There are three big lies.
We spend much too much time fighting these. They are worth fighting.
(I am currently reading: Simple Spirituality – Christopher L. Heurertz, the identification of three lies come out of something Henri Nouwen wrote)
I was reading 1 Kings 17 this morning… I’m not sure why, anyway, this is the story of the widow who feeds Elijah – the one whose bread and oil don’t dry up.
A few commentaries that Google produced talked pretty much about the ‘faith’ of the widow. Which is the story as I’ve pretty much always thought about it. I’m not sure this is entirely a story about ‘great faith’.
The widow is obedient, she is commanded by God (prior to Elijah getting there) to feed this guy. Then this miraculous never ending food supply thing happens. THEN her son gets sick and dies. Elijah beseeches God on her behalf and the son lives and that’s when we get this:
“Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.â€
This doesn’t seem like she had great confidence prior? It seems she was just getting by but wasn’t quite convinced it was God at work? (no?). Obedient yes? Great faith… not so sure?
This widow was given food when she was starving (one form of life) and then her son was given actual life (breath).
So do you then take a story like this metaphorically or at least in a messianic pointing sense and go with the widow as ‘us’, Elijah representing Jesus and there you have us: being sustained with food, and then Jesus advocating on our behalf and bringing actual life – a story of heaven – now but not yet?
or I’m a heretic. Perhaps she had great faith in God, just not in men… which is a whole other can of worms.
I was listening to the radio yesterday and there was a refugee talking about the asylum seeker situation, she said this: if your house is burning and the only way to escape is a rickety and broken ladder you are still going to use it.
If only more people could hear this analogy.
I read this post by Christop today.
One thing about giving away possessions is that it makes you more dependent on other people.
Yesterday day, our car key broke in the car boot. An inconvenience at best, but Geoff was out a fair way from home, the RACV would’ve taken 3 hours. Back to one car (after a year of borrowing my in-laws spare while they were overseas) we had to call friends. I felt bad calling friends, for interrupting their Sunday afternoon. These friends didn’t bat an eyelid, they just came.
It is interesting, dependance, because it asks something really quite small of our pride but gives so much back. It is hard though, to see or be confident in the much.
“It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is the beginning of blessedness and the consummation of humility is the perfection of all joy. Humility contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul. It is the only key to faith, with which the spiritual life begins: for faith and humility are inseparable. In perfect humility all selfishness disappears and your soul no longer lives for itself or in itself for God: and it is lost and submerged in Him and transformed into Him.†– from “New Seeds of Contemplationâ€Â Thomas Merton
A shout out to my inlaws who have been living in Uganda for the last year… you can read what they have been up to. Paragraph alert! They are back in 5 weeks, hooray!