Month: July 2016

CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY & THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

art, generosity, home, Love, photography, purpose, purpose, renewal, Spirituality, Strength, Uncategorized, vision, vision

Some folks say Merica, like they can’t stand to say the whole of our country’s name or bear the taste of it in their mouth. Others bleed red, white and blue, but they only see the America they know and love. Once they have their piece of the pie, they are afraid to let others come to the table. 
First we maligned the Irish, then we found other newcomers to scapegoat. We kept a whole race enslaved, and then found ways to keep them second class citizens. Women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920! Yet none of these oppressed groups ever gave up their dream of the America we can become if we all work together for the best of the lofty goals our forefathers desired. 
The providence of God is a faith belief and a trust that the pie is always large enough for all to share. God will provide for us our needs every day. Our human need to control our own destiny and define our own life is marked by our fear of God not being there for us. While humans may abandon us in our hour of need, God’s steadfast love endures forever. This is a promise repeated over and over again in scripture. 

Human love tends to be conditional, or a quid pro quo type of love. “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is how we explain this. God’s love is unconditional because God loves God’s creation and provides for what he created. The pie for people of faith is limitless, for God keeps increasing it. How does this happen? God opens our hearts to the needs of others and we share God’s blessings with them. 

This is why Americans are the most generous people of the whole world. We know the source of our strength and our power is magnified when we share it with others who are weak and under attack. If Christianity is going to be co-opted by our culture, let it be the best parts of our faith! The care for the poor, the weak, the hungry, the sick, the ones who need a miracle in their lives. Let’s not have Christ be used as a one armed bandit to deliver riches, health and wealth to individuals for the rice of prayers or deeds. 

Look at the photo again: a true patriot…

“This woman explained to me that the flagpole over her door was broken but ‘on such a day as this, one keeps one’s flag on one’s heart.'” I felt in her a touch of the strength and robustness of the early American pioneers’.

Photo by the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson USA. Massachusetts. Cape Cod. July 4th, 1947. Independence Day.

Hope and Transformation 

art, Creativity, Evangelism, exercise, Faith, Healing, Icons, Imagination, Ministry, poverty, purpose, renewal, salvation, Spirituality, Stations of the Cross, Uncategorized, vision

Happy to report this altar has found a home! It’s a one of a kind piece, made from found objects and items no longer found useful around my home. I found most of these items while walking around the local hospital, while others are from broken pieces of my jewelry and my mother’s old treasure hoard. The three matching pulls across the bottom are from the old kitchen cabinets of my 1965 era condo. For some reason, that huge block of wood called my name, as did the snuff pack and the bent radiator cap. Some one lost part of their hub cap, while I lost interest in a home improvement project for which those red acanthus supports were intended. 

While we often give up hope on the detritus of our life, only to throw it out the window or stuff it into a box, never to see it again, we still want something bright new and shiny. Many people today never speak of a struggle because they think it shows God isn’t with them or worse, God is punishing them. Yet the promise of Christ is for the hurting, the broken, the poor, the sick, and the oppressed. 

The message of this altar is Christ died to transform those without hope and for those we’ve given up hope they’ll ever change. As long as we breathe, we can hope. With our dying breath, Christ will complete us for glory if we believe in a redeeming God whose power is greater than our own struggle to rebel. 

You’d be surprised at the junk I find in the roadways and byways, but that’s where Christ did all his great miracles of healing, in the streets and fields of his world. Maybe this altar is calling us to bring Christ out into the world, instead of celebrating him safely within our sheltered walls. 

The Deisis Altar: The Handing Over

“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” ~~ John 19:25-27