Mist on the Water (James: your life is like a mist . . .")

As I was pondering James' words on the brevity and uncertainty of life this past weekend ("What is your life?  You're like a mist that blows away and is gone . . .") Jay was enjoying watching the mist rise from Townline Lake while on the Fall Men's Retreat.  See the photos of the lake--before and after shots of the same scene, about two hours apart.

In some devotional reading I was doing this week, I came across this quote from Evelyn Underhill, a 20th century Christian scholar and mystic that seems relevant to our study of James.  She too writes about humility - knowing our place as frail, beloved creatures.

"For a spiritual life is simply a life in which all that we do comes from the centre, where we are anchored in God:  a life soaked through and through by a sense of his reality and claim, and self-given to the great movement of his will." (E. Underhill, The Spiritual Life) 

This is the life that James is urging us toward in 4:13-17 - a life soaked in God, steeped in God's will.

peace,

Elizabeth

Fights, Quarrels and Conflict

A danger with the passage that we looked at on Sunday (“what causes fights and quarrels among you?”) is to think that all conflict is wrong. That James is saying that we should never disagree with each other.


That's not what James is saying at all. Indeed, conflict is inevitable when a diverse group of people come together in an intentional community like the church. At issue, instead, is how we handle that conflict, those disagreements.

If we let it tear us apart or tear us down, if we let it escalate quickly to the point where we're bickering and quarreling and choosing sides, if we let the disagreement quickly degrade to a point where we can't stand each other or talk to each other any more, then we're handling conflict the same way the world handles conflict. It's destructive and ugly and sinful.

If instead, however, we find a way to talk through our disagreements, if we are able to pray together about our passions, if we are able to see one another as children of God even in the midst of our different convictions, then we have begun to bring life into an otherwise dark world. Then we have begun to build the Kingdom of God through an undying, unconditional love for one another. Then we have been an example to all of another way, a higher way, a way of following Jesus.

Humility is beginning to play a large role in the book of James, and this week is no different. Approaching our differences with humility, with an awareness that we might not always be right, is a huge step in moving in the right direction. It's also a big step in being able to bring our differences before God and seek out God's will in them.

And hopefully, we'll find the disagreements become few and far between as we seek out God's purposes and God's will—and place God's will before our own.
Peace,

Pastor Jay

Interesting development of the week: We have reason to believe that the flying monkey, Bobo, who makes a yearly appearance at Vacation Bible School, has been abducted and is being held against his will by a Boston Square member. He has always abided peacefully and quite happily in the drawer in my office until suddenly he disappeared after VBS this past summer. We feared the worst until just last week we received a clearly coerced e-mail proclaiming his supposed happiness and world travels. If anyone has any information about the whereabouts of Bobo the flying monkey, please share them before it's too late!

Wise Words on Wisdom?

The sermon on Sunday was about wisdom--and specifically that wisdom in Scripture is almost always described in terms of how we live rather than what we think.  James picks up on this by saying that whoever thinks they are wise should show it by their good life, by their deeds.

If this is the case, then why do we as a society often assume that those who are more experienced in life are also wiser in life?  Is it because we think of wisdom as simply a matter of learning from our mistakes?

In James' view, though, unless learning from our mistakes teaches us more fully what God expects of us--more fully what it is to live our faith day to day--then those experiences are not gifting us with wisdom. 

In my own experience, the people I consider to be the wisest are also those who have learned what it means to live close to God.  To begin to know God's heart and to act out of that knowledge.  Most of those people are much older than I am, though certainly not all.  Age is not a prerequisite to wisdom, nor a guarantee of it, but hopefully if God works on us long enough, we begin to clue in.  And this is where age is an advantage.

May we all have the grace and humility to grow wiser even as we grow older.

Peace,
Pastor Jay

Misadventure of the week:  Overheard in our kitchen when faced with rock-hard dairy dessert..."Would it be a very bad idea to microwave this ice cream for just five seconds?"