Take The Long Way Home

-

When I was a kid and used to read the comics in the newspaper, one of my favorites was Family Circus, created by Bil Keane.  

 Keane would often run comics that depicted the circuitous paths that his son Billy would take on the way home from the bus stop, to the mailbox, or a short cut with his grandma.  

 Here's one that I found today that shows Billy's journey from bed to bus: 

I often find myself asking my 8-year-old son where he is going when he heads off in the wrong direction on an errand.  I want him to move in straight lines, but he seems programmed to do the exact opposite. 

 At what age do we lose the desire to take a long way home?  

 I think it happens slowly over time as we grow busier and busier, and so full of ourselves and our abilities.  

 At some point, we stop longing to wander.  We don't get lost anymore.  And when we do, we immediately pull out our smartphones to show us the way.    

 And this inability to make the road by walking affects our life of faith, I'm learning.  I think too many Christians take Jesus' wonderfully poetic words about the "straight and narrow" pathway too literally.  

 I believe that he simply meant that it wasn't the easiest path to follow, but I don't believe for a minute that Jesus wanted us to believe that following him is a linear process, utterly devoid of twists and turns. 

 Lord knows my faith journey has been anything but straight and narrow.  It looks a lot like the cartoon above, truth be told.  

 I read the most amazing line today from Brendan Kennelly's poem "John Keane's Field": 
We stumble on the eternal when we walk crookedly. 
Seriously, that was one of the greatest lines I've read in a very long time.  

The path to a more complete connection with God... the road to enlightenment... the journey to salvation, redemption, restoration and resurrection is not straight.  At all.  But eternity is found in the twists and turns.  

May this be true for you today and every day and may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re
Read more

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the cheers and pal
Read more