Like a child

Poatina Morning Tea Devotion given today

Embrace the mess

Just got back from a few days off – went fishing and caught heaps.  One a decent size. We got a book to try to identify it…couldn’t find it…it had fluro blue on it.   Along with that I spent Monday in Melbourne in first day of something called,  Arrow Leadership Course. They pick 30 of the emerging leaders in the Christian church and it’s a 2 year course.

It was interesting to meet the young emerging leaders. What was interesting was how different the paradigm is – it’s good to connect with different wings of the church   Everyone loves Jesus and sees things differently . Refreshing to see the difference.

Carl Jung said, “The most important question you’ll ever have to face is”what is the story by which you live your life?”.

We all have different interpretations of our lives.  There are  3 or 4 major interpretations that have come through human history.

It hit me as I read reading Mark 10, that Jesus pulls apart the 3 main ways that people choose to order their lives. He basically deconstructs them and says “This is not how things are meant to work.”

At start of the chap Pharisees come up and try to trap him with the question of Divorce…asking him to agree.  He says you guys just don’t get it do you.  The disciples come up later and he explains to marriage is a sacred thing. It is a big deal.

The Pharisees spent tried their lives trying to order the way to relate to God.

The Myth of modernism is that there is a right answer for everything.  Everyone up to baby boomers believes there is a right answer and science will give you the simple way to make things work.

Gen X & Y tend to be more post modernist (much more sceptical about the big story or myth;  may believe there is no absolute truth.)

The challenge for Baby Boomers is that the world is messy and you can’t make it need and tidy no matter how much you try.  You can’t make a world with neat tidy boxes.  The Pharisees tried to organize God into nice, neat, tidy boxes. It doesn’t work

The people brought children to Jesus hoping he might touch them and the disciples tried to shoo them off.  He got angry with them. They thought he should be dealing with the big things!

But he says, “Don’t push these children away.  Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very centre of life in the Kingdom.  Mark this, unless you accept God’s kingdom with the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in. Then he gathered up the children in his arms, he laid his hands on them and blessed them.”

He contrasts the Pharisees who come and try to trap him with word games, with little kids.

What is a childlike way of approaching life like?

A child is no hold barred – full on – either completely happy or completely not. Wonder. Excitement.  Transparent – embarrassingly transparent. Consequences don’t worry them – don’t stop to think.  Curiosity. Without hesitancy. Joy.

But also sadness. They don’t hold back their grief. They don’t hold back from their feelings.  They have a natural capacity to trust (when everything is healthy).  They will jump off the table and assume you’re going to catch them,.

Rather than say to the Pharisees, “You’re wrong!” he gets the little kids and says “guys, this is the centre of the kingdom, this is how it works. This is how to approach life. Trust. Look out at the world and trust that He is in control”.

I find that quite challenging. I’m always on the knife edge between telling a negative story or a positive story; between seeing all that is wrong and seeing what God is actually doing.

One of the dangers for Fusion (I love our training) but we can become a Fusion Pharisee where you get all the right ideas and learn to trust those ideas rather than ‘trust’.  The Kingdom is about being in the here and now, in the joy and pain, mess and opportunity.

In a lot of ways Jesus was free, like a little kid.

I’m keen over next devotions to look at some of the myths by which we choose to live. One in the worst is “You’ve got to get an education and work out through that, the right boxes to tick in approaching life.  But no – it’s about being wholehearted – “don’t hold back”.

“Cognitive dissonance” – when what you see in front of you doesn’t match what you think should be happening. The disciples probably experience 3 years of this.  Elizabeth Elliot said, “God only grants miracles to those who put themselves where they need them”.  In that place, you are on a knife edge between trust and despair. The journey of faith is a journey of continual cognitive dissonance.  Just when you think you have it sorted – have the right boxes ticked,  God comes along and says, “hang on”.  Jesus said of the Pharisees, “By all means do what they say, just don’t do what they do.”