New and reminders

Efficiency is excellent in its place, but though with a short brush I can efficiently scratch any itch on my back, it is more fun when the lady I love does it for me, even if it takes longer and misses a spot or two. We were made to give and receive and not to hold, and to serve each other. How far this service should have gone is an interesting field for speculation, but not very likely to be fruitful; our broken souls are too eager to take advantage of any hint that someone else should be doing for us. It's too easy to conclude we're entitled to the gifts and excused from the giving, and pass from there to trying to demand or compel (fueling a love of power?) the gifts. Someone wrote that everyone knocking on a brothel door was looking for Jesus; perhaps similarly those hungry for power are too.

A week from now, plus or minus a day, traditionally commemorates the "Holy Innocents", when men reacted with evil to good news and hope. Newtown is an obvious reminder of that, but the newspaper tells of many more innocent lives ruined, sometimes more horribly, day after day until the heart is sick of news of "Rachel"s weeping for or abusing their children.

Jesus was born one of us, which means he lived in a body that was always partly growing and partly dying, and which was symbiotic with mere bacteria. He didn't just need Mary's milk to keep him alive, but also a host of the lowest of the low. The author of life came not just to die but to start dying from the get-go, and to depend on the most primitive things in his creation to stay alive: the more we see the more amazing the divine condescension was.

New (to me) and reminders

We had a guest preacher this weekend: Pastor Matthews from Monrovia. He touched briefly on the massacre Friday. I realized one reason I'd never be a good pastor: I try to make connections from my life to the other's experiences. Part of that is trying to make the other person feel that I understand; but part may be trying to establish my own bona fides--which isn't necessary. Pastor Matthew refrained from that. Liberia has seen much worse than Newtown, but he didn't say a word.

At the Saturday morning men's Bible study, I was looking around the tables and realized that the story about the draft in WWI applied to the chuch. A blind man and a handless man were drafted. They helped draw water at a training camp: the handless man guided the blind man who drew the water. Raised to life but still not healed, each has a gift the others need. We need eyes tuned to see the gifts we get from God through each other, and not their failures.

One of the guys joked that Eph 2:7 said that God likes to show off. I thought about it a minute, and realized that 1 Peter 1:12 was relevant: angels long to look into such things. All who love God want to know Him more and better. He's teaching out of love, not showing off.

The discussion of 8-10 brought up the usual discussions: Forgiven; now what? Surely not just to sit around and be forgiven. Forgiven, and now the parable of the talents applies. We've all been given something more valuable than money: time. What do we invest our time in?

Of making many blog posts there is no end, and much reading wearies the body. And sometimes the spirit, if you're not careful.