vox

vox
Originally uploaded by rod lewis

I'm just not convinced, still, that where one is supposed to be is actually a place. There are exceptions, appointments, if you will, but these rarely have anything to do with permanence. I think we find our "place" by faithfulness where we are at any given moment.
Our Christian lives are so filled with preparation language, strategy, positioning, location location location, that we begin to think we are enlisted, boot camp grads awaiting deployment orders. Is it not such an irony that SO many College folk believe their call is to be "there", but an inordinate number hang around town for so long? I don't think there is anything wrong with the hanging around.

I truly believe that "there" is the air that touches our skin. I believe that God has infused us with tremendous amounts of God stuff that he expects us to breathe out into the atmosphere for others to absorb. Not only exhaled through our noses and mouths as sighs and songs and sermons, but also through our pores and being as perspiration of pungent Jesus fragrance. The kind that fogs up the windows in the driveway when goodnights linger a little too long.

So if the “there” is “here,” what are we supposed to be about?

The problem with strategizing and training is that we don’t get our gift skills honed, we set about learning new skills. Sometimes, but not always, these new skills are not even the gift skills of those teaching us. They, too, seem to have abandoned their being to be replaced with new strategic skill sets and methodologies.

I wonder if we all don’t innately understand how to emanate what is inside us, and that understanding becomes less and less trusted until we simply ignore it. I wonder if we were to take the word “training” off the end of the word pair, “discipleship training,” we’d find that we are less confused about doing and being and would allow ourselves to do based on how we’re made, and to be based on how we’re being made. What if discipleship were about relationship, and that relationship taught and caused us to express it?

I am saddened that so many of us have been given melody bits from the chanson de Dieu, but relegate singing them to our spare time creative outlet.
I have seen what makes your heart sing. I have smelled the fragrance of Jesus perspiration strengthen as the song grows louder. I have longed to hear it continue.

If you’re given a picture to paint, but anything else foregoes the painting; no matter where you are, the paint will just dry in the tube while the painting burns on your heart.
We have to do what we have to do, but we’ve got to sing the song, paint the picture, write the story, bake the bread, serve the wine.