digest - God is easy!

It is simple - just Love Your God

Paradox: message of God is simple, but not immediately or simple to embrace and know. Sure you can go to an event, location, or ritual to see and participate, but unless your heart is in it then the meaning will escape you. Two people can see the same situation and understanding the significance very differently, one who sees only what is present at the moment and engges the physical senses; the other capable of seeing what is connected to the present, either just before or long before the moment at hand, and likewise perhaps able to foresee what is likely to follow from the moment in the next instant or even the more distant future. The same is true of entering into God's simple truth and the message of Love Your God and Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. One whose heart is well prepared can operationalize the meaning and apply it moment by moment. The other who is new to this Way perhaps cannot comprehend the depth and breadth of the teaching.

Just so the many commentaries, studies, and preaching and teaching *about* God's love: there are many verses, illustrations, parables and points of emphasis during the three year course of the church Lectionary.What is one to steer one's life by or how is one to know God better when the message from one minister differs from another, and even the same learned person will shine a spotlight on different faces of the Word of God on each occasion.

Holding God accountable to act like LORD?!

Much of the Bible's book of psalms includes calling out God for neglecting or badly handling his (chosen) people. Even Job, biblically patient though he is, challenges God. Others put their complaint in God's terms: that this mistreatment only hurts God by keeping the righteous from being and doing all they can. The question, though, is how much of one's growing relationship with God is built of reciprocity (God loves us; saves us; creates us and so we will consent to honoring this God), and how much is based on God being God;? Perhaps the relationship that one may expect with God is less about doing or tangible benefits and more about praising his name, seeking his face, loving his creatures; more existential and less transactional.

Pondering Psalms

It can be eye-opening or baffling to consider that some psalms stand alone and came about separated by many generations, but that others may be numbered sequentially and what is more, can be understood one contiguous to the other (e.g. 22 and 23). While there is some praise and exhortation, a consistent element is the  presence of conflicts or at least its suggestion ("in the presence of mine enemies..."). The ones attributed to David have the elegant voice of pundit instead of that imagined of a shepherd, his position early in life when he felled Goliath. Speaking of kings, in place of pyramids or mausolea, what customs set them apart from non-nobility; what traces do archaeologists know today?

What calls a person to enter a place of worship?

There are those who grow up at a church or other place of worship, and so the interior and its proceedings are normal and may even be craved when that person is absent from worship for a time or during life events or parts of worship year. Secondly, others may attend on the occasion of a wedding, baptism or funeral. From this experience they develop a taste for more of the place, its ideas, and people there. Eventually these newcomers may go beyond merely attending and joining selectively in fellowship to contribute materially to the worship and to upkeep of the church of the programming and initiatives. Along the way the focus may shift from knowledge about the religious tradition and more to knowing God; or at least to desiring to know God better, as well as to give care in developing relationships with God's people who worship and those outside the church body who worship elsewhere or not at all. Thirdly, there are those who accidentally ran into God through health crisis, social status crisis, or life's purpose crisis. The flipside of losing one's way or having one's lifestyle overturned is not so much an absence of earlier ways, but instead is the presence of God's wonder, awe or possibly trembling; some sort of transcending event or longing. From this point of suffering, or this point of numinosity (feeling ecstatic or being filled with God; literally, enthused) then the person has an urgent need or a nagging desire for more of this God experience and so seeks it from worship experiences ancient and current. And if the commitment is more than a passing hunger, then the person may then want to know God better by study, prayer, and communing with fellow travelers on the spiritual road.

Singing together to worship the lord

Sound has many properties: pattern, pitch, tone (color or timbre), volume, duration and directionality; and in combination with contrasting or complementing pattern-pitch-tone-volume, duration and directionality. Thus, much the fleeting quality of "dew on the grass" (to which a human lifespan is compared in the Bible), so too of music and spoken expression there is a temporary quality to it: while it is present and alive it is fully immersive and engrossing. But once the sound waves stop rippling through the air space, then nothing but soft impressions made on one's memory linger. And so the act of singing God's praises, lessons, or wonderings mirrors the human experience of relationships and common cause. It is temporary, but together the experience is deep and rich. Through this the sung, spoke and instrumentally played expression of desires for transcendent beauty and uplifting righteousness and all embracing love something happens; something difficult to articulate, but salient and able to be sensed in the shared space of the music. In other words, much as music can be a vehicle to reach to God and each other, so too of the worship time and the rest of one's day and week in relationships with others familiar or unknown. Music is an immersive "now" experience that soon fades, and so too, is waking social life and indeed the span of one's life; just sojourning to pass through this Veil of Tears.