'Love Wins' - Week 2 - Here is The New There

Our question for this week was this:

"If we believe in a God of mercy - does it follow then that we must believe in a God of justice?"

It became pretty clear early in the discussion that this part of Bell's book was pretty well in line with the overall beliefs of our group - and quite orthodox as well, I think...

During my sermon, "Heaven... Otherwhere? Otherwhen" (available at: http://gracecommunityumcshreveport.org/sermons/sermons.html), I used the image that Bell provides on pg. 20 - that of a cross-shaped bridge connecting this world with some other world some other place and at some other time... The bridge crosses an abyss filled with roiling black and red smoke and flames... The destination is gleaming white and off in the distance while the place people are departing from isn't so much...

Bell says that his sister remembers this painting, "Of course, it gave us all the creeps."

But I don't see anything creepy about this painting... I don't see burly bouncers throwing people off the foot of the bridge on their heads... I don't see uniformed security guards standing at the head of the cross saying, "Sorry madam, your name is not on the list." I don't see bodies screaming as they fall over the sides of the bridge into the Dante Inferno abyss...

I see hope! Hope for every human being that has ever lived!

And my question the becomes, do we really have the Kingdom of Heaven so accurately pinned down to an absolute formula, and have we so limited God's Holy Spirit to what we know of as 'church', 'heaven', 'salvation' that we have excluded millions upon millions of people from Jesus' Kingdom of Heaven He spoke about in Matt 4:15-17...

Yup... Heaven - 'I can only imagine...' But one thing I'm of - - - the Kingdom is both NOW and HERE and NOT YET and SOMEWHERE :-)

Paix! C

Next week = "If we believe that God is a God of Justice, does it follow that He is also a God of Mercy?" & "Does this mean that God gets what He wants or do we get what we want..."

'Love Wins' - Week 1 - What about the flat tire?

This weeks small group began by looking at a picture drawn by a 6 yo girl... It was a circle with two triangles joined to the circle at the apex of the triangle... She drew it in blue [red and green markers were available but she chose blue]...

I asked the group to tell me what the picture was... The suggestions were things like - an angel, an airplane, a bee, a bird...

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a peppermint in it's wrapper... It all depends on one's perspective... She saw the wrapped peppermint completely different the way the rest of us saw it...

Might this be the same with how, when, where, why, and what God comes to us???

Do we have the corner (we = the western church!) - on God's movings within the human soul?

Is it the correct rendering of the 'sinners prayer'?

Is it kneeling at just the right spot at the altar (is it on the right or on the left)?

Is it being baptized just the right way (oh, and what is the right way?)

Can it happen in the car? In a house? Outside? Quietly? Maybe even tenderly?

Can it happen in the dark? In a bar? At a party?

Does it depend on the person annointed by God to share Jesus Christ with us? If so, what if they don't?

Is God indeed - at the end of the day - - - - BIG enough to transcend any of our conceptions of salvation reality? I think that God is big enough... Our minds are so limited and we have a limited ability to comprehend a God big enough to create a universe that may even be a multi-verse...

So - is it a blue bird, bee, airplane, or angel? Or, is it a peppermint within a wrapper seen through the eyes of a 6-yo... Depends on your perspective, I guess!

Paix du Christ! C