Memorial Day Parade

Our little community of faith has been in it's new location for 6 months now. We are finally getting settled. By getting settled, I mean taking advantage of the new locale. We are on Main St about a block down from the town hall.
Every year the memorial day parade runs down Main St and goes right in front of the building we now share. There is a beautiful front lawn edge with Azaelas. People will drop chairs off on the side of the road at 9:00 am to save a prime spot for the parade. Many families with little kids will show up an hour and a half early to get a good spot where the kids can see everything and catch the candy thrown by the brownies or little leage or local firefighters marching by.



We thought we would offer free face painting and games for the kids and free lemonade and water for whoever might be thirsty. I did I mention it was free. I was really pleased with everything. The parents, from the community, who brought their children seemed relieved to have something do with the kiddos. And we went through 10 gallons of lemonade and 5 gallons of water. My hope and prayer is this is just the first of many times we can serve the community from our new diggs.

Alternative Social Ethic

Alternative Social Ethic--This is a phrase used by the authors of Colossians: remixed to describe one lens through which to view the bible. That is to say, a calling toward an alternative social ethic is one of the recurring themes present from the creation account, to Jesus' birth to birth of the first christian communities. This represents a call away from securing peace and prosperity, or as Walsh and Keesmat write, "fruitfulness and Shalom," through military and economic conquest. On a personal level, this means, not giving into the notion that the source of peace and prosperity is the empire; Rome, Washington, Wall Street, the mall.

So how do we live within the empire and yet not be shaped by it? Better yet how do we go about implementing an alternative social ethic? What does the concept of an alternative social ethic do to our relationships, our calendars and our checkbooks?



colossians remixed

point of re-entry

I have obviously been absent from the blogosphere for a while. Trying to develop some sort of Godly rhythm to my life and blogging just wasn't fitting into that rhythm. Here is my attempt at a healthy re-entry.

I have spent quite a bit of time reading and studying the book of Colossians lately. I picked up a copy of Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh ans Sylvia C Keesmaat to supplement my reading. This quote really jumped out at me:

What god do you want? And on whose terms will you accept this god? You see the danger of wanting god, without being willing to allow this god to speak in a voice that is radically other to our own voice, is that the god we end up with is like any other consumer product we take off the shelf. p34

I have been noodling that one around for a while. For me, I think I have definitely been guilty of accepting only the parts of God that suit me at a particular time. I'm guilty of "shopping God" to me my needs. If any of you are still checking back here, what do you think?