A Spot of Rain

I'm sitting in my office, and it just got done raining really hard here--lots of rumbling beforehand from the thunder and then just a downpour. Now the sun is out and everything's "back to normal."

It's an altogether too familiar pattern, though. Think about all the things we've planned for in the church. A lot of effort goes into it and it goes like gangbusters. But then afterwards, we think, "Ah, now that's done. I can just let things get back to normal." Or even in our personal lives, we'll sign up for a short term Bible study or start into Sunday School or regular church going and we'll do it with great gusto for awhile, but then we let our lives go back to what they were before--"back to normal."

I think one of the things that letting God transform our lives means, though, is that there's a new normal.

It was just a spot of rain. I've lived in Texas long enough to know that there are verrrrrry few circumstances in which we don't give thanks for rain--any amount at any time. Today's rain will help things not to get dried out so quickly and give all the plants just a quick drink, which, of course, usually always helps.

But our lives don't have to be inconsistent. They don't have to succumb to the "old normal"...but instead be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" to a new normal.

Living with the Scripture this week

Every week that I'm preparing to preach, I live with the scriptures. I read over them daily, meditate, muse, research, read again, ponder, trying to construct worship around them. Sometimes they're like a beautiful set of ingredients, all laid out and waiting for me to put them together in a way that they make something lovely and filling to the congregation. Sometimes they're gristle--difficult to understand and wrestle with, and I just have to prepare them the best I can and help people to get them in their own mouths and gnaw on them as well.

But sometimes they seem already prepared--like I shouldn't have to do anything except read them. That seems to be the case this week with Romans 12:1-21. Paul lays out an ethics, not based on humanity (as so many of our ethics systems are) but based on God and living in a community that claims Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior--and living as a community that claims Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior...within a world which doesn't.

So what should I say from the pulpit? Do I just point out where this is happening? Hand them the dish and say, "eat up?" The dish is lovely to look at, but it can be bitter too--especially when the ethics go against what would make us feel good or when it challenges our own (my own!) self-righteousness. Maybe just to say that this is Paul's idea of the food that is best...the food that is healthy...the food that is wholesome--and whole-making.

Eesh. It may be too much for one bite.

So I'll struggle some more.