Day 155: Living Waters

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  John 7:37-38

I feel like these days there are people who are walking around with earplugs when they go to church or listen to the Gospel.

While we are in the midst of praising God and proclaiming God's name, Jesus invites us to come and drink.  The next part of the invitation is key, though.  Those who come to Jesus to drink will themselves become fountains of living water.

Of course, when we read this statement, we need a definition.  What are living waters?  John gives us a good answer, saying that this is the Holy Spirit.  But even then, we can have issues with understanding this because of the fact that we might not know what the Holy Spirit is.

When we think of the Spirit, we should always remember the breath of life, for spirit and breath are one and the same word in Greek and Hebrew.  And the Holy Spirit is the Lord and giver of life.  And what is life?  Life can be anything that we make of it, but Jesus has been clear from the beginning that eternal life comes from our faith in him.  Therefore, life is following Jesus.

So, if we are coming to Jesus for a drink, should our fountain of living water look like an outpouring of judgment based on the law of Moses?  Certainly not!  As Paul has said, the law reveals death.  Jesus, on the other hand, shows us life.  Jesus, the preacher and manifestation of love, is life.  We cannot forget that fact.  Jesus is the fulfillment of everything we do.  All of our worship, all our prayers, our reading, our preaching, our listening, our learning, our understanding points to Jesus.  Everything points to God's unconditional love for us.

When we go to Jesus for a drink of water, we will begin our transformation, much like a detox diet.  We will start to drink of this life giving water which will cleanse us both inside and out.  Then, through our transformation, we will start to become a fountain of love.  We will know that we are drinking of this fountain, for that will be when we are showing our love forth throughout all of the pain and suffering that exists in the world.  As Christians, we can only claim to be followers of Jesus Christ if we are becoming fountains of Jesus' love.  Otherwise, we are just pedants, proclaiming and sealing ourselves in hatred that closes in on us until we die both in body and spirit.  We need the Holy Spirit.  We need life.  We need love. 

Day 133: Building up a Community

 "Is anyone among you suffering?  Let him pray.  Is anyone cheerful?  Let him sing psalms.  Is anyone among you sick?  Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord."  James 5:13-14

I feel like this is something that we've distanced ourselves from in recent times.

We look at church like a place that exists far away from home that is only open on Sunday mornings.  It loses its spirituality over the week and becomes just a building.  We also become divorced from everybody at church once we leave on Sunday.  Yet, that's not what the point is.

When I read the above passage, I think about how important a church was to the community.  All of the activities that are listed above (and even after this passage) are things that we normally associate with church.  The thing is, though, that there isn't any fine print.  There's nothing that says, "If anyone is sick at church," or, "If anyone feels cheerful at church," or "If anyone is suffering at church."  It's plain and simple.  We are the church, and we take it everywhere we go.

The other side to consider is that we need to make sure the church is a community, not just a bank, where transactions happen between a teller and a customer.  Instead, we attend church as a community.  We should be willing to join hands in prayer and healing at any given moment.  We should feel as if the church is our second home, if not our fist.  We need to have camaraderie between all the members.  If there are issues, then we should make sure to go forward and solve them.  Rather than let evil break into our communities, dividing them and infecting every person, we should be guarding all the good that comes from our community.

Our faith is not something that we just say.  Anybody can crack open a prayer book or (in that case) look up the Creed page on Wikipedia and recite the words with no faith.  That's easy.  It's living our faith that we are called to do.  When we read the bible and learn what to do, we can build up our communities to become stronger.  It takes a great effort to build up a community, but when we do, it will benefit us, healing us, and celebrating with us.

Day 103: Hear Him

While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were fearful as they entered the cloud.  And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son.  Hear Him!"  Luke 9:34-35

I find the Transfiguration to be something very confusing.  The description we get in the Gospels doesn't seem to warrant so much to make an important feast day out of it in the church calendar.  Perhaps, when I compare it to the Passion, the Nativity, or the end times, this description pales in comparison.

However, every time I come back to reading about it, I feel that God speaks to me in a different way.  A detail that stuck out to me this time around was the passage I copied above.  The disciples whom Jesus had brought along for this event were filled with so many questions, as can be evidenced by Peter's suggestion to build tabernacles for the three men.  In addition to that, they were frightened.  Their teacher's face had just started glowing!

Despite all this uncertainty, though, they entered the cloud.  And, as they entered, they began to receive the gift of understanding.  Jesus is one with God.  In the same way, we should take this approach to our own lives.  We will encounter so many different things where we won't know all the answers.  However, when we take the leap forward, even with our doubts, our questions, our fears, we will get the answer.  God is wherever we are, but we need to receive God.  I find that the physical church building can be seen as a sort of parallel to the cloud.  Within the church's walls, we hear the voice of God in the form of song, prayer, and scripture.  We can also look at our own moments of deep meditation as entering the cloud - the cloud of our own souls.  Within our meditations, we can hear the voice of God.  Another parallel of the cloud is the bible.  When we open up the covers, we can start to receive the revelation of God.  And, each time that we receive the revelations, we understand the same message:  "Jesus is my beloved son.  Hear him!"

Day 047: Spiritual Wisdom

"Let no one deceive himself.  If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.  For it is written 'He catches the wise in their own craftiness'."                          1 Corinthians 3:18-19

How can this be?  Don't we want to have the best thinkers in the Church?

That's kind of my first reaction to this advice and to the quoted text.  We have enough trouble these days with people misleading masses of people because of their lack of discernment and knowledge and wisdom.  At the same time, some of the theologians that I respect the most, from ancient to modern times, were wise in both Scripture and philosophy.

However, the beginning of this advice gives the whole message away.  One can consider himself to be wise if he truly wants to.  Eventually, there will be someone out there who will believe him.  In the same way, it shows that there are so many wise people out there today who constantly take steps deeper and deeper into admitting their ignorance before God.  They allow themselves to become empty vessels, blank canvases, so that they may receive more and more revelations of God. 

Throughout the history of our spiritual tradition, God became known through revelations over time.  In the bible, we have many examples of people receiving the revelations, but we probably have just as many of people refusing them.  Of course, the stories of those who received the revelations end well, and those of those who refused the revelations end terribly.

How, then, do we make ourselves fools before God?  The first thing is to understand that we will never know more than the all-knowing and omnipresent God.  The next step is to let God take care of us.  We should start to listen to God for guidance in all of our questions.  Obviously, the only way we can accept a revelation is by opening our eyes.  As Job said, "But now, my eyes see you," when he received an astonishing revelation of God, so should we as we receive revelations from God each day.

We can open up our spiritual eyes by coming into communication with God.  When we read the bible, we can start to understand more about who God is.  When we pray, we have a conversation with God, where we can hear the answers to our questions.

Day 027: The Source

Jesus answered and said to them, "Indeed, Elijah is coming first and will restore all things.  But I say to you that Elijah has come already and they did not know him but did to him whatever they wished.  Likewise, the Son of Man is also about to suffer at their hands."  Matthew 17:11-12

In his ministry, Jesus took many opportunities to show disciples exactly who he is.  In the transfiguration, Jesus reveals himself in all his glory before three specific disciples.  They had all the information they needed, and yet they still had trouble accepting Jesus as the son of God.

Today, we are very blessed to have access to so much information. You can use so many different search engines to find answers to questions that your friends probably don't know the answers to.  You have access to so much of the world's knowledge.  But, we still prefer to pretend we know things.  We like to recycle lies.  We like to read lies as well and believe them.

In this political season, we like to buy whatever the ads are telling us.  We believe the tears that actors were paid to shed.  We indulge in the voice of a politician who is probably going to turn their back on us.  We allow for these people to make up factoids on the spot without taking the five seconds to check them out for ourselves.

If we go even deeper, we have the bible, published and bound, made cheap, so that we can all have a copy, let alone find online.  Yet, we let people tell us otherwise about it.  We like to cycle many myths that we don't understand, and we like to believe things that aren't there.  However, another issue is that we don't want to take time to learn.  Today, I came across a Greek proverb that says,

"One day does not make a wise man."

Sure, we might be able to get watered down answers in seconds so that we can keep a conversation going over lunch with friends.  But, in order to understand God, to hold onto God, we need to give God all the time we have.  We need to allow ourselves to be molded by God's hands, not by tempting human ones.  We need to go straight to the source to strengthen our faith.

The bible is long.  The church services might seem long.  The prayers might seem long.  But, we find ourselves wasting our time on our phones, playing games that get us nowhere, spending money on trinkets we might forget about before we even receive them, reading about things that don't have any substance.  We need to devote ourselves more to God, for that is the only way we will have a lasting relationship.  We need to fill ourselves with all things spiritual, so that we can see the all-encompassing glory of God.

Today's Readings:

Exodus 3-4

Psalm 21:18-32 (22:18-32)

Proverbs 10:15-16

Matthew 17:1-13

Acts 27