Soul Survivor this year kicked off for team with an activity about our ‘theme’ (Everything). We collectively (and consequently, individually) shared the ways/places/times we see God and we wrote these on several hundred light globes that were strung up across the main auditorium.
Last night we had a discussion around community and our community and building community with the Missio crew and Dave Andrews. We were reminded that God is good and merciful and just and these characteristics can be found in all kinds of places certainly not just in the typical Christian ideas’ where these things show up. God is all around us and in many things we maybe don’t’ want him to be.
I have recently read an exceptional book: ‘Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art’ by Madeline Le’Engle.
“If our lives are truly “hid with Christ in God,” the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.â€
― Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
So here I am, in my rental in the North of Melbourne.
I have a kid, I work a bit – for myself and struggle with the tension of this and being a parent and giving my own life space. I am married to a teacher, he’s great, I’m super proud of him and we moved and changed a lot about our life so he could work in a disadvantaged school, doing the stuff he’s meant to be doing. And I often feel stuck at home not being terribly hmm… influential? Out doing ‘kingdom stuff’ (dumbest phrase if I ever heard one, but it’s late and my brain is a tad fried).
I want a house (eventually when we can afford one) and I want to travel even though sometimes I feel guilty about these ‘wants’ when clearly we already have so much.
And here is Jesus too.
Lets not aim for lights on hills, but to be leven in dough so mixed up you can’t tell the difference (pinched that one right from Mr. Andrews) There’s some Christianese for you to mull over when contemplating being in this world but not of it. eg. You are not a freaking alien with three eyes and your holiness cape come to rescue the world. You are human and are already here.