The Ancient Paths

It is easy to swerve off the road when conditions are bad. Even the most experienced driver can lose control when the elements are against them.   We often think we are headed the right way when suddenly a storm hits, and we second-guess our choices. The way forward seems impossible; a detour seems easier, or what if we just turned around instead? Our life journey with Jesus can seem like this. The way forward often has resistance; the Christian life is not easy. We think, “What if I just went back?” Yet to go back is a dead end; the only way is forward. We have been that way before, and there  isn’t  anything worth going back to.  It’s  just ashes breezing through our fingers compared with the reward ahead of us. The reward is Christ Himself, finally seen with all of our senses , no longer  veiled  and hidden. But the way backwards often seems like  a good idea . We can be walking forward and still thinking about life “back there.” We  essen...

It is hard to see in the dark. Most people would agree with me about this. When there is no light to  see,  we  must  incor porate our other senses to get where we need to go:  touch, smell, etc.  As we grope in the dark, we hope to find the exit to where the light is.  However, the process of being unaware of where we are or how we are to get where we are going is truly frustrating and a little scary.    In many ways our interaction with God is like this. It is like  being in  a dark room where we cannot see the way forward unless we use our other se nses that are sharper in the absence of sight.  This other sense is like faith; we can put our fingers around God s o-to-speak , but it  is n’t  with our hands. Our interactions are  innately  spiritual;  there is no physical dimension to this sensing. God is spirit and not made of the same stuff that we are.  We feel God, but it is often like a cool ...

When we hear the word “holy ”,  what images pop into our heads? Do we think of  a stereotypical  stuffy church lad y  wearing conserv ative dress  and judging you for your music tastes? Do we think of an angry street preacher calling fire down on his enemies who happen to be everyone  with in earshot  of his diatribe ?  Is it a building? Is it a book? Our thoughts and images about  these  concepts that are central to the story of Scripture are important . T hey can either be a help or  hindrance to drawing closer to God. The above images  will   probably  c ause  us to run far away from Him.   However, the word that translates to holy in English is the Hebrew word “ K adosh ” ,  meaning “otherness” or “set apartness ”.  It is not a word that means moral perfection or  religiosity as we tend to think  it does . God  is  morally  perfect but  that’s  not the prima r...

The  words “The  Kingdom of God ”  sound far away and otherworldly  to many of us . For  a lot of   people  this  phrase  translates to  “Hea ven ”;  it is only about a world outside of this one.  We  don’t  think it is something immediate  or available  for us now.    Yet Jesus means something  very different  from this idea. N.T. Wright says this:   The gospels are all about ‘the kingdom of God ’,  and God’s kingdom or kingship  isn’t  about another world to which we might escape from this present one. God’s  kingdom is precisely his ‘in-charge-ness’ ... The point was not that people would  leave this world and go somewhere called ‘heaven’ instead, but that the life, the  love  and the power of ‘heaven ’,  of God’s domain, would become a reality here on  earth.   1   What does this mean in a practical sense for those of us wh...