meditatio at the water's edge

A few little bits of things I wrote last week as I thought about loving our neighbors...


/Don’t be satisfied with being nice and polite. Nice and polite is certainly preferable to angry and contemptuous, but nice and polite is not enough. Be courageously engaged in loving your neighbor as yourself. (Oh, and begin with your neighbors in your home.)


/Jesus didn’t send his disciples out to start churches with children’s programs and worship teams and many other things by which churches today choose to define themselves (not that those things are wrong or unnecessary). Jesus sent his disciples out to begin a worldwide moral revolution where the entire population of this planet would come to experience the abundant goodness of life as God has always intended for human beings. He sent his disciples out to transform the world so that everyone would know the God of love and light and love the Creator God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves.


/There is a great danger for us who live in this individualistic, consumer driven culture. The danger is that we start approaching the spiritual life as individualistic consumers: “What can this church do for me?” “Was this week’s sermon entertaining?” “Do I like the color of that church’s carpet?” “Wouldn’t I be more comfortable in a church with air conditioning?” It’s surprising to me that we don’t have some version of “Consumers Reports for Churches.” Maybe we already do.
But if you can get beyond that to a higher level of thinking, you see that you are not just here for you—you don’t just participate in community for what you get out of it or how it makes you feel. You begin to see it as a means of acting in responsibility for the people around you. You start asking questions like, “How can I be a blessing to that person?” “What can I do for the benefit of the person next to me in line at the grocery store?” “What will it mean for me to will the good of my neighbor?” Even, “How can I learn to appreciate a different music style for the benefit of someone else?”


/What is preventing people from demonstrating love to others?
1. Busyness. Frankly, many of us are too busy to care. One of the great deceptions in our culture is that busyness equals significance. The truth is that busyness keeps us from being available to others.
2. Debt. Many people are so far in debt that they have absolutely no ability to provide for those who are in need.
3. Consumerism. If you are more concerned with measuring up with what your friends and neighbors have that’s bigger, newer, and faster, you will miss out on the blessings of contentment. I think more people should be concerned with 'measuring down' and identifying with their neighbors at the short end of the stick.