Treasure Hunting for God

Asked for a devotional on how I deepen my relationship with God, I came up with the following.  Sadly I couldn't fit a Cowboy Mouth or Adele song in the 1hr I had to write it:

Weep for yourself, my man,
You'll never be what is in your heart
Weep Little Lion Man,
You're not as brave as you were at the start
Rate yourself and rake yourself,
Take all the courage you have left
Wasted on fixing all the problems
That you made in your own head – Mumford and Sons

My relationship with God deepens through any number of processes, events, practices, and encounters.  Yet often the most meaningful, life changing moments come seemingly randomly while focused on some organized process aimed to an end, much like following a map to the X where the treasure will be found.  Yet, rarely do these “treasure” seeking missions turn out as simple as the map makes them out to be. Along the way things happen which cause me to look more deeply at myself, to see what my personal motivations are, to hear the music that is playing as I walk along side others, to see the world more deeply through better understanding myself and those I’m traveling with. 

Ten thousand words swarm around my head
Ten million more in books written beneath my bed
I wrote or read them all when searchin’ in the swarms
Still can’t find out how to hold my hands – Avett Brothers

Sometimes what we find even at the end of these adventures is the thing that changes us.  Sometimes we think something is the answer, but when we look at it deeper it actually changes us and changes the questions. Our relationship with God is deepened by realizing that the everyday has great amounts of spirit moving throughout it and it leaves us caught in a tension between realizing what it is that we could have done differently and working to reorient ourselves on the path we’re now on as the people we’ve become.  This constant state of flux and searching makes up life itself and pulls at us so we can’t just be comfortable as who we see ourselves to be.  When we are willing to not just focus on an end, but to see the means of life as ends unto themselves, we find ourselves continually moving, changing, growing, and ever more faithfully searching for who we were made to be. 

In these bodies we will live,
in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life – Mumford and Sons

Awake My Soul.

Too Much?

Today I pounced on an opportunity to preach.  I've made a big deal at work about wanting to focus on doing my job the best I can and thus skipping out on more things like session, being liturgist, and planning meetings, and trusting the Education committee to pick up that slack.  So I understand when my Head of Staff questioned me offering and wondered if I was being hypocritical.

Yet as a seminary trained educator I feel that I need the random occasion to preach.  It is an important place of education, and for some people the only place that they receive education in the church.  Do I dislike that second fact? Yes, but it is a fact.  Thus I try to do lots of other things where maybe they'll read or see something educational.  Part of the reason this blog has been quiet for almost 3 months is that I was starting up a church blog that I hope will help people hear other voices and grow in their faith.  So in order to put my creative energy into that something had to give.  In this case it was my voice here that went.

Priorities, my friend.  We all have them, and we should review them regularly.  What was important to me last year, last week, or even last hour may not be now.  Our priorities constantly change and rearrange and we need to be willing to move with them, or to move them around as needed.  I hear often of the need to be focused on prayer, scripture reading, service, confession, submission, or worship, but while all of those are good, they are only half of the classical spiritual disciplines.  The others: Fasting, Meditation, Simplicity, Solitude, Celebration, and Guidance?  They're no less important to us in the big picture.  There is no one set list of what makes us most spiritual, most human, most righteous, most anything.  It's not about being most, it's about finding what touches us, reaches others, stewards creation, and seeks God at any moment of our lives.  All we can do is the best we can do at any one moment.  Well that and enjoy things like this:




ENJOY!

Also, if you missed my return late last night to blogging please take a look at this and then my view.