Blog - God’s Relevancy

(This blog is an adaptation of a recent presentation I gave at the Sawmill Retreat Center in Huron, OH, for a clergy and rostered leaders’ event for two combined ELCA synods.  The theme of our days together was that of discipleship).

Appropriately, I think, I tend to keep personal updates off of my OMG Facebook page.

I was fussing with the idea of re-posting this blog this week, but then a friend of mine made reference to it today, and I viewed it as a sign that maybe I should just as well go ahead and do it for the third year running.

Within days, our eyes and ears and minds and hearts have drawn in far too much smoke and fire and blood and weeping.

Twice in the last several months I’ve had occasion to tell the tale of the time I stood in front of my late husband’s closet, charged with choosing the clothes in which he’d be buried.

Today, Economic Justice is the OMG topic du jour.

Today, at 10:00 p.m., South Dakota will execute a man, and another man within the next couple of weeks.

So the kidlets and I were in Target this morning, racing to get an errand done between church services and a meeting we wanted to attend.

Question: It may be semantics, but leaving church and leaving congregational religion may not be the same.  Consider–if I woman has been for whatever reasons in abusive marriage(s) and decides that marriage is not a good thing, that is not a declaration that all men are bad, but a declaration that marriage is not the way she chooses to relate to men.  It may be that people who leave congregations/church (one word for both in their mind) are seeking a different way to relate to God.

As much as I have recently made a case for Advent, and then for Christmas, you might have expected that I would write something about the season of Epiphany, now over a week past.

I am decorating for Advent.

Except when it doesn’t.

The other day, my good friend told me that she’d watched a show about the Rogue Wave Phenomenon.

“It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not even the enemy of His enemies.”

The problem I see every day amongst Christians is the inability to find a more practical explanation to those of us who don’t quite understand the meaning of giving up your only son to save a bunch of sinners. Why would anyone do that? And worse: no matter what kind of crook you’ve been your whole life,  just accept such a travesty and you secured a spot in heaven. And I’m supposed to reason with that?????  Come on!!!

We just returned from two weeks Florida, the children and I.

For people who think on such things, May 13th marks the day of medieval mystic Julian of Norwich.

Recently I read a review of  a new book by Terry Eagleton called Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate.  A very fine survey of his life can also be found here.  The review of this particular volume was so compelling that I ran out and got it, and you should too.

Question:
I was brought up being told that God is everywhere, and all powerful, that those who seek shall find, and that it is quite possible to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, while fearing no evil.

In my dining room hangs a framed and matted lithograph by William Benson, a now-retired art professor at the University of Wisconsin (Eau Claire).