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14 June 2008
Word on the Web
Meditations for Life's Journey - Loss
From the Wise Traveller Series
Today's Word on the Web follows a different format to our normal pattern and uses material from the "Wise Traveller" series of meditations for life's journey on loss. The material is copyright Scripture Union and used by permission.
Wise Traveller
Simplifier
Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion - do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best - dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers - most of which are never even seen - don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
Matthew 6:27-33 (The Bible, The Message version)
'It's only through losing your life that you'll gain it'. Surely this is nonsense, isn't it? Aren't we here to gather around us shoes and jewellery and larger houses and faster cars and collect them behind walled gardens and wrought iron gates just like the celebs do - a window display of all our success for everyone to see?
A simple calculation dividing the habitable parts of the earth's surface by the population would give each of us a piece of land about the size of a football field. We could all have space for a huge house, with a swimming pool, with probably some green space left over to grow some food. We could gather all our possessions onto this little personal dominion, climb atop the pile with some new flag and declare ourselves President.
There are some problems with this, of course: we'd need roads between the plots to deliver stuff. And probably an airport too. And a place to put the factories. And some way of powering it all. All eating into my space. And people would still need to go and make all this tuff for me, and I'd probably need some way to pay it.
Before long our island dream dissolves back into out two-up,-down, with a garden if we're lucky. A play-off between wanting objects and needing people to produce them.
A old man in the desert was said to have had just a begging bowl and, one lucky day, a bag of rice. A robber came by and snatched the old man's rice. The old man got up and raced after him. He caught the robber and let on his shoulder, panting. 'Here,' he said, 'you forgot to take my begging bowl too.'
He had understood the lie that possessions tell: they boast that they will make us more popular, but they only serve to insulate us further form the human warmth we al really need. This is the gain we make when we strip our lives bare: there is nothing to separate us.
Kester Brewin
Word on the Web
Meditations for Life's Journey - Loss
From the Wise Traveller Series
Today's Word on the Web follows a different format to our normal pattern and uses material from the "Wise Traveller" series of meditations for life's journey on loss. The material is copyright Scripture Union and used by permission.
Wise Traveller
Simplifier
Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion - do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best - dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.
If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers - most of which are never even seen - don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
Matthew 6:27-33 (The Bible, The Message version)
'It's only through losing your life that you'll gain it'. Surely this is nonsense, isn't it? Aren't we here to gather around us shoes and jewellery and larger houses and faster cars and collect them behind walled gardens and wrought iron gates just like the celebs do - a window display of all our success for everyone to see?
A simple calculation dividing the habitable parts of the earth's surface by the population would give each of us a piece of land about the size of a football field. We could all have space for a huge house, with a swimming pool, with probably some green space left over to grow some food. We could gather all our possessions onto this little personal dominion, climb atop the pile with some new flag and declare ourselves President.
There are some problems with this, of course: we'd need roads between the plots to deliver stuff. And probably an airport too. And a place to put the factories. And some way of powering it all. All eating into my space. And people would still need to go and make all this tuff for me, and I'd probably need some way to pay it.
Before long our island dream dissolves back into out two-up,-down, with a garden if we're lucky. A play-off between wanting objects and needing people to produce them.
A old man in the desert was said to have had just a begging bowl and, one lucky day, a bag of rice. A robber came by and snatched the old man's rice. The old man got up and raced after him. He caught the robber and let on his shoulder, panting. 'Here,' he said, 'you forgot to take my begging bowl too.'
He had understood the lie that possessions tell: they boast that they will make us more popular, but they only serve to insulate us further form the human warmth we al really need. This is the gain we make when we strip our lives bare: there is nothing to separate us.
Kester Brewin
