By Andy Wade –
Resurrection is all well and good, but what does it mean for my neighborhood? That may sound a bit irreverent, but that thought kept running through my mind as I planted seeds for our garden.
Over the past few years I’ve been exploring the idea of gardening with God and neighbor in mind and what it means to move from boundaries to hospitality in the garden.
This has been a profound journey of baby steps that has opened my mind, as well as our front yard, to a deeper level of sharing the hospitality of God.
Back to my question, “What does resurrection mean for my neighborhood?” If I stick with the narrow view of Jesus’ death and resurrection, then, for my neighborhood, it simply means figuring out how to get more people on the bus to heaven. But in the context of the larger story of God, resurrection is about God, through Jesus, drawing the whole creation together (Eph. 1.9-10, Col. 1.19-21, Rom. 8.20-24). Jesus is the Prince of Shalom, the Great Reconciler, the healer of our brokenness, and the one who makes all things new.
As I continue to ponder these deep, theological concepts, I’m tempted to just stay there, in my head, marveling at the greatness of God. But that does little for my neighborhood. Instead I’m forced to ask, what’s going on in my neighborhood? What good is already happening? Where are the points of brokenness, even division? Are there deep hurts or isolation? As I ask these and other questions then I can look back at my yard and ask, how can this be a place that fosters healing, reconciliation, friendships and support. In short, how can this become a garden of shalom where people, animals, and nature can flourish in the newness made possible in Christ?
These are big, potentially overwhelming questions. Sometimes when my mind goes in this direction, I either become trapped in heady theological gymnastics, or I become paralyzed by the seeming enormity of it all. But yesterday as I sat in my church’s Easter worship service, an image came to my mind. It was of a kayak quietly cutting through glass-like water. In its stealth-like movement it would be easy to miss, but behind this kayak was a wake. Not a huge wake, but rather small, gentle ripples slowly expanding across the water all the way to the shore on either side. Most of us are like that kayak: small, unassuming, often unnoticed, yet called to move through life in such a way that in our path we leave an ever-expanding wake of God’s shalom. Perhaps this is what my garden is to be.
I don’t have this shalom garden all figured out. In fact, I doubt it will ever be finished since the neighborhood, the needs, and my own involvement are constantly in flux. In fact my beginnings have centered, in a way, more on what needs to change in me to make shalom in the garden a reality. I’ve needed to move beyond the borders of public and private – mine and yours. I’ve needed to take little steps in discovering how I can be a more hospitable neighbor. I pray that in the midst of these personal lessons a small ripple of shalom develops.
This year, as I expand our Little Free Library, cultivate our free sun tea and herb garden, and share starts and cuttings with the neighborhood, I pray I may also gain a deeper understanding of the needs in our community. Hospitality is a doorway to friendship and healing, and it’s a doorway that seems to get bigger as we open ourselves more and more to the fullness of the resurrection.
Here is a short video I created a couple of years ago that shows the beginnings of the garden journey I’ve been on. Below the video I have few questions to stimulate your own imagination about how to garden with God and neighbor.
Starter Questions
- Do I know my neighbors?
- Is there a sense of trust in my neighborhood?
- Does my neighborhood feel welcoming or do we live more in isolation from one another?
- In what ways does my front yard communicate welcome and hospitality?
- In what ways does my front yard create barriers, both physical and emotional, to hospitality?
- What is one thing I could remove from my yard to make it more welcoming?
- What is one thing I could add to my yard to make it more welcoming?
- How does my yard express both care and welcoming to people as well as God’s good creation?
- What is one thing I could do this month to foster a deeper sense of community in my neighborhood?
- Who are the most likely neighbors I could conspire with to foster more joy, celebration, and friendship in my neighborhood?
Light of Christ by Mary Harwell Sayler
By Mary Harwell Sayler –
Exodus 34:6-7: “The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed:
‘The Lord! The Lord!
God who is compassionate and merciful,
very patient,
full of great loyalty and faithfulness,
showing great loyalty to a thousand generations,
forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
punishing for their parents’ sins
their children and their grandchildren,
as well as the third and the fourth generation’,” CEB.
Prayer:
Dear loving LORD,
we praise You for passing before us
in the beauty of worship,
in the words of Your Word,
in the forgiveness
and restoration that comes to us
through Your Son, Jesus Christ.
But I don’t have Your patience, Lord,
and frankly, I don’t want to pray for it
for fear You’ll send hard trials
to help me become
ever more tolerant of others!
Forgive me, Lord.
Forgive my lack of trust in You
and my annoyance with myself.
I think I want every pore in me
to exude Your love,
but that’s not really true, is it?
Love costs a lot –
a lot of mercy,
a lot of grace,
a lot of patience,
a lot of faith,
a lot of You!
Help me, LORD, to receive You more fully. Help!
Thoughts: Grace, mercy, patience, faithfulness: These aspects of love repeatedly pass before us without acknowledgement or even awareness that God is here; God is near. I wonder which of those aspects of God’s love is most lacking in my life? Do I dare think about it? If I really, really don’t want to know, could this be a sign that I’m not placing my faith and trust in God’s everlasting love? Do I trust myself to know what’s best for me, more than I trust God?
photo: Kirsty Williamson Lee
by Tom Sine –
I am celebrating the very good news that God is raising up a new generation that not only care deeply about the urgent issues that facing our neighbors near and far but they want to do something about it. They are creating new innovative forms of social enterprise and local community empowerment that often have a lasting impact in the lives of others.
These new changemakers are comprised of gen Y the 18 to 35. Researchers tell us that their younger sisters and brothers, gen Z, are even more intent on making a difference in the lives of others than gen Y. In my book I argue that that I suspect that the Spirit of God is raising up a new generation, largely outside the church, to awaken up followers of Jesus to the opportunity to join these young changemakers in becoming much more people of compassion, creativity and action.
This is an introduction to the video below that answers key questions I address in Live Like You Give A Damn! Join the Changemaking Celebration.
As a discuss these questions I am sure you will discover, as I have, that we all have much to learn from this new generation about how we can join them in creating our best neighborhoods, our best world and in the process often our best lives as well!
Why would anyone want to settle for less and miss the best? Why would anyone want to miss out on discovering how God can use our lives, in concert with a new generation, to make a lasting difference in the lives our neighbors… in times like these? As you listen to these interviews I would welcome your questions, feedback and pushback about this remarkable new changemaking celebration.
I would also welcome the opportunity to learn about innovative ways you are already involved in changemaking. I will share a sampling with of your innovations and feedback with the many others who are interested in learning more about this remarkable new changemaking celebration at my blog site newchangemakers.com
Don’t forget you can pre-order Live Like You Give A Damn! Join the Changemaking Celebration at the special 40% discount price until April 16th.
Photo by Jenneth Graser
By Jenneth Graser –
So many conflicting messages worldwide, so much on the news, images of terror, violence, political upheaval and conspiracies. Recent news of a local murder in a nearby community, created seismic shock waves in the hearts and minds of many locals in the Western Cape of South Africa. And the carrying of so much unrest can lead to feelings of intimidation, shrinking back, a paling at the sight of so much gone wrong.
I began to feel, “…maybe our time here in South Africa is coming to an end. I must do research into possible immigration. A lot of people have done the same.” But my knee jerk reaction left me feeling very stressed, shrinking back, intimidated, defeated. God at the same time was calling me ever so gently through this time, into a trust that doesn’t make sense to earth-bound eyes.
It was during a time of worship at the piano during our time of Free Flow, (a contemplative prayer evening we have at our home) that I felt a song come to me:
Come into the garden again, let me take you by the hand. Come with me to the still waters, refresh your weary feet. Lay down in the green pastures, lay down your weary head. Trust in me with your whole heart, don’t rely on your ways of thinking. Acknowledge me in all your ways and I will surely lead you. Lay down your heavy load, and rest here. This moment with me, is all that matters. It’s all that matters.
Then I felt a lifting.
I have been coming to see that no matter where we are in the world, there is a shaking of all that once felt like normal, and it’s been going on for quite some time. The only way we can live in the peace Christ calls us to, is to surrender our own ability to hold it all together and take his hand. He is leading us into the place of rest in the midst of the storm. The resurrection life of Christ dispels fear and does the opposite of shrinking us. It expands and expands and expands us. Like the ever growing universe. We are enlarged in the power of Christ and his resurrection.
But I need to appropriate it, by resting in the truth of it. Letting go of the fears of the unknown and of what I cannot control. Imbibing the reality of resurrection. Making it part of me, by realising – it is me. I am resurrected and made one with the Trinity. “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus…” Ephesians 2:6.
I need the help of the Holy Spirit to live in this rest. I cry out, Lord I do believe! Help me overcome my unbelief! (Mark 9:24) We all know in part, and one day we will know fully as we are fully known. (1 Cor 13:12) But for now, we have part of the picture and our thinking is shaped by so many things – our upbringing, our culture, our education… We need the ongoing renewal of the Spirit to bring us into alignment with truth. The truth of God is embedded in love. And this love expands through us with resurrection power that transforms our lives and the lives of others.
It may be just a small gesture, a sudden enlivening feeling within, a surge of creativity, a responsive forgiveness, a release of resentments, the melting of fears, a reaching out. Possibilities filling our dreams that we left long ago, dusty on a shelf. Now we can take them off and plant them in the ground and watch the Great Gardener at work. That often means we don’t get to see what is going on underground. We only get to see the signs of the life he works in time, with patience and with the willingness to lay down our need to know.
A dear friend gave me a branch of the Resurrection Bush. This twig looks like it must be destined for the compost tip. And yet, put it into some water and it miraculously turns from brown to green overnight. You can see the stirring response of the water sucked into what looked completely dead, and the leaves magically unfurl, freshly green! Jesus makes resurrection possible in every place. From our hearts, to the world we live in, resurrection is possible everywhere and for everyone.
Graphic by Jenneth Graser
I wake up to news of bombs, murder in the fynbos
Terror in eyes, flowers wilting on the fence, left for the dead.
My body is a withered bush, trying to remember the colour green… I
take myself out of myself, Into the mystery of resurrection. I
will myself to believe, suspend the striving brow
Uncrust my heart in the waters of truth flowing from your mouth.
I step into the amber river of your love,
I listen to the sound of water over the stones.
There is no worry, there is no fear.
Just pure letting go, holding the light, going, coming and going
With the flow.
Let me be so,
Let it be so.
Let us not look only with the eyes we can see, and react to what we see with the mind we have. Let us see with eyes looking from our true home, the vantage point of things eternal, and look with the mind of Christ to see every possible coming to life around us. We are the channel of his resurrection wherever we go. Let us speak to ourselves and to the world we live in, “Live! Breathe! Trust! Live again!” Where Shadows Passed by Laura Rhinehart
Cross in Desert from all-free-download.com
By Kathie Hempel –
In the famous line from the 1980’s movie 9 to 5, Dolly Parton chastises, “get off of the cross we; need the wood.” While rather irreverent, the line struck a chord with Christians and non-believers alike.
Matthew 16: 24 in the International Standard Version is recorded as: “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to follow me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me continuously’.”
Both quotations seem to suggest that rather just ‘hangin’ around,’ we are meant to get to work. We need to get about the work of resurrection and not get stuck focusing on the death. We need to pick up the wood that used to crucify the old man and of that make a new thing.
But how? Whatever might we hope would follow the Glory of Easter? And why is it so dang hard to make the transition into a new and glorious life?
It’s work. For those of us who might secretly hope that the day after Easter we would be floating around on a cloud eating bagels with cream cheese, this can be a very rude awakening. What? Back to the old grind?
No. We have a new employer. A gentler employer and trust me this is a big switch and understood, perhaps best, by those who have worked for themselves. As with any new job, there is a period of adjustment and finding your way around.
The policies and procedures manual for this new work is unique. It has the same content for all employees and yet is open to different interpretation depending on the specific task assigned, the individual and quite frankly some of the guidelines are not all that clear.
Great news! This Bible manual comes with a personal guide and instructor. A tutor for those who will accept the tutelage and we have forever to get the job down. God never fires us. He never lays us off. There is always plenty of work. The toughest part of the job is that while there is plenty of loving support, there is no delegation. Each of us must complete our own assignments. By grace there are no deadlines.
As we step down from the cross into the work of practicing our resurrection, it can feel more like we are stepping into a wasteland than a verdant garden. We realize that the road before us is not so cut and dried, as we may have imagined the path we previously followed. This can be frightening and shadows of the past can threaten to pull us backward. However, they are just that: shadows. While they can appear to be threatening, when we turn about and face them, they disappear.
Adding one small step to the next, we soon realize the truth of the adage: “Fear knocked, faith answered and there was no one there.”
Oh, the places you can travel in this new position! The journey forward as with all travel starts with but one step but as Neil Armstrong noted when he first stepped out on the moon, “That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.”
When we step down from the cross, it is not just our own journey that changes. We may never know all the people, both near and never known, that one decision will affect. Working for our new employer means we are working for all those he loves. The realization of that, can keep us going in the tough times that will inevitably come up.
We can meet with tremendous resistance. This is significant change we are working on here and we will have to overcome it in ourselves and from others. When we meet this resistance, we recognize the need for a new glossary of terms to accompany our policy and procedures training manual. It is now we begin to redefine what we mean by the words we use to describe the journey.
In his book, The War of Art, Steven Pressfield exposes Resistance as it relates to this great love that now directs our lives.
“Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there is tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
“The more Resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you—and the more gratification you will feel when you finally do it.”
Stepping down from the cross is the biggest project many of us will ever undertake. It certainly is the most rewarding, for finally we have purpose. We are now working through another’s power and while it can feel uncomfortable for a while, it holds the promise of great satisfaction.
Stepping down from the cross, we enter an exciting new world with work we can truly love.
by Christine Sine –
It is a week since Easter Sunday. We have celebrated the resurrection and now it seems we are back to life as usual. Just as the disciples returned to their nets, unsure what to do with the rumours of jesus resurrection, we are unsure what do do with resurrection in our own lives.
These pivotal days of our faith seem to make little difference in the way we live. Why I wonder? Why aren’t we transformed by the resurrection?
Sometimes I think it is because living into the resurrection seems so overwhelming for us. We think we need to dash off to be a missionary in some other part of the world. Or we need to give up the job we love to work with the homeless in the inner city. Or we need to sell all our possessions to live with the poor.
Yet that is not what resurrection is all about. As Lynne Baab commented in Spiritual Practices for the Easter Season, this is a season of light and joy. Light and joy don’t take spectacle to live out. Jesus did such mundane everyday things in the days of his reappearance and must have looked very ordinary and unassuming too.
What is your response?
What do you think resurrection living looks like for you? Take some time to reflect on your life and how it has been changed by your relationship with Christ. What are the daily, weekly and seasonal activities that you feel most represent resurrection living. Are there changes you sense God may be asking of you this Easter season?
The risen Jesus seemed like a very ordinary person. If we were in charge of his PR campaign there would have been neon signs in the sky, interviews on CNN, audiences with world leaders. Approaching this Jesus would have been impossible, and following in his footsteps totally unimaginable. But that was not how Jesus came.
- He came to Mary as a gardener not as a king. He was so ordinary that she did not recognize him at first, after all who really looks closely at the servant who tends the gardens?
- He made breakfast on the beach for his friends. Again it took them a while to recognize him. And it needed a bit of a miracle – 153 large fish weighing down their nets – for them to truly see who he was. Perhaps their eyes skimmed past him because of the ordinariness of how he looked and how he acted.
- He came as a stranger and walked for a whole day explaining the scriptures to a couple of his disciples before they recognized him. A stranger who walked rather than riding in a carriage is hardly a king, let alone the risen son of God.
- He comes to the disciples, afraid and hiding behind closed doors. He let them touch him, calmed their fears and sent them out to change the world.
Resurrection living is not complicated. It is about ordinary people doing ordinary things just as Jesus did – simple acts of hospitality, companionship to the fearful, talking to strangers.
What is your response?
Watch the video and reflect on your own life. How could you more effectively live into the resurrection at this season? Are there situations in which you could offer breakfast to your colleagues or friends? Or perhaps you could take some kids out for a hike, talk to them about their life concerns and answer their questions. Or maybe their are strangers at church whom you could ask out for a cup of coffee and a chat. The possibilities are endless. How could you practice resurrection today?
By Andy Wade –
Our Lenten journey is over. We’ve navigated the dark places and walked through the events of Holy Week. We have seen the resurrection. After waiting 40 days to celebrate, our temptation is to jump right in to resurrection – to it’s time to party! “He is risen! He is risen, indeed!”
The problem comes when we embrace the resurrection while forgetting the journey that brought us there. To fully practice resurrection I need to embrace all that came before. To live into the truth of resurrection, the fullness of this reality, is more than a mental exercise. It involves my entire being… in the context of the whole creation around me.
In the excitement of the resurrection it’s easy to forget the bigger reality beyond “personal salvation”. Put in the context of Jesus’ own life and words, however, jumping to that sole conclusion is done at the cost of missing the fullness of what God has offered. So what’s really going on?
Jesus enters Jerusalem humbly riding on a donkey (coming in peace). The people are shouting triumphant praise; here comes their conquering king! But their idea of how this would happen was way off base. Along the way Jesus pauses, weeping and looking out over Jerusalem, and reflects, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.” Immediately after entering the city Jesus goes into the temple and drives out those who had turned the temple courts into a holiday bazaar.
This past Palm Sunday I was struck by this contrast; the people recognize that Jesus is some kind of king who will shake things up, perhaps even the Messiah! But the fullness of what God is up to in Jesus is somehow hidden from their eyes. His disruption of temple business at the height of Israel’s holy season is another indictment of just how much they didn’t understand.
These things, and so much more, give me pause. I want to rush to resurrection. Like those following Jesus into Jerusalem that Palm Sunday I want to say, “I get it!” and start living into my meager understanding. But if Lent and Holy Week have taught me anything, it’s just how much I don’t understand.
If the blindspot of Jesus’ followers that Palm Sunday was believing that he was coming as a conquering military king to overthrow the Romans, perhaps our blindspot in modern western Christianity is believing that Jesus came merely to save individuals from sin for heaven. “Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” “Have you prayed the ‘sinners prayer’?”
For me, the Lenten journey is a life-long process, one of walking with others, indeed the whole creation, in following the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12.2). Life is kind of a Lenten journey of resurrection living – two realities commingled, as we attempt to live into the mystery of God and God’s purposes for all creation.
Salvation in Jesus is not just some theological construct of right belief, as if belief and actions could be divided. Salvation is rather a mind-blowing expression of God’s intention to make all things flourish as God brings all things together – things in heaven and things on earth – in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 1.9-10, Col. 1.19-21, Rom. 8.20-24).
This reality is driven deeper by exploring the meaning of two central words, peace and salvation, or rather, Shalom and sozo. Shalom, which we narrowly translate as “peace”, and sozo, the word we normally translate as “saved”, have much broader implications than our simple English rendering can grasp.
These two words are central to the work of God throughout history and in the world through the cross and resurrection. Both words attempt to contain the complete desire of God for all creation: wholeness, harmony, restoration, rescue, freedom, unity, and so much more. The Year of Jubilee, commanded by God and proclaimed by Jesus, represented the actions behind those words. And the resurrection proved that the time of jubilee had arrived.
Practicing resurrection, our theme on Godspace this Easter season, requires that I embrace all of these things. Before I act, I must listen. I must hear the song of shalom and sozo and jubilee as it rings through the ages and bursts forth from the empty tomb. I must hear its song not only as deeply personal, but also as a tune filling the whole creation. I cannot practice resurrection alone.
So I invite you to join me in listening, drinking deeply from the well of shalom made possible in Jesus. I invite you to look around at your family, friends, neighborhood, city and world and ask what shalom and sozo and jubilee mean for them. And ponder the creation: the donkey that carried Jesus, the wine and the bread – gifts from the earth, even the soil that soaked up the blood of the one who died to reconcile all things to himself. Then, perhaps, we’ll be ready to truly live into the profound purpose of resurrection in ways that release the fullness of God’s love into the world.
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