Well, it’s been a pretty few days since I last wrote my blog entry. Lovely how time goes by even when you’re up to your teeth in being busy, isn’t it? I’ve been out for foot massage three times, been to see my doctor once, been to the diabetes school twice (well, since the beginning of the month), made two beaded bracelets and ten.. no, eleven beaded snowflakes to date, and I still have four others planned.
Even all around this funky business of having much interrupted sleep and periods of really annoying blood sugar highs in the mornings.. (it has to be really, really simple, I swear. No long-acting carbs at night. Long rice, sunflower seeds, wholegrain bread, it’s to blame… damned healthy food XD)Still, God is good. I’ve marveled at much the past weeks, from hearing two simple, warm-hearted danish missionaries talk about their time with folks in africa, to churches under fire in Israel, yet blossoming greatly.
Are you one of those folks that watch ‘the God Channel’ or something like that and think Israel is some enchanted religious shrineland? It’s not – the people there are just as american or english or .. well, heck, just as western as any of the kids you go to school with or work with every day, and they could give less than a rat’s arse about this or that place being ‘holy’. It’s historic but not disneyland, in reality. People who go and try to be ‘missionaries’ get turned out right in the airport. You don’t go out into the street and start preaching, and if you wanna go teach orthodox jews to be messianic – heh! you can forget that!
Anyways, that’s old news when it comes to the comings and goings of things in my life, but it was important – the missionary’s wife was really the one doing all the talking, and she just brought to the podium stories about how sometimes she missed studying her bible and the fun she’d had with the folk in africa. The first time she’d ever been given the chance to teach, it was in front of the pastors of many small churches down there, and she just froze up. Church women – you know, we’re all little biddies that think ‘oh! we’re not supposed to speak at podiums and be up in public! That’s the men!’ and she got all nervous and excusing herself in front of these home-grown african fellows, and the leader of the arrangement stood up in the back got up and said ‘Just tell us what you got on your heart, momma!’.
Her point was about how free africans are about their faith – they’re poorer than anyone in an american ghetto, but they really light up about their bibles, and the sing and clap and dance to hymns. They’ve got joy in abundance with their faith and the simple things in their lives – the little truths they learn, and they’re not all worried about it being religion like we do in our ‘modern’ and ‘tolerant’ societies.
Now my mom? The lady that’s been my plague and cattleprod through my teenage life? I talked with her over the phone around two hours… (Hmm.. No? .. Sorry, I don’t have a prior blog entry to link to to explain my teenagerhood. oh, poop. ) … Yeah, two hours, and of course she had more words in her mouth than could all get out in one time, and life hasn’t been easy on her this past half-year.
I prayed with her over the phone too. I man.. really, prayed! The woman has changed so much it’s mindboggling. I’m overwhelmed the way m,y prayers for her and her family have been answered, and she overwhelms me now – she’s actually *mothering* my sister through college, as opposed to the ‘mothering’ I did to Martha when she was just separated from my dad and I was on forced visitation.
She’s had more mental problems in her life than you can shake a stick at, but I learned a lot more about her side of the family within that talk than I really had when living with her part time.
Martha was almost literally the first believer in her family – she took Christ on in eighth grade, but never really got the chance to talk with anyone in her family about it. They didn’t talk bible in her home – they went to church on sundays, but that was pretty much the extent of it. Her dad.. yeah.. he believes – he chose Jesus when fighting in the army – World War 2, I suppose, but I’ve never gotten direct answers about his past. When he got back home though he went seeking his roots and found that this or that grandparent, uncle or whathaveyou, started a ‘swedenborgian church‘ in the US, and he engendered himself in everything that has to do with that doctrine.
The problem with swedenborgia (as there is with Mormon and other ‘christian’ spinoff cults) is that it’s based upon the writings of a person who came long after Jesus and the first churches. It’s bible-plus, if you care to call it – if someone starts teaching you something that is the bible and something else then it’s no good.
In fact, that’s basically the definition of cult. But Grandpa – he’s on his last legs now, and from what mom told me, all but one of his kids have really taken their faith to heart, but they will not discuss Swedenborgianisim with him. He’s tried to discuss this branch of theology with me, and as well in turn, my dad, but after making our basic pointers to him, we cut off the correspondence. Grandpa thinks there’s no such thing as sin anymore (tell that to the closest neighbor who’s witnessed a murder) and that everything written in the bible is to be understood purely in the philosophical sense (What do we need the cross for if Jesus already came back and made the world all right again?).
Is he going to heaven? Is grandpa still saved? It’s a question I suppose all of us related to him, and who really do care about him ask, and the only answer we can properly give is that it’s between him and Jesus. Grandpa may find that his tailing a false teacher has led him horribly astray his whole life, but that his first love for Jesus is still there. We might just see him when we all party together again, but where he’ll be, I don’t know – and it’s really a personal issue for him. I still pray he’ll look Jesus and life in the eye though, and choose life instead of swedenborgia.
More on the next page
But my mom, my mom… She had the most wonderful courtship with my father, from what she told me. He was one of the first folk she had real fellowship with, because he was in ‘Young Life’, a campus outreach ministry that met and made a bible study at his college campus. he met Jesus there and I imagine for the first time felt really free, ever. What really wonderful people they must have been at that time! I wish for a moment here I could see them as they were, ignorant, happy, wise and silly all at the same time, and young adults like I am now. Currently between me and my parents are years full of turmoil, and the troubles and traumas that made them as they are now – but to experience that first upblooming of life and freedom in them, it must have been wonderful.
That point at which believers really see Jesus for the first time in their lives, and catch on fire for just how good the bible really is – where they are just full of happiness and fellowship with being together with folk going through the same thing – that’s being christian. It’s not the sleeping church we all know so well – going to a sunday meeting all formally dressed, hearing a drowsy sermon (blahblah, blah blah blah blah…) singing a little, and then going home again to eat; It’s not stomping your feet on the street corner saying ‘the wold is going to end!’ either. Certainly not ‘going along with the flow’ for a ‘holy experience’ either…
But what can I say? A person – a church alive in Christ – is not drowning in theology, drowsing in tradition, snubbing eachother’s clothes on sunday, or ignoring the cornerstone of what brings them together. A live church has a balance of four fundemental things -
- Teaching the bible and being true to it, which is basically that jesus died to free us from sins and pay off our debt to give us a new connection with God, our creator and the source of all real love,
- Fellowship – Meeting regularly for both the fun of it and inviting new folk in. Fellowship is not meeting and frowning – it’s partying together! It’s potluck, games, singing together, sharing the newest happenings in our lives, learning from eachother, sharing both joys and sorrows… Without things, a church becomes traditional!
- Communion – always returning to the fact that we have been sinners, living in a sinful world, and keeping the cross in front of us. Communion’s both a remembereance of the fact that we are united as a family by the fact that we are saved by an act of love, and nothing less than that. It reminds us that our calling is to love unconditionally, and that includes forgiving others with the same uncompromising love.
- Prayer – Whee! This one’s so fun! You can pray over Anything – ANYTHING, and it’s the .. the.. it’s like the source of all your food and power for the day. A couple that prays together, stays together. A congregation that prays together, does bigger things. A person who pays in their bedroom at night, or no matter where, cannot count the blessings they unleash upon themselves and others.
*Cough* Here I go into the wandering writing again!
I cannot stay away from the keyboard long though – I have so much to write about. For the past four years my tiny church here in Aarup has been struggling during services – we meet no more than 5-10 people at a time on Sundays, and we sing and listen to a boring sermon, and then.. then what? When we meet at simple things like our annual christmas party, suddenly our rented old restaurants building is full to the brim with people, and we love it.
I was at Michael Christensen’s house last Tuesday, and I dropped by just so I could rest on my way home walking up the hill. I didn’t have anything in particular planned, and they had said in the past that I was welcome to stop by now and then, so I took a chance and knocked on the door. Heidi, Michael’s wide, was busy with coding in the office, but I had the chance to sit down in the living room and chatter with Michael about how things were going, both for him and myself. It was really rather nice – even though he got interrupted three times by phone calls. He’s now the acting pastor for our tiny church, so folk were inquiring about where the next prayer meeting should be held and where, etc, etc..
But I did end up talking to him about my young friend Isabella! She is around thirteen or fourteen years old and really bright, and she’s stopped by our (Hubby and mine) apartment a few times in the past two years to visit and play games with me. We’ve helped her family with little things like installing computer software or troubleshooting the silly putters, and they are in the same family with our old pastor and Michael and Heidi. Anyways, Isabella visited me two times this past month – on Tuesday the 5th, where the poor girl heard my unhappiness about family and stress, and she urged me to come with her to the aglow meeting with the elder missionary pair (written about above).
At that Aglow meeting we all ended up praying for a renewal of the holy spirit in our lives – really, that we’d have our joy, happiness, faith and growth back as a fellowship. Mom-in-law, Ingelise was there – I just know she enjoyed it, even though it was the first real church function she’d been to in ages. Sometimes speakers just talk in words you can understand, and it’s a real, wonderful thing. Isabella really blessed me by pushing me to come along to the night’s meeting.
She visited again on either Wednesday or Tuesday last week – I taught her backgammon, and we made broccoli salad together (really, it was my asking her for help chopping the broccoli), and a little after, she helped me with some handmade christmas cards, cutting out forms for me. (Christmas trees and hearts).
So I told Michael (the guy I was visiting with) about simply playing games with her, and went ahead and suggested that we should do the same somehow in church. Have meetings just for fun – potlucks, game nights, evenings to just relax and be ourselves together – and Michael just started lighting up! He’d been feeling exactly that our sunday services and such had been feeling like beading an old donkey on the behind. He told me that in the beginning with Aarup Fikirke (Aarup freechurch) that the whole business of meeting had just been gathering at someone’s house, enjoying eachoher’s company, and sharing the word. We do need more fellowship in our church – it’s just what we’re lacking to bring new life and fun into being together.
Ahhh.. yeah, I’m waiting to see if the postman will finally come with that package Mike wants, or if perhaps isabella will SMS me back to say she wants to come play backgammon again – it’d be nice seeing her.
And I’m feeling… sleepy .. again..