'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
W.H. AUDEN, "As I Walked Out One Evening"
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
This poem is a Franciscan Benediction found in Phillip Yancey’s book Prayer. I read it and I start burning inside. My heart boils over as I experience a holy anger at the complacence in my own life and in the Christian community. There must be more. This can’t be it…
We seem to easily forget, but Jesus invites us all into uncomfortable places. He invites us into places of pain, suffering and anger. He invites us into frustration and He awakens our heart so that we may begin to feel what He feels for this world.
When this happens, we have a choice; to harden our hearts or to pursue Christ. We can either make it about us again, continuing to chug along with a meaningless self-centred existence, or we can turn off the TV, get off the couch, kick our apathy, and start trying to do something, anything, that will bring about change.
It is in these moments that the baggage that we hold so tightly to and our desires for fame and fortune fade into obscurity. All of a sudden our future, our time, our talents, must be used to make a difference in this world. In one sense we are ruined, on another we have never being more alive.
In the midst of this moment, Jesus calls us to have the courage to sit with doubt, questions, and disappointment, and to wrestle with what it really means to follow Him. I would strongly argue that Jesus is disgusted with how much of our energy is actually spent outworking Christian culture, which looks so different from the Jesus culture of the gospels. I believe that Jesus is disinterested in our culture, but incredibly passionate about our hearts. And when it is our hearts that count, it doesn’t matter what we look like, or how we act, because Jesus will accept us as we are, meaning we can throw off the masks, empty rituals and fluff that we so easily heap on our Christian subculture.
So I encourage you to re-read the benediction and to make it a prayer. A personal moment with you and God, where you invite Him to bless you with discomfort, anger, tears, and foolishness to believe you can make a difference. That is, not to build our own little empire, but to build the Kingdom of God. Not to build our fame, but to build His.
And be warned, it is a wonderfully dangerous prayer to pray.
-Sam Harvey
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
This poem is a Franciscan Benediction found in Phillip Yancey’s book Prayer. I read it and I start burning inside. My heart boils over as I experience a holy anger at the complacence in my own life and in the Christian community. There must be more. This can’t be it…
We seem to easily forget, but Jesus invites us all into uncomfortable places. He invites us into places of pain, suffering and anger. He invites us into frustration and He awakens our heart so that we may begin to feel what He feels for this world.
When this happens, we have a choice; to harden our hearts or to pursue Christ. We can either make it about us again, continuing to chug along with a meaningless self-centred existence, or we can turn off the TV, get off the couch, kick our apathy, and start trying to do something, anything, that will bring about change.
It is in these moments that the baggage that we hold so tightly to and our desires for fame and fortune fade into obscurity. All of a sudden our future, our time, our talents, must be used to make a difference in this world. In one sense we are ruined, on another we have never being more alive.
In the midst of this moment, Jesus calls us to have the courage to sit with doubt, questions, and disappointment, and to wrestle with what it really means to follow Him. I would strongly argue that Jesus is disgusted with how much of our energy is actually spent outworking Christian culture, which looks so different from the Jesus culture of the gospels. I believe that Jesus is disinterested in our culture, but incredibly passionate about our hearts. And when it is our hearts that count, it doesn’t matter what we look like, or how we act, because Jesus will accept us as we are, meaning we can throw off the masks, empty rituals and fluff that we so easily heap on our Christian subculture.
So I encourage you to re-read the benediction and to make it a prayer. A personal moment with you and God, where you invite Him to bless you with discomfort, anger, tears, and foolishness to believe you can make a difference. That is, not to build our own little empire, but to build the Kingdom of God. Not to build our fame, but to build His.
And be warned, it is a wonderfully dangerous prayer to pray.
-Sam Harvey
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