When I read your posts, it seemed to be connected. Yet I'm too tired to explain the synapses, so please do your best to follow. Then again, this post is mainly for me at this precise instance in time. It is likely that I will have absolutely no idea what I was saying in mere hours from now.
I've heard this recently, and I wish I could recall the fleshed out bits. Anyway, it came to mind after reading a bit by Len at Resonate:
we have mistaken the map for the territory, the vehicle for the journey.
What Len wrote tied into an out of context reading of Marc's latest:
Len: I’m convinced that we haven’t merely reduced the gospel to four laws, we have done violence to the very character of the message. In wresting propositions from the story of God’s mighty acts in history, in reducing the Truth to a check list, we have moved the gospel from its relational foundation to a rational one.
Marc (from 1 Cor 1): Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ... For consider your calling, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
Marc continues "This reminds me that it's not about me. ... It's all about God. And as far as I can fall, there is redemption." Which brought to mind the note I jotted in the margin at Bible study on Monday alongside:
Joel 2:17 Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep and say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and make not your heritage a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'"
And the ensuing discussion about redemption; about blessing following repentence.
Steve wrote about forgiveness and reconciliation from the eyes of his daughter about a month ago. What is the thing that "gets into your dreams, makes you feel sick, wakes you up"?
My head is a jumble of these thoughts and more. And I am unable to provide any succinct description of the happenings of my peri-conscious. But that's just me, starting far too many sentence fragments with conjunctions, and craving just a wee bit more logic and order and rules. I need the definition of my environment and the definitions of my interactions with it. As of late, I've been thrown into an unfamiliar land without a sheet of "Instructions for play." Now I live with faith that the rules exist; even if I cannot catch a glimpse of them or be blessed by their presence, I will flounder along until our paths cross again.