ministry of reconcilation

Today I am lead to consider reconciliation. I am tempted to say that I am more familiar than most with fractured communication and estrangement, but I think it more truthful to say that these are aspects of the universal human condition. Every plate is filled with a helping of estrangement. Without exception, I imagine.

Our first estrangement is from God and we are not reconciled until Christ stands between the people of earth and the Person of Heaven and propitiates for our sin. It seems that once the fundamental reconciliation is begun, we cannot help but long to be reconciled with ourselves, with nature and with other people.  I long for these reconciliations and the restitution of our prelapsarian glory. Don't you see it sometimes? Doesn't it make you sure that you will see it again? I long for the coming of the Kingdom in truth and fact and in the recesses of my heart.

I'm wondering if this unsheathed longing is a fundamental aspect of my observation of Lent this year. I'm hoping to consider it as Easter approaches and I'm hoping to consciously submit myself to this longing for the restoration of the human relationships I've lost. I will pray about this fervently and see what will come of it.

St. Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 5 about the "ministry of reconciliation" granted to every believer who has been/is being/will be reconciled to God through the work of Christ. It's a mystery ministry and I'm not sure what it means. But I like that idea. I like the idea that we can at once show other people how we were reconciled to God and participate in that reconciliation in some way.

The more I think about the riches of God and the idea that we as believers are co-heirs with Christ the more I am absolutely gobsmacked at the earthly power we are afforded and with my own complete inadequacy. I feel like an ant with a really large sword.

The Bells of Highlands UMC

This day began with an explosion of the scatological variety, last-minute ironing and burned breakfast. I'm not a "morning person" on the best days and by "morning person" I mean that I sometimes find it difficult to wake up at 4:30 am which is when the alarm clock rings. (So, don't get all judgmental on me you sad wake-up-at-seven sacks.)  I felt anxious and harried and it was difficult to keep my composure and stay in the moment. But when I went outside with the trash, I actually heard the bells ringing at the Methodist Church about a mile away. They rang for an unusually long time and I lifted my hands in prayer to receive that blessing that must have been borne on some strange wisp of cloud. I came inside a different person.

Christ was. Christ is. Christ will be. Present in the moments. A fully-attentive father. Amen.

Olivet Mantra

I hired a landscape designer who came with her graph paper and fancy pen and sketched a plan for the Quintessential Southern Cottage Garden. My excitement knows no bounds.

I am concentrating on my life as the papier-mâché that I form around the values of simplicity, joy, and beauty. Beauty is the superlative of godliness.  God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.  

My life isn't simple, but I strive to pause to savor the pleasure of simplicity as a sort of meditative practice. Form in function. And art in a pot of strawberry preserves or a sleek pimento-stuffed olive (or five) bobbing languidly in a martini of the filthy variety.