I grew up near the ocean, close to the bay, and about a block from a slough that connected to the Lafayette River.  Yeah, Norfolk has a lot of water flowing around.  I have been away from the water for a long time, though when we moved to Greenwood we got the James River as a backdoor neighbor.  In the summer I will walk back through the woods to the James.  It is a trip to a different place, and maybe time.  There is nothing back there as far as people go, except the power lines that cross the river, but if you walk down river they are soon gone.  

Just a bit east, where she heads into Richmond, the James flows over an old dam and through several miles of rocks before gaining enough depth and width to become useful for shipping.  It will widen a great deal on her trip to the bay, finally miles wide, before spilling into the ocean.  

It is interesting to me how the personality of the river changes as she flows for several hundred miles through the Commonwealth.  Up where the Cow Pasture joins with the Jackson she sometimes seems almost sprite like.  Around Lynchburg, especially around the old foundries and warehouses she takes on a sense of “work”, but not far to the east becomes a lazy river, usually peaceful except for the springtime rush when she will turn brown and get agitated.  Behind Greenwood, in July and August, the river thins herself out and really is a peace “attending” you, flowing so slowly you think she will stop and wait with you if you decide to pause to really examine something.  In Richmond, the river is really Nature’s presence in an otherwise totally urban environment.  You can look at her as vignette of “before we got here” but the James is still very much alive.  Each year young people who have learned how to survive the drugs and guns of their neighborhoods will find those skills no match for the river’s currents and a couple of fishermen who have been taking fish out of her depths for years will find themselves taken down to her bottom.  After Richmond I think the James is just determined, determined to pick up the Appomattox’s waters and then flow into the bay.  You can swim in her or sail on her and all too often people have used her to move themselves, their goods, and even their environmental abuse downstream, but the James doesn’t seem to care, she just flows, picking up salinity as if she is morphing into the ocean she will join.

Three days of heavy rain and high wind are getting me a bit concerned.  Water is not obeying the rules.  Remember Day 2 when the rules were put in place, water above and water below?  And then Day 3, water here and land over here? And, when water breaks the rules of Days 2 and 3, it usually breaks the rules of Day 5, instead of carrying living things about it is  full of dead stuff, leaves, branches and especially trash, and depositing it everywhere.  Plus, it weakens the soil holding the roots of trees and they start going over, and the part I take very personally, it is threatening that piece of causeway in my drive!  In a moment I will go out and clear the culvert.

When water breaks boundaries I get concerned.  I guess it is because Biblically it means God is active.  Springs breaking forth in the desert is a good image.  Water springing from a rock is another good image.  Then there is water dividing like the Red Sea.  And there is the Noah thing. And, there is the water that bursts right before each of us bursts forth!  When I was at St George’s in Israel I took a great interest in Purification rites, water was scarce and the gathering, channeling and storing of water for such purposes intrigued me.  In the Christian scriptures this storing and channeling and keeping of water seems to be passed by.  Jesus makes wine out of water that had been stored.  Jesus heals people before they get to the “special” water at Bethesda’s pools.  John uses any old water, unbounded and free flowing, to baptize.  So does Phillip.

God does a lot of stuff with water.  There is a lot of water today.  Better be careful, God may be busy around here!  Souls may be being made “well”.

Over the last several decades I have become acquainted with various “techniques” of “evangelism”, some that I learned to practice on people and some that were practiced on me by others.  These experiences have taught me that like Gaul, all evangelism is divided into three parts.  The first part is lining up the unsuspecting future Christian to receive your presentation, (that is the second part!).  Through the use of “diagnostic questions” or some diagrams or introducing some “laws” that are guaranteed to have been “broken”, you basically maneuver the “target” to a place where you can say, “Boy! Do I have good news for you!”  This basically means I will now begin the talk I have been memorizing for the last couple of weeks.  

The “talk” is usually a quick presentation of “the Gospel”, which being interpreted means “penal substitutionary atonement”, you are evil, you deserve to die, but God loves you, so God sends Jesus to take your place and die, paying the “price” of your sin, and restoring you to a relationship with God, IF you say this special prayer, and then, when you do die (I don't like the part of still having to die to be in God's presence!)  you will go to heaven, which means you won’t really be dead, just your body will be dead or something like that.

Usually, before they (the sinner) want to “say the prayer”, you will need to “deal with objections”.  This is pretty standard fare and you will be trained to answer problems with babies that die young, people on islands far away and other distracting issues.  Once you get the “answers” memorized you can really rattle them off pretty quickly, calm the person down and move to “the Prayer” and add a new name to the Book of Life.

I realize now that this means of “Evangelism” became popular in late 19th century America, and even grew more popular in the 20th century, because it “fit” how we were living.  First, it assumes a homogeneous society.  Backgrounds, life styles, concepts of right and wrong, aims and ambitions were pretty much the same for most people.  Secondly, we were a culture looking forward and believing good things were ahead, so why not “heaven”?  And, this sort of evangelism was formula driven, like science, a plan anyone could learn and use!  We were always looking for a way to get it done, whatever it was.

Somewhere in my travels I was taught that these “opportunities” “to share the Gospel” were really “Divine Appointments”.  I guess that meant God set up the person to hear the presentation and “take the plunge”.  But, I wonder, is that how Jesus would have gone about it?  Somehow “Listen to this” doesn’t seem to fit with “Come and see.”

They say we may get seven inches of rain today, the remnants of Ida.  The wind has brought down the last leaves on the trees to join their friends on the ground.  The rains will carry them to the ditches and creeks and I imagine the creek that flows under the drive in a culvert is now flowing over the drive.  The road that goes by our place will probably be flooded in several places, as well.  In the city, people want to get flooding “fixed”.  When we moved out here we learned to steer around deep water or change direction.

The great hymn “It Is Well With My Soul” is a good hymn for rainy days with flooding.  It is also a great hymn about understanding the work of Jesus.  You can read of the hymn’s origin here:
http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/i/t/i/itiswell.htm

The first stanza and refrain are as follows:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.
            Refrain
            It is well, with my soul,
            It is well, with my soul,
            It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Sonja and I did have lunch and we did talk about Jesus dying on the cross. I think she got it exactly right when she said, “He (Jesus) must have been a terrible threat to all those people.” She meant the authorities in Jerusalem and the temple folk and all.  And, of course, a big part of the problem was there was some pretty good and available evidence that what he said was true and what he did was way powerful.  Jesus was a problem that needed to be “fixed”.  So, Jesus was ground down under the heel of the ...<< MORE >>

With new tires on the Expedition (big 4 wheel drive SUV for those not in the US, and yes, I do use 4 wheel drive since Greenwood is an old farm and the horse died a long time ago) I can finally hear myself think while I drive, so I was doing that. And I thought, “Why did Jesus die?” I thought that because I was going to have lunch with Sonja and she asks questions like that.<< MORE >>

Good stories have three parts. The first part is the “grounding” of the story. It is usually the beginning, but it doesn’t have to be. A story is grounded when it has a time and a place to occur and a character or characters to make it happen, for example, “once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a princess”. What “happens” because of or to the character or characters is the middle. The final part of the story or the “end” is the change that comes about because of what happened. There can be lots of middle, lots of happening stuff, but if there is no change, the story has not ended, yet. That is why I think the Bible has two and one half stories. One of them is not finished, yet. The first story is the creating. Before anything was, God began creating, and so there was time and a place and finally an us. Now there is creation and God says it is good, and that is change. From nothing to creation by God’s action. Good story.<< MORE >>

Life is fragile. Any parent who has dealt with a pregnancy that did not end with the birth of a child knows that reality in a wordless way. Perhaps we put words together to tell a story about an event that might be called miscarriage or abortion or still birth or accident, but I do not know words that adequately describe what happens when mothers and fathers who knew life was coming to us are changed to “not now” mothers and “not now” fathers because, at least, “not now”, life is coming to us. You dream about, think about, participate in and prepare for “having children”. We typically do not direct our lives and actions to a place where we create the advent of life in order to “not have children”. But, life is fragile.<< MORE >>

Scott McKnight rightly points to the Magnificat as an anthem proclaiming what Atonement looks like first in the work of Jesus and then as the church Jesus was calling into being. It is the song of a mighty work, a Godly work, of reconciliation.  I will go far as to say that Atonement is the portal to eternity.

However, the language used to speak of atonement lately has made many of us turn from this doorway to God’s presence.

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If we wish to speak of God our first task is to choose a language.  Choosing a “tongue” spoken by those with whom we want to converse will speed the conversation along, but choosing a vocabulary, a pattern of weaving words together, and a style of directing the words we speak into the one we address is the “language” I mean.  It is the language that conveys, that carries the content of the conversation from me to you.

Our choice of language in daily conversation is so casual we are usually unaware of it until it fails to convey ...<< MORE >>

Todays' World

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