I’m on a streak. Two days in a row I’ve ran. I need to stay on top of my health and everyone I know that runs loves it, so…
I still hate it but am making myself learn to love it. Any runners out there want to share some advice? Best time to run? Form and technique tips? Shoes? Etc.?
Also, be sure to check out John Dobbs blog tomorrow. Click on the link for Out Here Hope Remains to the right.
God bless.
What do you think about the song? The short film?
The song blows me away…”If I can change I hope I never know.” How many live with these feelings?
I’m still baffled by the short film. It’s powerful but in a way that words can’t explain. And this is why I believe that those who follow Jesus must wrestle with art expressions such as this video. Yes, we’ve often done a great job of engaging our intellect as we attempt to discover the human condition. But what about engaging our soul? Our emotions? Have we thrown in fully, (emotionally, spiritually, soulfully) to find solidarity with the society in which we find ourselves?
What people in our neighborhoods, schools and jobs face often defies articulation. Can we meet the mess of life without words? Yes, but.
Doing so means that we must open the emotions of our life to the vulnerability of being torn deeply by things to painful for words. Will we wear the scars of a neighbor’s wounds?
Recently I teamed up with John Dobbs in writing. His blog Out Here Hope Remains has had a profound impact on people. He writes with honesty and from a place of deep faith. He has experienced excruciating pain and yet, still, hopes in the resurrected Messiah. He is an inspiration to many. I’m glad to be a part of what God is up to through his blog ministry. So go on over and check it out.
I’ll remain posting here but only on some short thoughts and perhaps a bit of commentary on pop culture here and there. I’ll go a little deeper every other Friday at his site. Have fun and stay tuned. And thanks John!
God bless,
Josh
Finish the sentence. Ministering means…
Ministering means helping others find thin places. I first read about thin places in a book by Marcus Borg. It stuck and I haven’t let go of the concept. Thin places exist when heaven and earth come wonderfully close to slamming together, where only a trace of humanity’s fall remains. They are moments when a person can sense the divine within the mundane. They are experiences where things of earth seem flooded by the energy of heaven. In the moment of a thin place, a person can feel the tug of God’s presence.
Imagine you were injected with liquid metal and studded with magnetic particles. Now envision that throughout the day you were required to pass between a sheet of metal and a life-sized magnet. Both warp and lunge your direction as you walk through. You feel the impending collision ahead of time as each piece forces millions of invisible, molecular particles into your path. That’s the force of thin place.
Prayer. A certain song. A smile. Birth. That old recliner. A lover’s embrace. A glass of wine shared among friends. Psalm 23. Worn spots in the shroud of humanity’s fall.
Ministry, then, ought to encompass an intentional effort to lead others into thin places. It is God alone that can heal and mend broken hearts, and in a fallen world that bars his full disclosure we must encounter him at the thin spots, at least for now. So I understand ministers as once-broken veterans of thin place exploration, discoverers of the renewing force of God’s presence, who go back and share their discoveries with those now-broken.