Have we missed those moments where God is hitting us over the head by using people to continue the work of God in the world? Has the church been so focused on bodies, babies, and baptisms that we have failed to see the goodness of God outside the four walls of the church?
I talk to people nearly every day about the presence of God in the world. I speak of how God knows us, cares for us and is abiding with humanity in every time and place. But as with most things, they are easier said than done. Sometimes it takes something drastic to get our attention instead of trying to navigate this thing called life alone.
For one to actually contemplate the presence of God in the world is a bit overwhelming; For one to actually contemplate the presence of God in the world is a bit overwhelming; God is present in every aspect of human life — from the trees, to the clouds, to the faces of people we interact with each day. They are all created by the same hands of the same God.
Three years ago, a nobody from nowhere got famous for doing something unpleasant.
The self-ordained pastor of an unknown Florida church threatened to burn a Quran. And then he did it. And then others with their own intentions picked up the story and used it to inflame Muslims in several nations.
The result: At least 50 people were killed, including seven United Nations employees.
Now that nobody is back, threatening to burn 3,000 Qurans on Wednesday as a “memorial” to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
You may have noticed I’ve not named the man. That’s not an accident. Publicity is what he wants and I had decided that my small protest against him would be to not contribute to it. While I defend his legal right to do this, nobody needs to add to his spotlight.
And then I heard about a planned counterdemonstration by a Muslim interfaith activist, Mike Ghouse, who’s been plugging away at his cause for years. This year he’s bringing his 10th annual “Unity Day USA” to the same Florida town where the pastor has threatened to burn the Qurans.
I realized that other parents are hoping that I will love and care for their children just as they do. There are so many moments every day when someone else’s child is in my hands. Do I recognize this? Do I choose to see them and love them that way?
In reality, our hands are never empty, even when it feels like we’re letting go of someone so special to us. We open our hands and give our children as a gift to the world. And in the same moment, we find our hands filling up with so many others — the children of others, the parents of others, the brothers and sisters of others.
Will we treat them with the same love and care that we give to our own children and parents and sisters and brothers? Will we treat everyone as family?
VATICAN CITY — Of all the novelties that Pope Francis has brought to the Vatican, few have endeared him to the public — and unsettled his aides — as much as his penchant for picking up the phone and calling someone out of the blue.
The pontiff with the pastor’s touch has phoned his cobbler in Argentina to inquire about a shoe repair, called to cancel his newspaper subscription, and phoned a woman who was raped by a local police officer to counsel her.
Just this week, Francis phoned a pregnant Italian woman whose fiancé had pushed her to have an abortion.
Anna Romano instead dumped the guy, wrote to the pope about her problems, and on Sept. 3 received a surprise call from the Holy Father, who offered encouragement and even said he would baptize the baby if she couldn’t find a willing priest.
There’s a catch phrase that comes to the fore when people start looking for religious reasons not to enter a war like the one now raging in Syria: “Who would Jesus bomb?”
Jesus would not have bombed anyone, of course. Bombs were not weapons of choice in his day. But the cruelty of war was no stranger to his era. The Romans could be every bit as cruel as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. They executed dissidents like Jesus himself with ease. They leveled the city of Jerusalem.
But if it is hard to imagine Jesus targeting a cruise missile aimed at another nation, it is not hard to imaging him encouraging his followers to stand with those who are most vulnerable, to seek ways to defend others from cruelty, to come to the aid of those refugees displaced by war. The question is how best to do that.
God looks like someone who shows patient commitment.
If that’s the case, then we don’t need Wikipedia articles to show us what God is like. We can catch glimpses of God in all sorts of places where people respond to the needs in front of them, whether they set out to do so or not. These glimpses can appear utterly ordinary, like a school bus driver whose commitment to children actually goes beyond transporting them. In this video, notice his presence in their lives, attending to them so none of them can roll away and gets lost in the shadows or cracks.
In the video, driver Jerry James utters a great line: “This is serious business.” He means more than piloting a bus full of children. He means his devotion to them: investing in young people’s lives in the few minutes he has with them every day. He does what he can.
Turning our faith into a set of rights and wrongs is partially based upon our own insecurities, but our fears are often warranted by how others respond to us.
“You attend that church?! Oh, that’s your pastor?! You went to that seminary?! You’re reading that book?! You like that theologian?! You belief that?! You like that type of worship?!”
It’s happened to us all at least once — someone labels our faith as wrong.
Question after question, one after another, on a daily — almost hourly — basis. If we aren’t careful, our faith and spirituality can quickly devolve into a set of distinct questions and responses.
In a corporate culture driven by hard data, statistics, evidence, trends, sales, surveys, and measurable information, our beliefs can be treated like a quarterly business summary — dissected, analyzed, and studied.
Our relationship with God turns into a cold and calculated set of methodologies, hypotheses, and professional-driven structures — the intimacy, raw communication, and love slowly disappears.
The mystery of God becomes something meant to be overcome, explained and defeated. And our church institutions become modeled after Fortune 500 companies instead of reflecting the vibrant early church communities of the New Testament.