so on my last trip home to colorado my mom made me go through a box of old books. and among a couple of "original" works by yours truly ["goober's bad day" & "all about dogs"], i found an old hardback that took me back to my white iron twin bed where i spent hours poring over the book's contents. i had found my "doubleday illustrated children's bible".
many times over the years when i've struggled to feel the Lord's presence or even just read my bible, i have thought about this book. when i was a child i thought like a child, and yet i'm pretty sure i understood more about my relationship with the Lord as a 6 & 7 year old than i do now. it wasn't clouded by theology, experience, and old age. it was simple. and while simple isn't always better, simple is certainly less risky to wrap your heart around.
for the time being, i've gone back to reading my children's bible. i want to recapture the awe and reverance that i felt as a little jordyn...full of desire to know this God who time and time again has proven his faithfulness to generation after generation...
song o' the day: DEAREST...buddy holly
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2 comments:
I like this and I agree - I still have my Psalty's kids Bible. I should bust it out.
Tonight at church a great example was given. It was to think about growing up in church and a youth group as a you a fish bowl. It is pleasant, and occasionally overcome by algae, but someone always ends up cleaning it out.
Then come college, and most have to enter the ocean. If you put a fish into the ocean who has lived its whole life in a bowl, it is really going to have to fight to survive.
Anyway, the whole point was to not be so tied to church, but to go out, and constantly give yourself away in service to others in order to spread the Gospel. I don't really know what my point is, other than you are right - it is SO simple. Theology, psychology, unclear boundaries, emotions and justifications totally get into the way, where as it is so easy to just live simply when we were in the bowl...
We just have to encourage each other and continue to seek out counsel of those who are wiser than us and try and replicate that passion of a child. :)
It is fun that you have a blog now.
i read this today and makes me think of your post........maybe we rely TOO much on the church. which is why it lets us down:::::
I hope that we will have lower expectations of leadership and the institution and therefore less need to rebel against it or unnecessarily depend upon it. After all, as the poet Rilke put it, “There is no place on earth that isn’t looking for you. You must change your life.” The Church cannot make that happen. It can only announce its possibility and offer its Risen Life as leaven and salt. I always wonder why such a glorious power and privilege is not enough! It is more than I ever hoped for or will ever do! Many people are upset with the Church because they expected too much from it.
More than anything else I hope that we will be a people who have entered into mercy and allow others to enter. I once saw God’s mercy as patient, benevolent tolerance, a form of forgiveness. Now it has become an understanding, a loving allowing, a willing “breaking of the rules” by the One who made the rule, a wink and a smile, a firm and joyful taking of the hand—while we clutch at our sins and gaze at God in desire and disbelief.
from The Great Themes of Scripture
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