Grace-period

As the Creating Spaces series comes to a close, I am sure that there are many among us who are grateful that we are moving on. I am often one of those individuals who gets bored after a few weeks on one topic, however this series caught me off guard, leading me on my own personal journey. As I have been considering how the story of Gideon might relate to my church, I can't help but consider what the implications are for me, on a personal level.  Certainly I have thought about our church: what are we doing well that we should keep doing, what are we not doing well that we need to stop, and what are somethings that we're not doing so well but we need to do better. But these are the easy questions, aren't they? The more difficult questions are when I have to look in my own heart, my own actions, my own beliefs and see what I need to be doing better, what I need to stop, & what I need to continue to do. In this inventory of myself, as well as the church, I have fo

Gideon still won't let me alone. He follows me around, pointing to examples in the experiences around me, in conversations, in literature, in movies. This weekend as I was watching the Matrix, Gideon began jumping off the screen: "Don't think you are. Know you are." Morpheus says to Neo during training. "He's beginning to believe...." Morpheus explaining Neo's choice to stay and fight rather than run from Agent Smith. Gideon, Mr. Anderson/Neo, even I have been called to be someone else. Gideon was called out of farm work by an Angel of The Lord who called him "Mighty Warrior." Mr. Anderson/Neo, a computer hacker was freed by Morpheus who explained that he was "the One." And me? Well, nothing as dramatic, but certainly I was freed when God called me his "Daughter." Being called out of one's past is only the first step tho. At some point we "begin to believe" because we start acting out of the new identity. N

I have been the resident fish keeper for the church during this series of messages about Creating Spaces.  We used the idea of a fish tank because we are looking at our "tank" being full. However, in the course of my duties, I have learned  more than I expected about how similar we are to the community in the tank. Here are a few of my observations. You may feel free to link them to human experience, should you see any parallels. I chose feeder fish because, frankly, they are cheap. They are disposable without too much guilt. Still, expect to be interrogated a little if you go back too many times to replace the dead ones. The fish store people take their jobs much more seriously than most of us do. I have learned that goldfish have no stomachs. They eat and eat and eat but can never feel full. The food goes right through them and is passed as ammonia.   Basically, they eat food constantly and their body expels poison.  Of course the problem is that they don't have the fac