unbloggable ramblation

The pressure is just too great SP!
Actually, in the heat of preparation for huge events this week, my mind has been camped in a couple of specific areas. I’m really not sure if these thoughts as I am thinking them, are bloggable. However, the immediate huge event is that I’ve been consumed with being ready for this morning’s chapel, and in my consumption, my mind has been wrapped around the story I’d planned to tell with that chapel. It occurs to me that my concept for chapel was also unchapelable. But maybe I pulled it off.
I wonder if preachers’ sermons are born of giant concepts that arrive without form, but with clear understanding in his mind? I wonder if the greatest challenge is finding language to put to the concept that will allow those with ears to hear and be invited into the thinking of the concept.
Today, when I got back to my office, someone said to me, “I think I might have understood most of what you were saying.” Of course, I took this to mean that I still haven’t quite learned to communicate the point of what I’m saying. So I replied, “if you were made to contemplate what you weren’t sure about, then you understood exactly what I was saying.”
My point is to send people away having found themselves in a new context that requires contemplation. I want to make people ask themselves questions. I want us to realize that we haven’t figured out all that we thought we’ve figured out. I want folks to go away thinking, “I’m not really sure what he wanted me to think about that.” Go away thinking about it. I’ll bet you’ll arrive at what you’re supposed to be thinking about.
My main thought point for today’s chapel is not to find parallels, and types in the old testament as precursors to new testament realizations, but to see the whole as a story that is being told in time. The same story, not one that is symbolized BC, and told AD. I want to consider that the story is still being told and that I am a player in it. And as the story is being told, it has very different endings depending on perspectives of the many players. This is a concept that fascinates me.
So didn’t I warn you at the beginning of this post that my thoughts were unbloggable? You have no more from me than you had before I started writing. Sorry. So I’ll leave you with a thought that expresses how the same story could sound so different to two different people. It is a thought that Molly reminded me of early this summer. Paul refers to it when he says that we are the fragrance of Christ and it smells like death to some people and life to others. I used a passage in Exodus today that expresses the same paradox. When Israel was backed up to the Red Sea and Egypt was closing in, the pillar of fire moved in between Israel and Egypt’s advance and held them off. The passage states that all night long, the pillar shined light on Israel and cast darkness on Egypt. It is similar to Paul’s warning’s about participating in the Lord’s Supper. If it doesn’t symbolize life to you, it represents death. But it is more than simply stating that death and life are opposites, it is that the very thing that gives life, if not taken, causes death.
Anyway, I told you it was unbloggable. Maybe in the comments, you can say it better than I did.