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The Danger of Despair or What We May Feel After We Give

June 22, 2018 0 Comments

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Galatians 5:22-25 (NIV)

 

Have you ever felt as if your giving was accomplishing nothing, except making less of you? Here’s a contemplation for you from Miroslav Volf and The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.


Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, 118-119.

We are good trees who bear good fruit, wrote the apostle Paul, because “we live by the Spirit”, whose fruit our gift giving is.

 

The Spirit counters our indolence as givers by molding our character to conform to Christ’s and employing our talents for others’ benefit. The Spirit also gives us hope. Often we experience a sense of futility in giving. We give, and recipients seem none the better off for it. Unscrupulous people insert themselves between our gifts and the recipient’s benefits, and gifts seem to disappear together with their intended benefits. Or recipients seem to receive gifts like a black hole sucks in light. Giving doesn’t make sense, not so much because we lose by giving but because the world doesn’t gain much. We give, but it seems to us that we aren’t mending the world.

 

What is the relationship between our gifts and others’ benefits? We tend to think of it in terms of cause and effect. The gift is the cause: the benefit is the effect. As causes produce effects, giving should produce benefits. Often that’s not what happens, so we despair of giving.

 

But in fact, our gifts and others’ benefits are not related as causes and effects. They are related as the cross and the resurrection. Christ gave his life on the cross — and it seems as though he died in vain. His disciples quickly deserted him, his cause was as dead as he was, and even his God seemed to have abandoned him. But then he was resurrected from the dead by the power of the Spirit. He was seated at the right hand of God and raised in the community of believers, his social body alive and growing on earth. Did Christ’s “gift of death” cause his own resurrection and its benefits for the world? It didn’t. The Spirit did. So it is with every true gift of our own, however small or large.

 

Like Christ’s healings or feeding of multitudes, often our gifts offer immediate help. We give, and the hungry are fed, the sorrowful comforted, and loved ones delighted. We are like a tree, laden with fruit that only waits to be picked. At other times, we give, and the gift seems less like a ripe fruit than like a seed planted in the ground. For a while, nothing happens. Dark earth covered with cold winter holds the seed captive. Then spring comes, and we see new life sprouting, maybe even growing beyond our wildest imagination.

 

Sometimes it seems as if a fate worse than lying in the dark earth befalls our gifts. It is almost as if some evil bird takes away the seed we planted before it can sprout and bear fruit. We labor in vain. We give — and it seems that no one benefits. Yet we can still hope. The Spirit who makes a tree heavy with fruit and who gives life to the seed that has died will ultimately claim every good gift that the evil one has snatched away. Just as the Spirit resurrected the crucified one and made his sacrifice bear abundant fruit, so the Spirit will raise us in the spring of everlasting life to see the harvest of our own giving. Our giving is borne by the wings of the Spirits’ hope.

7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Galatians 6:7-10 (NIV)

 

Listen & Watch: We Labour Unto Glory, Porter’s Gate Worship Project

 

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuPZCXShg4

 

Change, Discipleship, Giving, Leadership, Quotes, Work

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Institutional Amnesia and the Justification of Dominance

June 7, 2018 0 Comments

Genesis exists because of Exodus. 

 

We might not observe this readily as our minds are captured by the chronology of the Bible as “the books” have been arranged. But, with a bit of reflection you may arrive at the same conclusion. Genesis exists because of Exodus. 

 

The redemptive work of God forming a people as His own reveals Him as Creator and the One who has ultimate claim on the lives of men and women created in His image. 

 

As I read the first five books of the Bible, the gift of the Torah, is God’s gift after His redemptive work displayed through the exodus of Israel from Egypt. The work of the Exodus pre-dates the revelation of the Torah but not the work of God.

 

Even as the Church we must not forget that the substance of our faith resides in the redemptive work of God through Jesus Christ in a body, from this people, on a cross, and in a grave, to form a people from the nations as His own. He endured the cross “for the joy set before Him.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)

 

Exodus begins with power and its institution nurturing amnesia.

 

“Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.” Exodus 1:6

 

This new king, a pharaoh, systematically begins to dismantle the worth and the place in society held by the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Just as Joseph meant nothing to him, the people of Israel, would mean nothing to him unless they served as cheap labour, for his projects, and for the projection of his dominance. He needed them around so he could show his greatness. The Pharaoh needed Egypt to forget that these Israelites were persons. In fact, Egypt would have to forget that the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob and Joseph, had organized their own rescue from famine. Indeed they tried to forget, but they could not, so their contempt turned to dread.

 

The pursuit of amnesia is meant to excuse Egypt’s shameful treatment of bodies. This historical amnesia is framed by the pursuit of national security. Egypt might be embarrassed someday to discover that the Israelites had joined with an enemy of Egypt in order to take autonomous action for their own lives. Shame, even the threat of shame, holds in it not only the loss of honour and respect but also the loss of economic security. Pharaoh would not be the first man or the last to exercise language and a “divine edict” in order to justify, not just justify, actually blind others to his quest for greatness.

 

“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”

11So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13and worked them ruthlessly. 14They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.  Exodus 1:9-14

 

Exodus gives birth to Genesis.

 

The glorious revelation of God as Creator, personally involved with His Creation, is rescued from a sea of forgetfulness. To read Genesis from this side of the Nile is to bask in the light of revelation: every child of ‘Adam and Eve, is of immense and equal worth. To read Exodus with the light of Genesis is to see what extraordinary lengths God will go to free His Creation from death’s domination and its fake promises of life animated by structures that seem so real and so necessary in the ordering of things… and persons.

Institutions that want people to forget are often led by persons who need everyone  to forget their connection to a redemptive past. Why? I believe its because they are plagued by the threat of shame and perhaps anxious about the economic insecurities accompanied by remembering and honouring the redemptive work fully.

Change

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Craig’s List for Reading in Summer 2018

April 20, 2018 0 Comments

 

As students in our crowd head out I’ve usually made a recommendation of some books that may prove helpful for growth.

 

Read a book. I’m shocked still, and perhaps I should not be, but I keep hearing from students who get to graduation and haven’t read a book.

 

Did you know people who read books live longer?

 

Change

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Remembering to Serve People on the Journey to Refuge

April 19, 2018 0 Comments

Origin in Athens

Photo Cred: Reed Eaglesham

Dear Readers,

I’m doing something new, using my blog to ask for help.

 

Origin is headed back to Greece. We will be in Athens in May to serve alongside our friends with Canadian Global Response. Ten of us will be going to “remember the poor.” You can help them too. People on the journey for refuge have had to run, to leave, to survive, to witness. Its not a pretty experience and its worse than most of us can imagine.

 

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei, wants you to know that “Over 65 Million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes.” I watched the film and cried. This is what many of the dear people we met last year have gone through. What will our compassion do? Compassion comes alongside the human flow not to judge but to give hope. Though we are tempted to, I’m learning we must not underestimate the power of a cup of water, a smile, a listening ear, a gift, and a moment of care and kindness in a safe environment. We believe these are the small gestures affirming the incredible worth of each person.

 

Our team of ten is going to Athens but we cannot accomplish this alone. We need your help to extend the ministry of our friends there in city. We will be assisting with what they want to do in order to serve folks who had hoped to pass through the city but have gotten stuck there and who find themselves to be intensely vulnerable. Our strategy for supporting and extending the ministry of our partners on the ground in Athens requires about 1000 euro’s per day in ministry funds.

 

Help us serve people on the refugee journey in Athens, Greece.

Let’s move remembering the poor into real presence and action. Here’s how you can give. By clicking on the Origin in Greece button you will land on our Canadian Global Response project and giving page. Follow the instructions, making sure to to note “Origin in Athens.”

Thanks so much.

Craig

 

 

 

Change, Leadership

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What’s on your summer reading list for 2018?

April 12, 2018 0 Comments

As Winter term ends for students and we get ready for summer term, the church I’m a part of at UBC publishes a summer reading list.

Our list of books seeks to get at our desire to be a Gospel-Shaped, Disciples-Making, City-Blessing church. So we know we have to get in touch with authors who help us engage some aspect of the four relationships of Christian discipleship — with God, with self, with people, and with the stuff of Creation.

You can see our 2017 Summer Reading list above.

I’m curious — what would you recommend for a summer reading list?

 

 

Change, Discipleship, Education, Leadership