Sitting in a popular, family friendly coffee shop, I have positioned myself in a tiny nook by the door, resting upon one of four leather chairs. Slowly but surely, strangers pile in to read a book before work or grab a quick snack to start the day. But as late morning approaches, I find myself enclosed by a Mommy Meet Up and their two incredible kids. I wear headphones as a disguise, somewhat unintentionally, but appreciative that it frees me up to hone in on conversations without much suspect of the neighboring customers.

Potential Playground According to 3 Year Olds

To an extent these children are reckless, but entertaining to say the least. The cold, burgundy linoleum becomes the new mulch for their imaginary playground. Chairs turn into mountains, and tables into miniature jungle gyms. At one point, a stranger must leave her seat to unleash the grasp that the front door monster has on the shoe of the younger boy. And then, much to my delight, the fourth wall is broken. Like a staggering zombie, with the mouth foam of a typical gargle replaced by the icing of a poorly consumed coffee cake, a three year old girl walks to my chair and begins chanting and dancing. “Raarr rarr ra ra ra!”

I have to laugh, and like clockwork, the younger boy follows suit and comes hungry for the same attention. My concentration is shattered. My focus appears to have never existed at all. And for a moment, I find myself envious. I want to put away my computer and laugh. I wish I had smeared icing on my face. It is starting to look less like an accident, and more like an expression of freedom. “Why not? This icing is my joy” the young girl is telling herself.

In Matthew 18:3, Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” I can’t suggest that smeared sugar or dinosaur growls will guarantee a stronger relationship with Christ, but as we enter a season of prayer and audacious hope at Imago Dei Community, I am renewed through the eyes of these children. They see adventure in the day to day, and opportunity in every new face willing to look and listen.

I think about my times with Scripture, and the expectations I have when I turn to the Word. Do I seek opportunity? Do I look for adventure? Is this coffee shop simply a place to imbibe hot liquids, or can it be more than the routine and scenery that we treat as the boring the background of our busy lives. Could I do the same in my time with God? Could I be inspired to know Him more? To pray expectantly, and with the staggering, yet fixated stride, of my three year old zombie friend.

The Quiet Time Companion will provide some variety and texture to your personal reading, with a minimum of stress and rigorous timetables, and will take you through the Bible in about two years. You can even take a week off every few months if you wish to simply drop out of the flow or read exclusively in Psalms or Proverbs. The book divides the Bible into weekly studies of surprising depth and refreshing diversity. The studies are not dated, and each week is broken down into five days plus a weekend study, so the end of the week is set aside for meditation on what you have been covering during the week.

The content and method of the studies, however, reveal the truly unique contribution of this particular book. There are nine different approaches to Bible study that are used, and various emphases are alternated week by week. For instance, one week you may do a topical study on Christian growth or guidance. The next week you may be involved in a study of a complete smaller book of the Bible like James or Lamentations. This may be followed by a careful examination of an important Bible character like Abraham, Hezekiah or Timothy. Other weeks may take you through studies of key words from the Bible, or meditative studies on important small sections of Scripture. This may be followed by historical studies on the resurrection, the Exodus from Egypt, or the birth of the church. You can see the plan – each week you approach the Bible from a slightly different perspective; you look at Scripture from various contexts and points of view. This keeps your experience of the Bible fresh and your daily study time unique and challenging. Plan on about thirty minutes each day, and be sure to record your thoughts and responses in a notebook. When you finish the “course” the journal writings will ultimately represent your own personal meditation and interaction with the whole Bible.

The history of Christian belief has often been characterized by unfortunate conflicts of position which have produced adamant divisions and polarized camps, all to the effect that the watching world sometimes rejects out of hand any serious consideration of the gospel. ‘Mosaic…’ skillfully articulates a mediating theology, one which bridges and buffers the unnecessary hostility between different perspectives within the Church. Olson insists that there exists a broad middle ground within Protestantism which believers throughout history have always embraced, a thoroughly biblical “great tradition” of doctrine. Equally committed Christians must sometimes agree to disagree about secondary issues in order to come together on these most critical and ultimately unifying fundamentals.

The book’s fifteen chapters address some of the most perplexing questions in the history of theology – Must the Bible be the ONLY source of norms or dogma, or can we also appeal to the great traditions which have developed over two millennia of church history and experience? How can we fathom a God whose vastness and power are beyond our understanding, but who also relates to humans in a nurturing and personal salvation? How can we reconcile the fact that salvation is a gift of God’s grace with the exhortation that we are to strive to work out our salvation? The book’s methodology is straightforward: the two apparently opposing views are defined, generally in terms of the most extreme poles, then Olson tries to cast the most balanced middle ground, one which would be acceptable to most believers. He suggests that, in the face of seeming opposing sides, a “both and” rather than an “either or” posture is unavoidable.

Whereas most books on theology may appeal only to theologians, Olson’s clear writing style makes this one accessible to a much wider audience. I’ve always felt that the good theologian is not so much adept at arguing for his or her position, but is more adept at characterizing clearly and concisely a variety of positions on the same topic. Olson does an admirable job of doing just that, seldom betraying any biases or prejudices he may have brought to the discussion.

Imago Dei Books is open before and after all services on Sunday, we are located in the lobby area of the sanctuary building.

Steve Shogren
Imago Dei Books

Healing:  From the verb “to heal” – To make sound or whole, to restore to health, to overcome adverse circumstances, to be restored to original integrity.

The desire for healing is universal; it’s a defining feature of our humanity, to desire wholeness. Without brokenness, this concept, “Healing”, would never have existed. It would have been unnecessary, in fact, unfathomable. Similarly, without suffering, I would suggest, we would not really understand compassion.

When I started medical school, my idea was that by becoming a doctor I would experience satisfaction through making the world a better place. I also had this underlying concern that somehow God didn’t quite have the situation under control, or things would clearly be going differently than they were. Something happened along the way that I didn’t expect. I was stretched beyond my limits, to the point where I would fall asleep talking to my parents on the phone, but it wasn’t enough – there was always more, so my human energy was inadequate. I discovered that sometimes people would continue doing things that were harmful to themselves even when they received good advice. I found I couldn’t always make it better, even with a lot of knowledge and skill, and concluded that there was a gap between what will ever be humanly possible and our ideal of wholeness. I found myself as a doctor completely inadequate when everything medical had been done to no avail, to mend the wounds of grief and loss. So the magic required to “make it all better” had not passed into my possession. Through all of this, I came to suspect the possibility that Christ might have a different agenda than “making it all better” in the simple way I’d like to see.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was talking to a patient years after a car accident that dealt severe damage to the left side of her face. She has multiple scars, and her ear is permanently misshapen. Yet she is fully functional. She doesn’t look “normal’, she doesn’t look the way she did before the accident…Is she healed? What is our expectation of what it means to be healed? Is it possible that things won’t be the same after as before?

I also looked on Google Images under the word Healing. I got 22,300,000 pictures, and I looked through them all, and a lot of them showed hands – hands receiving light, lifted up, or the laying on of hands. Now, I think that’s a powerful symbol that says something about healing. Why does this symbol speak so universally? Is healing a relational event? What is communicated in the laying on of hands for healing?

I met a man on a medical mission in Indonesia. I’m not sure it’s accurate to say I met him actually, because he was unconcious. He had fallen out of a tree days before. His body showed the marks of “cupping”, a traditional healing practice where heated cups are laid on the body to suck the illness out. Eventually, his family had brought him to the hospital, his internal injuries already advanced. I think this illustrates some interesting questions about things that get in the way between us and healing- Do we have preconceptions about healing that perhaps get in the way? In expecting one thing, do we miss another opportunity? What else comes between us and being healed? In our search for healing, do we run up against our own sin, another’s sin, or perhaps the greater darkness of the world?

Is healing a painful road, sometimes a road we would prefer not to take? My high school friend was hit by a car, and day by day, had her thigh bone lengthened a millimeter at a time – that was excruciatingly painful. What is the cost of being healed, and does it sometimes require more courage than we seem to have?

Is it possible to experience healing after our hopes are disappointed? Another friend is grieving today, a year after his beautiful wife passed away from breast cancer shortly before her 40th birthday. He still can’t sleep, he experiences tremendous back pain, and his children are having nightmares. Is it safe to conclude that he and his family have been forgotten? How long do we wait – how long does healing take?

Who is more whole – the woman in my office who is about to have a healthy baby, and is so angry, she hates everyone she meets, or my friend who is confined to a wheelchair since her 20’s with Friedrich’s ataxia, already on medication for a failing heart, and is able to share her sorrows with her Creator, able to have friends and to love people, and has hopes for the future here and for a new life in heaven? If we were truly well and at peace in our souls, would our physical infirmities matter a little bit less?

When I think about Christ’s healing, I love the story of the woman who needed a good gynecologist. Let’s look at the story of the woman with the hemorrhage…Mark 5:25-34.

“And a woman who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years, and had endured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse, after hearing about Jesus, came up in the crowd behind Him and touched His cloak. For she thought, “If I just touch his garments, I shall get well.” And immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. And immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My garments?” And His disciples said to Him, “You see the multitude pressing in on You , and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’” And He looked around to see the woman who had done this. But the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened to her, came and fell down before Him, and told Him the whole truth. And He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.”

This woman had plenty of pain and shame. I think she probably had fibroid tumors, enlarging her uterus, causing pressure, pain, and endless bleeding. She was probably so anemic, she was always exhausted. She couldn’t stop bleeding, so she was always unclean. She stank, she couldn’t go far from home, she tried everything and spent all her money and only got worse. She made contact with Christ, that physical healing contact, but that wasn’t enough for Him. He went back and found her. She came to him trembling – what had she done? Touching the Master when she was in fact unclean? But He spoke to her with kindess, he called her Daughter, and he offered a benediction over the healing she had experienced.

My home community has been studying Mark, and we looked at this and other miracles of healing that Christ performed. Each one is unique; he has different words for some, he touches others, sometimes he spits or makes mud – but he always approaches each person individually, no assembly line, impersonal, healing for the sake of quickly making it better. What does Christ’s ministry to this woman and to individuals tell us about what healing means to Him? What does Christ want us to experience of Himself, to know about Him in the process of being healing? Or does our experience of suffering and compassion actually bring us into relationship in a way that wouldn’t be possible otherwise?

These are some old and new thoughts from my journey as one who would be part of Christ’s healing work.

Some questions to consider:

*What pictures come to mind when you think of healing or being
healed?

*Thinking as the woman with the hemorrhage, how do you imagine
yourself feeling as Christ turned to ask who touched him?  How
might those feelings change or shift as you spoke with him?

*Do you know someone for whom healing came at an unexpected
time or in an unexpected way?

*What are some common barriers/derailments/roadblocks to healing?
What gets in the way of healing?

All through scripture, God seems to see names and naming as *prescriptive* rather than *descriptive,* meaning he names someone in order that they can grow into who he sees them to be.  Abram’s name is changed to Abraham because he *will be* the father of many; Simon becomes Peter because Jesus knows his own future as the *rock* upon which the church will be built.  Jesus renames him *so that* he can become someone new.  The names God gives us are his own blessing, his promise, his hope, and ours.

Naming *often* comes in trouble, in pain.  It is easy to allow painful experiences to name us, to curse us with a constricted name that turns us toward death in our spirit.  Yet God offers to brand our names on us, our blessings or promises, on the ruptured, wounded, flesh of our spirits.

There is healing in this blessing, if we will accept our name from God.

Jamie shared this from her personal journal:

What can I say today.  I am so deep down sad today.  This morning in church, a 92 year old former architect and former women’s dean at Multnomah, urged us to “hang in” and “hang on” to Jesus during difficult times in our faith.  And she walked us through the stages of vine cultivation to show how our lives progress through difficult time along the way to producing so much fruit.  She said that absolute hardest time, harder than temptation or loneliness or feeling “tied down” is when we tear ourselves down, saying we’re not good enough, or that “God loves us generically, because he has to, not because of who we are.”  Really, deep down, we think we are too disgusting to love, even for God.  And it was this word, “disgusting” that brought tears that I couldn’t stop, all the way through the rest of the service, the communion, the closing song.  That’s what my mom called me in that horrible phone conversation.  Disgusting.  No longer recognizable to her.  So disgusting that she didn’t want to be part of my life anymore.  And I realized, as I heard this woman saying our deepest fears and self-flagellations about our unloveliness that that’s exactly how I am feeling, how I feel resigned to feeling.  Alone, unwanted, and so totally unlovable.  So resigned that I didn’t realize how much it was hurting, and how much I had decided to absorb these words into the truth I hold about myself.  I took those words in and they became truth.  I’ve been trying to tell myself that these are the words of someone who is not well, that they reveal so much more about her own problems than they do about any reality about me, but I can’t seem to hold on to that.  The only thing I kept thinking is that she is my mother, and she, seemingly by magic or destiny or biology, has the power to name me, a powerful power.  You are disgusting.  And so I am.  You are unwanted.  And so I am.  I realized today that I am still a mash inside, so completely crumpled up and then trying to live and give out of this mashed up self.  So what can I do?  I can try to discern God’s truth about me, cling to it, and repeat it often, in order to live it out, to live from the truth of it.  God loves me just the way I am.  I am lovely.  And so I am.  I am worth knowing and loving.  And so I am.  I am wanted.  And so I am.  Please God, help me to believe.

When Jesus rose from the grave on the first Easter, resurrection wasn’t hard to see. And when Jesus returns one day, resurrection won’t be hard to see; it will be all we see.

Most Easter art takes us for an inspiring ride either into resurrection’s past or its future – which is vitally important.

But the art we have this year does the wonderful and perhaps uncomfortable thing of leaving us right where we are: in a place where resurrection can be hard to spot.

At the same time, though, these images can remind us not to be fooled by the darkness around us – and not to be lulled into a Technicolor hope: the resurrection work God started in Jesus doesn’t leap over us and start again at the second coming. It is continuing in you and me and in people all over the world right now, not despite darkness and hypocrisy, but through them.

Eternal life is sprouting up through the cracks of our weakness, and from the compost of our selfishness. The great Gardner is inside us and among us, already inventing the ceaseless greens and countless colors of His new creation.

Easter, viewed through this art, is something like an alarm-clock reminding all of us kids to wake up, to get up, and to get out into the garden – because even though its barely dawn and it’s still pretty cold, God—three-in-one–is already out there, in joy and beauty, making all things new.

Your Life is Mine
(Hannah Glavor’s Easter Song)

where once he lay
light of life by darkness slain
bright bursting forth
sing hallelujah, glorious day

you did change the world in a single day
and you bound up my heart
forevermore I’m yours

light shines brightest after the dark you took my
place and I am born anew your light brings life
your life is mine

though darkness hides
my efforts cannot move my stains
deep shadows bright
turned my darkness into light

heaven’s first light
shines upon my broken heart
lift up my eyes
free and crowned in radiance bright

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name="bg song" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">

So the question becomes pretty clear. How do we help our kids understand behavior in a healthy way, in a way that will actually draw them near to God rather than drive them away? Is that even possible? I am certainly not assuming that the answer is to remove all behavioral expectations. The truth is, behavioral expectations are and will always be a reality for both parents and kids. And the truth is our kids will draw conclusions from our behavioral expectations, whether we have articulated them or not. I would simply suggest that rather than letting them draw their own conclusions, it is extremely important to help them understand behavior in a correct context. I drew the wrong conclusions and have spent a significant amount of my life trying to unlearn things deeply entrenched in me. So how do we help them understand behavior in a healthy way?

One of the most significant ways this happens is for us to actually have healthy understandings of behavioral expectations and then try to embody them. The reality is, for most of us, our behavioral grid is not something we really pay much attention to. As a culture, we are at a great loss for any sort of standard. We have sort of adopted the, “everybody does right in his own eyes” mentality. While this at times seems to make the issue even more difficult, I think it can actually be very helpful, because it can force us to not just look at what is socially acceptable, but to ask the harder questions. And that’s what I would like to do here. While it would be impossible to exhaust this issue, I would be quite happy if it compels you to begin to think through these issues and commit to being intentional about them.

What I would like to attempt for the next few blogs is explore the question, “How does the gospel shape our understanding of behavior?”  At the core of pretty much every religion is the idea that if we just do certain things, and refrain from doing other things, we can work our way to heaven, or into some other state of eternal bliss. While the lists of what to do and what not to do may be significantly different, the basic principle is the same, “You can behave good enough to get there”. At the very core of the gospel are two connected central ideas that are significantly different than any of this. First is the idea that Gods standards are extremely high. In fact, because they are based on His character, they are nothing short of perfection. Secondly, there is the recognition that none of us on our own will ever meet these standards. We are all dealing with the fact that we are not perfect. Most of us are highly aware of this, and that is why you care about this subject. This is our reality. The gospel has huge implications for our understanding of behavior and offers several lenses through which we can explore this issue. I believe that if we are willing to explore behavior through these lenses, we can actually begin planting gospel seeds and start to create healthy contexts in which our families can walk through life with gospel understanding built in.
While there are numerous ways the gospel shapes our understanding of behavior, I would like to explore in the next few blogs three gospel lenses that are central to the issue. First, I would like to look at the nature of God (and us being created in His image) as a basis for behavioral understanding. Secondly, I would like to ask the tough questions: “How does God deal with our imperfection?” and “How do we learn to navigate our own weakness?”  Last of all, I would like to contrast the differing concepts of shaping behavior vs. shaping the heart. I hope you will begin to think through some of these ideas now, and I’ll look forward to exploring these things together in the coming weeks!