Musings on 1 Cor 6-10

The liberty of Christ can be really, really hard to live out. Legalism is so tempting, with its clearly defined rules and limits, however artificial. It's hard to know when you're doing the right thing, hard to know when you're following the will of God, hard to make tough decisions and feel confident you made the right one.

In this passage, Paul takes us past just judging things as "sin" or "not sin" and explores what exactly we're supposed to do with all this freedom Jesus gave us. He sets the thing up as a version of his typical footrace allegory. I'm an athlete, and I'm going to be racing. There's a race track and a prize and a very scant skeleton of rules. Sure, I could eat bad food, stay up late the night before, and never exercise. But I certainly can't expect to perform well if I do that! If I'm a serious about this race I'm going to analyze my diet and find the optimal way to eat. I'm going to undertake an exercise regimen fit to suceeding at this particular sport. I'm going to prepare carefully, stewarding my resources and keeping the goal in mind. In the most active sense of the word, I'm going to care!

So here we are, on planet earth, with seemingly endless decisions and distractions and mini-goals, but we all share one unified goal: Jesus! It seems kind of obvious in hindsight, but Paul's point is if that's our goal, we should be taking it seriously and making choices that will set us up to be successful. There are so many things we could do, but the more in that direction a choice takes us, the more optimal it is.

Some pointers he offers:

• When in doubt, seek the good of others over your own good
• Don't tread a brother or sister's faith in the dust while running your own race, Jesus bought and loves them too
• Keep your freedom by putting even pleasurable things in the proper place in your life, don't let them become the top priority
• Don't put off seeking God until your circumstances improve or it is easier, start seeking right where God put you. If your circumstances do change for the better, great! Use your new circumstances for God.
  
• Don't cling to your rights and expectations as more important than the good you can accomplish by laying them aside willingly
• Don't expect your church to carry you to God with no effort from you! Moses led lots of Isrealites to the Jordan, but only two actually made it across.
• Don't give offence for no good reason, examine your motives and ask, "Is this point really important to God... or just to me?"
  
• Take time to thank God for what you receive

And what it all comes down to:

• It's all about God! Keep his as the important thing in your life, as your priority, as your goal, and put him first. He's the only only one you need to please in the long run.

In thinking about this, it also tied in the "fear of God" concept. Being awed by God is the beginning of wisdom, because banishes practical agnosticism and aligns your mind and heart rightly. It takes you beyond merely acknowledging God's existence, into living with that reality as part of your planning. It leads to caring what God wants, and thus learning about and of him so you know what he desires, and then putting it into practice.

I'm sorry if this stuff is too obvious to be worth reading, but really pondering it and applying it to the decisions looming in my own life was amazingly helpful to me. I hope it is to you as well.

Wain!

Ceelie had an encounter with rain today. We've hustled through it before, and gone out with her dad under the awning, but this was a little different. She just sat in my lap, no shoes on, with a light drizzle showering on the two of us. Her arm was snuggled around my neck as she pointed repeatedly at the sky and said inquiringly, "Wain?" The large, cold drops slowly descended on us in what must have only been a minute or two but felt like forever.

It was one of those perfect, indelible moments that you could never plan but will hopefully never forget either.

Resurrection Sunday

The Lord is Risen!

My current area of daily reading is through Luke, and it has spawned more thoughts and reflections than I have wrist function. After a long time in the Torah and epistles, getting back to a gospel is amazing. While it is joyous to read about the big setup for Jesus and the "how to's" after him, it is unique to just sit and ponder his words and actions directly.

I found these words in Luke 21 to stand out today.

13-14 And it shall turn to you for a testimony. Settle [it] therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer:

19 In your patience possess ye your souls.

34 And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life...

36 Watch ye therefore, and pray always....

Jesus spoke them after his triumphant donkey ride into Jerusalem, during the days when he was preaching to huge crowds at the temple there, and in light of the persecution that would follow his death, the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans, and his return after the age of the Gentiles.

They are a really peculiar call, when you take the chapter all together. Bad stuff is coming, for the Jewish people, you personally, and lots of people who will be born in the far future. But be patient and enduring, keep seeking God in prayer. Be sober, ready, avoid escapism, but don't get too caught up with life's details either. Even if you get dragged out to testify about your faith, don't fret, I'll be there and tell you what to say and give you the boldness to say it.

There is a rest that seems to be the subtext of this entire chapter, a deeply appealing rest even in the middle of big trouble. Under it, I can hear Matt 11:28-30 "Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Paul's assurances at the end of Rom 8 could almost be from essay written on the chapter: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

When the occasional worry looms over how quickly my condition is progressing, when I become so weary of just trying to manage life with rapidly encroaching disability, it is this rest that pulls me through the day.

2008

Personal life:

Jan 1, 2008 was the first day Balkar was officially unemployed. (He was receiving pay although not allowed to go to work up until Dec 31, 2007.) He started his job hunt several days later, once business resumed after the holidays. In the end, it didn't matter that it turned out to be fruitless. During Easter week I was hospitalized with the worst exascerbation I've ever had, and we realized we didn't have enoughs support in Indiana to live through two of those. Three days after I was out of the hospital, we were back in NY. (Our stuff took a bit longer.)

That was the low point of the year. Balk got a job with the company that took over his old company. It took a little while to start, but Fa and Dan kept us fed while we waited. It has been a big blessing to us: it has great health benefits and decent pay.

The second half of 2008 has been good to us. We are financially back to where we were before Balk's unemployment, our household is very functional, and we are pretty happy. My health has been poor, but that is hardly unexpected or a big deal.

The World Outside:

The great illusion that everyone who does the right thing can have it all has been pierced. Health and wealthism has taken a blow, and he who has eyes can see what our world has become. Will they see? Will they care? I don't expect them too, but I do hope so.

I think this point is a chance for earthlings to see what the excesses of industry, debt, and greed have wrought us and change. I pray that in the face of these realities we will repent of our societal evils and forge a new path.

Those Days When Your Ramp Becomes a Boat

This beautiful piece of art was made for me by my sister. It is the first part of a series portraying the innocence of the interactions between children and disability.

[Description: A child squats on a wheelchair ramp leading up to a patio, grasping the side, gazing perpendicular to the camera. The yard around her is replete with backyard paraphenalia. In a thought bubble on the top right, is the following poem:

I found this raft tethered
Unwanted along the shore
Its wobbly and weathered
But will sail a few times more
I followed a little fishy
Swimming, fast and free
We'll sail into the sunset
'Till Mommy comes for me

by Faith K Friedman]

Impairment and Spirituality

Disclaimer: Normally I'm not much of a preacher, unless someone asks. Ryn asked :P I also apologize if it is excessively rambling.

Before I am anything else, I am a disciple of Christ. When I lost my memories and personality and my brain blew up for almost a year, I was a different person in almost every way. I forgot my friends, barely remembered my family, changed from outgoing to shy, lost my pride, lost myself. The one thing I did not lose, one of the few constants in my life at that time was his presence in my life, and my faith in him. I was not as mature a christian, I was more prickly and easier offended about my faith, but that faith never left me.

My belief in God is the lense I see the world through, it is the deepest and most immovable part of me. One of the few things that is understood about my disabilities from a medical perspective is that there is a lot of congenital involvement. Thus, to be consistent in my beliefs, I cannot come to any conclusion other than this:

God created me knowing I would be a crip.

That conclusion, which looks so simple written down, took me a decade to work through. The implications were huge, and accepting it was difficult. I tried to forget it, ignore it, deny it, but I cannot. If I believe that God is the omniscient creator of every human being, that we are fearfully and wonderfully and individually made, then God made me. He made me knowing what he was making, what would happen, and with a purpose in mind. He knew what my life would be like, and saw worth and value in it.

Some folks who have claimed to share my faith have claimed that disability is the result of sin, using sin as a word for individual misbehavior and tradition breaking. I vehemently disagree with both their conclusions and definition of sin. People aren't born disabled because of a sinful last life. We aren't bearing the misdeeds of mom or dad, nor are we being punished for what we might have done otherwise. Living a virtous life cannot save you or your children from impairment. We are simply affected, as all creatures are in one way or another, by the darkness that has taken root in both the physical and spiritual manifestations of the world.

I am not any more broken than the world I was born into. Sin is real, and its effects are evident everywhere in the corruption and entropy of our world. Huge regions of the world with no potable water are a sign of it, just as surely as the lack of caring for the people who live there by those who don't. As a people, we try to distract ourselves from the suffering around us, we blame the victims for being "lazy", we selfishly try to hold on to however much we can get, we discount the value of others. We try our best to prosper, heedless to the cost of other human's lives. Dehumanization is rampant, because without it the masses can't feel good about their lifestyle. All the while, the news anchors treat stories about thousands of Iraqis dying under occupation with the same brevity as stories about the local prom queen being arrested for scanty clothing. The world is broken.

People are born as parts of this broken world. We are born seperated from God, mired in this world, in darkness. No one makes a big deal about this congenital spiritual impairment, just as no one rants about humanity's lack of ability to fly: it is the norm. Physical and mental impairments are to be fought, resisted, driven out, but spiritual impairments are "best dealt with privately". Christ had different priorities. In fact, when he was walking this earth he healed physical and mental impairments as mere lead up miracles, to show the concept. The real work was giving a way for people to be healed of their spiritual impairment.

So where does that leave me? I've devoted myself to God, and he thinks spiritual healing is more important than physical healing. I have accepted that, and more than accepted that: I am beginning to understand. The love for my fellows (even when accompanied by grief and sorrow), empathy, patience, grace, faithfulness, and joy that he has filled me with over the years are better than hearing and walking. Society says I am the broken one, the sufferer, survivor of tragedy. I think it's the other way around. Society fears and others us because we visibly show how broken it's world really is, and force it to deal with the problems it would rather ignore.

Woot!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080520/ap_on_bi_ge/blind_money