute walk from my apartment. I enjoy the quiet solitude of a walk, observing passersby as they walk, jog, run and drive to their next destination. I sometimes say hello and strike up conversations, but more often than that I just enjoy the experience from a distance. Sometimes I even create fictional life stories for them. I give them people to love, obstacles to overcome, and goals to achieve.

I’ve always had an active imagination.

And on the bus too I am provided the quiet time necessary to get completely lost in thought. When I read through the Bible the second time it was primarily done on the bus. In addition to the Bible I have read countless books, articles, and stories. I have also said countless prayers and spent many hours meditating.

We all need that quiet time alone. Often times it is hard for us to get it at home when there are so many people and things vying for our attention. If it isn’t one of the random commercials on a constantly running TV set trying to manipulate you into buying their goods and services it’s someone at home asking us to do something.

Home may be where the heart is but good gracious if only they’d just leave you be some times!

In the excerpt above folks were pushing up a bit too hard on Jesus and he had to go ahead and bounce to a mountain top. And you know what, I’m not mad at him.

Sometimes we gotta prioritize self. Otherwise we get caught up living life on other people’s terms instead doing what we have to do to achieve our own dreams.

Ivory Avenue

“I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.” John 5:30

Today’s Reading: 1 Chronicles 1-3; John 5:25-47

I did not feel like going to church on Saturday.

My dad’s church, Simi Valley Christian Center, is in Simi Valley. This is forty miles away from where I live in Culver City. If that weren’t enough, it is on Saturday evenings at 6pm! It makes sense though given that it is a new church and the kinds of folks that attend (the blended family is one of his ministry focuses and it is much easier to get your kids together at 6pm than Sunday morning).

But, it’s rough on your boy.

The last several Saturdays I have gotten in my car and started to head down there but ridiculous traffic always discouraged me. Plus, I’ve got things to do on Saturdays and it kinda breaks up the flow.

So I wasn’t feelin’ going AT ALL and I had almost decided that I wouldn’t go when I was talking to my girlfriend. She asked if I was going to go and I hesitated… to which she responded “didn’t you tell me that it’s moments like these, when you don’t want to do something, that you have to do it!?”

Drats…

So I get in my car and head down the road earlier than usual to make sure that I get there on time. Of course as is usually the case in such situations there was very little traffic so I end up getting there about a half hour early.

What am I going to do with all of that time?

Then it hit me… I haven’t gone by the old neighborhood in a long while. So, when I exited Tapo Canyon Rd I turned right instead of left and went by the house that I grew up in all the way through high school.

It was such a wonderful experience.

As I drove down these familiar streets all of these wonderful memories from my childhood welled up in me. I remembered riding bikes down Alamo with my sisters, going up and down the hilly sidewalks pretending that I was going a hundred miles an hour. I remembered riding down Galena to the shopping center. We used feast on 99 cent Whoppers during breaks from playing videogames on the game console displays in Target. I remember going to the comic book store with my friends waiting for the new releases to come out. We had fun trying to predict which new comics would be the next big thing. After missing horribly with Spawn we gave up that endeavor.

It was so much fun.

When I made the turn on to Galena and then the quick right on to Emerald the memory of the first time that my dad let me drive rushed back into the present. I was eight years old and could barely see over the steering wheel of our red 1988 Toyota Tercel but since I dared to ask he dared to let me try. I must have stalled at least three or four times trying to negotiate the stick shift around the one turn to our street, Ivory Avenue. But when it was all said and done I felt like a man.

Twenty years later, as I approached this same intersection in my own stick shift I marveled at how much has changed but also remains the same. The huge trees we used to climb in the island in the middle of the street were gone and replaced with smaller ones. Many of the homes had new garage doors and some different landscaping. But there was our old house still looking exactly the same.

It felt like coming home again.

Had I not been encouraged to go to church on this beautiful Saturday afternoon I wouldn’t have been reminded of how blessed I am. I am so blessed to have grown up in a place safe enough for kids to ride bikes and climb trees. I am so blessed to have a father who loves me and has always done his best to support me. I am so blessed to be able to drive back to my old neighborhood twenty years later as a young man with so much to look forward to in life.

I hope that one day my future kids will be able to do the same thing. I hope that they will be able to look back on their childhood with the same fondness. I hope that they will be able to come home, wherever that is, and remember a lifetime of memories of love shared with family and friends. I hope that they will have the relationship with me and my future wife that I have with my parents; one of loving guidance, respect, and joy.

I know this is possible and will happen if I remember to “seek not to please myself but him who sent me”.

I’m looking forward to it.

Question of the Day: What are some of your fond memories of childhood or any time in the past that makes your heart smile?

P.S. Oh yeah and church was GREAT. He talked about faith and the things that block it in our lives. Pops has heat… check him out.

Simi Valley Christian Center

4191 Cochran St

Simi Valley CA 93063

(at Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church)

God Don't Like Ugly

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. John 5:1-5

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 24-25; John 5:1-24

So I just read this article in the Washington Post this morning entitled “Why Looks are the Last Bastion of Discrimination”.

The article briefly discusses the legal history of discrimination against unsightly individuals and then goes on to suggest that perhaps civil rights protections should be extended to people generally considered to be less attractive.

When I got to the section where the author sited the “National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance” my first thought was…

Word?? Come on man are you serious?

But then I kept reading.

My mood changed for good when I came to the section about a study done by some researchers at Cornell University

“Stephen Ceci and Justin Gunnell, two researchers at Cornell University, gave students case studies involving real criminal defendants and asked them to come to a verdict and a punishment for each. The students gave unattractive defendants prison sentences that were, on average, 22 months longer than those they gave to attractive defendants.”

Wow… that’s almost two years man… That is NOT ok.

It made me think about the times when I was a kid (and as an adult… let’s keep it extra real) when I ridiculed others for being unattractive. And then I thought about the passage above, how back in Jesus’ time folks were marginalized for many of the same reasons.

Jesus was a champion of the poor, maimed and downtrodden. What right did I have to ridicule anyone?

None at all.

So I realized that I had to ask forgiveness on that one and change my ways.

I will do my best.

There’s an old African American proverb that says “God don’t like ugly”. The ugly that God doesn’t like isn’t anything that can be seen on the outside. It’s that ugly on the inside that we all have and keep hidden from the outside world.

So I wanted to take a moment to thank the writer of that article for helping me to clean up some of the ugly that I have on the inside.

Better late than never right?

Here's an interesting piece by the homie Adam Tillman-Young. It relates. I promise.

Question of the Day: Do you have anything within that needs to be cleaned out? Do you harbor any hidden prejudices that you never thought were that big a deal? Take an honest look and work through it. You’ll be a better person for it.

A Book That Changed My Life

When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king's attendant: "Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us." 2 Kings 22: 11-13

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 22-23; John 4: 31-54

Whew… I bet that was traumatic. Remember all those crazy laws we read several months ago? Imagine being the king and reading all of that for the first time knowing that for the last several generations no one had followed them.

Not a good look.

But on the flip side… it did provide for a way of life that would lead to blessings. So the question that popped in my head was this:

Are there any books (besides the Bible) that made me look at life differently? This is a hard question for me to answer since I really enjoy reading. If you are facebook friends with me then you know that I’m always posting status updates about some book that I am reading.

I’m such a nerd.

But to answer my own question, the first one that comes to mind is Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.

It was optional reading before my semester abroad in Brazil but I decided to read it based on the title. I had no idea what I was in for.

The book is about teaching folks how to liberate themselves from whatever dominating situation they are living in. The author developed this theory while growing up and living in Brazil under dictatorships. At the time that he published it he had to go into exile and anyone found with even a chapter of the book risked being killed.

It’s that hot.

But why did it resonate so much with me? It was the first time I came across a book that provided answers. Whenever I read other texts on oppression or slavery or whatnot they did a great job of telling the history of it, or describing the psychological aspects of it or even just making you feel plain depressed about it.

But they never had any answers. Paulo Freire had an answer.

Several months later when I was in Brazil my program visited a farm collective settled by the Landless Workers Movement. They used this book to help come up with a way to fight the crippling poverty of sharecropping that they experienced. A loophole in Brazilian law was discovered that stated that if you squatted on unused land and it was not claimed after a certain period of time, that land became yours.

That movement is millions of people strong.

I was sold when we were taken on a tour of the farm by a young gangly boy named Weberson. He couldn’t have been a minute over 11 years old. He also happened to be well versed in the politics of genetically modified seeds and Nietzsche.

Yes… this Nietzsche.

It’s amazing what happens when we expect people to think for themselves. They tend to step up to the plate.

There is something about Jesus’ message that does this for me as well. Jesus gives us very few rules for how to live our lives. He tells us to love God, love our neighbors as ourselves and to live by faith.

We are challenged to figure out the rest.

It is an amazing challenge, but just like Weberson, I believe that each and every person has the ability to figure out their own best way through life.

It’s up to us to take that challenge to live the best that we can each and ever day.

The goal isn’t to be perfect, but to be better.

Question: Are there any books, songs, works of art etc that have changed the way that you look at life? Chime in here or at the A Convo With God facebook group.

A Tough Day...

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." Excerpt From John 4: 20-24

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 19-21: John 4:1-30

Yesterday was a tough day for me.

It seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Office politics are at an all time high. As a result of this, I got to work super early to get a head start on things but by the time 2 pm rolled around I was still spinning my wheels.

I did not have enough information to do what needed to be done. The people that I needed to work with were hostile and uncooperative, and my patience was running thin.

Plus, I was under some tough time constraints. It seemed like both ends were pressing against the middle. I didn’t know what to do.

So I decided to stop what I was doing, take a mental time out, and look at things from the outside looking in. I went to one of my favorite go to passages in the Bible to seek inspiration but I was so stressed that I couldn’t finish reading it!

So I was like wait one damn minute here! I know I can read! What the hell is going on.

It was then that I remembered to pray for a second.

Some call it mediation others call it prayer. Call it what you will. But right at my desk I just closed my eyes and listened. I cleared my mind and tried to open myself to receive and once I did this an overwhelming peace came over me.

We don’t have to be in a special building to connect to God. God is all around us all of the time. This isn’t a statement against places of worship but more an acknowledgement that we are not limited by them.

We can connect to God whenever and wherever we want to.

So whenever you need to call on that power from on high remember that you don’t have to wait till Sunday to do so.

Just take a deep breath, ask your question, quiet your mind, and wait for the answer.

The answer will come.

P.S. Yes... I did manage to get everything done that needed to get done after this... in less time than I spent before when I was trying to do it on my own... go figure...

Pimped by Fear

"Do not listen to Hezekiah. This is what the king of Assyria says: Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death!
"Do not listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, 'The LORD will deliver us.' – 2 Kings 18: 31-32

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 17-18: John 3:19-38

Wait a minute!

Did this dude just tell the people living in Jeruselem that all they gotta do is surrender to him and they could live off of their own land until he took them from their land and placed them in a new place flowing with milk and honey?

Yeah right playa….

Ok Let me tell you how I read this. The only way for me to clearly explain this is to put it in Blaxploitation Era Pimp Vernacular English.

“Say baby, come be on my team and I’ll provide for all of your needs. I’ll give you clothes, I’ll give you food, I’ll give you shelter, all you gotta give me is that money… We’ll be a great team. You and me girl, you… and… me…

...spoken by this guy.

I think this is what happens when we let life’s circumstances scare us into mediocrity. Instead of living in faith we live in fear and when we make this choice we are choosing bondage. The only thing that comes from fear is slavery.

Freedom finds its home in faith. It takes faith to take that first leap. It takes faith to have the audacity to see a future that does not yet exist.

So don’t let your circumstances play you. The doors that fear opens may seem comfortable or less risky at first; but eventually, fear will have you on the street tricking for change that you won’t even be able to keep.

Chuuuuuuuch. *with pimp cup in my hand*

The John 3:16 Dilemma

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. – John 3:16-18

Today's Reading: 2 Kings 15-16; John 3:1-18

Sigh…

So this is one of those scriptures that have always been hard for me.

I love what it says for me. That’s great. But for those who aren’t a fan of Big Homie J…

Rough game man…

To be quite honest with you I still struggle with it until I remember that condemning others to eternal damnation is NOT MY JOB. But when I really think about it, my biggest struggles are with how folks use this scripture.

A couple weeks ago I was walking around during my lunch break in downtown LA. As I’m going about my business trying to come up on some good grubbery I see some dude holding a sign that says “John 3:16” on it. And on top of that he looks at me like I’m some kind of heathen with devil horns growing out of my fro.

Getouttaherewithallthat

In the past it used to hurt my feelings, but now it just pisses me off. This kind of behavior is what I was talking about with my last post on my pet peeves. I hate when the Bible is used as a weapon to condemn random pedestrians and the like.

I’ve been to many a Easter sermon where the preacher brings out the fire and brimstone and scares the hell out of everyone (pun intended). Then at the end of the sermon you have all kinds of folk walking up to the alter call, knees shaking, confessing their faith in Jesus.

If fear is the opposite of faith then how are these people “saved”. If you come to God out of a “if you can’t beat Him, then join Him” mind state… what do you really believe? Do you believe that you should live your life with Jesus as the example or are you just trying to get over?

Now I’m not saying that churches shouldn’t preach from this scripture, or that it should be hidden away from folks so that we can all feel warm and fuzzy… but I do wonder about this.

We are supposed to spread the Good News right? But is that what we are doing when we harass people on the street with this scripture, finger pointing, with mean grimaces on our faces?

I have no answers here… Just my thoughts…

My Biggest Pet Peeve

As soon as Jehu had finished making the burnt offering, he ordered the guards and officers: "Go in and kill them; let no one escape." So they cut them down with the sword. The guards and officers threw the bodies out and then entered the inner shrine of the temple of Baal. They brought the sacred stone out of the temple of Baal and burned it. They demolished the sacred stone of Baal and tore down the temple of Baal, and people have used it for a latrine to this day. 2 Kings 10: 25-27

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 13-14; John 2

Wooahhhhhh!

I’ve heard of Christian missionaries in Brazil who did this to folks who practice Candomble.

Now… I’m not a big fan of Candomble but good gracious… you can’t use this scripture as justification to act contrary to Jesus’ message of love your neighbor as yourself.

Which brings me to my point…

Some folks look at stuff like the passage above in the Bible and compare it to Jesus’ message and say that the Bible is contradictory. The typical argument goes something like this.

“The Bible says an eye for an eye and turn the other cheek. That’s contradictory therefore the Bible is hogwash.”

Umm… these people clearly haven’t read the Bible.

Now that we are pretty deep into it maybe you are noticing a progression. If one were to look at the Bible as a history of God’s relationship with humanity then we can see that this relationship has evolved greatly.

The first agreement was with Adam and Eve. They had one rule. Don’t eat the fruit.

That didn’t go so well.

Then the next agreement was with Noah to never destroy the earth with water again. The symbol of this is the rainbow.

Next was the agreement with Abraham. If Abraham worshiped only God then God would bless him. It continued that way through Isaac, and Jacob and all the way until we get to Moses. Moses went up to Mount Sinai and got the first of the 613 Mosaic laws. These laws clarified what it meant for the nation of Israel to obey, follow and worship God.

Then fast forward to Jesus who changed the game by making us accountable by faith shown by love instead of actions.

My point is this… much like nature… the relationship between humanity and God in the Bible evolved greatly from Adam and Eve to Jesus. It is very easy to pull a scripture from the time when the Mosaic laws were king and compare them to Jesus’ message and say that the Bible is contradicting itself…

But before you do this, try to understand the context. And if you don’t know the context it’s ok to say “I don’t know” rather than assuming.

This is the good move in life as well. If more of us spoke only about what we actually know then life would be a whole lot less complicated. Many lives have been destroyed and lost based upon innuendo, hearsay, or outright lies.

So to my fellow Christian folks… stop pulling out archaic Old Testament references to justify acting out on your character flaws.

And to my non-Christian folks… if you have heard or seen terribleness when it comes to Christians and are curious about why… ask someone that you know and trust who is knowledgeable. They might be able to break it down for you.

And if you don’t know any such person, holla at me… I’ll do my best.

A Convo at the Lake Shrine

Today's Reading: 2 Kings 10-12; John 1:29-51

I missed my Dad’s church yesterday and trained Capoeira this morning so I felt like I needed to do something to fill up my spirit. I decided to go to the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple.

It is a special place.

The guy who started it, Paramahansa Yogananda, created it as a place where anyone of any faith could go to share and meditate. A good friend of mine told me about the place years ago and ever since then I have gone there when I needed some quiet time alone.

As I walked along the path that circles lake in the middle of the grounds I admired all of the beautiful trees, bushes, shrubs and flowers that pepper the landscape. The colors from the plants pop out at you. From the reds of the wild berries to the beautiful greens of the ferns and bamboo it is easy to get lost in wonderment as you walk the grounds.

I passed by a place where I saw the most beautiful blue flowers growing in the gaps of a rock wall and felt something special there.

But I continued on.

When I got to my usual spot there was someone already there. Frustrating, but I guess that’s cool. It’s not like I own the place.

Plus, there was something about that area with those blue flowers that kept running in my head. So, I went back and sat there, took out my Bible and meditated a bit.

Several people walked by my spot along the path. Some of them were buried in their cell phones, or talking loudly with other passersby. But others were reverently walking the grounds.

It was these folks that took the time to say or nod hello. I responded in kind.

When I was in my meditative space I could feel someone approaching on the right. I looked over and saw that there were two women approaching, middle aged and peaceful. The woman on the left was walking with a considerable limp. For some reason I could see the pain in her hips.

She stopped at some bushes just before me and I felt the urge to pray for her asking that God would give her some healing for her hip and whatever else might be wrong. Then I returned to my meditation.

Out of the corner of my eye I watched as she picked a flower from the bush in front of her and continued walking toward me.

I turned to look at her but she was already looking at me.

We smiled.

Then she walked directly to me and without a word she handed me the flower. Her smile said “thank you”.

I smiled back “You’re welcome.”

She continued along the path, her steps a bit lighter, and her gait a bit stronger. At least that’s how it seemed to me.

But what I am certain of is that I was in that place at that time for a reason. There are no coincidences, only opportunities to walk through doors.

But in the end, it is each one of us who must decide whether or not we will take the first steps.

In the Beginning (the Remix)

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 men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. – John 1: 1-5, 14

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 7-9: John 1:1-28

Wow… what an opening line!

Let’s flash back to the very beginning for a second. This is an interesting twist on the first “In the Beginning”.

Remember the original creation story where God said let there be light and it was? Then God continued on to speak things into existence; the sea, the earth, plants, animals, etc?

The way that John is flipping it here is pretty profound. He’s saying that Jesus is the word of God. But what does that mean? I don’t think that anyone can definitively say but let me share with you my train of thought here…

So, God created everything through speaking it and Jesus on earth was the “Word of God” in the form of a man. Jesus walked the earth providing us with the perfect model for how we are supposed to live our lives. He performed miracles that healed, fed, and nurtured. Any time his disciples’ faith wavered he clowned them for having little faith. He suggested that we could do all that he did here (in terms of healing, miracles etc).

In essence… Jesus provided the example for how we can be the word of God…

Now before you holy rollers get all worked up into a tizzy…here’s what I mean.

When we look at the history of humanity we see that humans have the ability to build or destroy. We have evolved in both ways. As society has moved forward we have created new and more efficient ways of doing both things. We have developed agriculture to the point of being able to feed billions with just a few resources; very much like how Jesus fed thousands with a few loaves of bread and fish. On the other hand, we have created weapons that with the push of a button can destroy life on this planet as we know it.

We cannot create a blade of grass but we can nurture it so that it grows, or we can stomp it out and destroy it.

Jesus came to teach us how to nurture, how to build, how to heal. He came here to teach us how to love. It is through the love of God that all things were created and Jesus was the greatest teacher of that love.

So I see these few cryptic verses as a challenge to do my part to spread that love.

If God is love, then when we show love, we are messengers of God. We are active parts of God’s ever evolving creation.

Keep Pouring

Elisha replied to her, "How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?"
"Your servant has nothing there at all," she said, "except a little oil."

Elisha said, "Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don't ask for just a few. Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side."

She left him and afterward shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring. When all the jars were full, she said to her son, "Bring me another one."
But he replied, "There is not a jar left." Then the oil stopped flowing.

She went and told the man of God, and he said, "Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left." 2 Kings 4:2-7

Today’s Reading: 2 Kings 4-6: Luke: 24: 36-53

I bet she looked more crazy than a little bit.

This is one of my favorite stories because it really is a clear illustration of faith. This woman approached Elisha about her needs and he met them. But what’s really interesting is how it was done.

She was required to act.

He told her to go around to all of her neighbors and ask for their empty jars and then fill the jars with oil. But the catch of course is that she doesn’t have any oil. That’s the whole problem. She’s broke.

But she DID it anyway.

What’s remarkable is that this was a miracle done by her, a regular person. Elisha didn’t actually do anything. He gave her instructions. It was up to her to believe that what he said would come true. It was up to her to believe in unseen…

Most of life’s miracles are done with our hands. When we see an image of what we want, or who we want to be, or what we want to do, and decide to act on it, we are doing what this woman did.

When we engage our mentors and plan out a strategy to make it happen it is like this woman going around to her neighbors and asking for jars. When we gather the necessary education and resources it is like this woman bringing the jars back to her home. When we start to act on our plans without knowing for sure what will come of them it is like the first moment that this woman poured the first drop of oil into the first jar.

The trick is to keep pouring.

Keep pouring until there isn’t a jar left that isn’t full of the blessings you want for your life.