Ready to Play

Check out this take on how creation got started:

First off, nothing... but God. No light, no time, no substance, no matter. Second off, God says the word and WHAP! Stuff everywhere! The cosmos in chaos: no shape, no form, no function -- just darkness... total. And floating above it all, God's Holy Spirit, ready to play.

So the Creator has a playful spirit, according to Rob Lacey and his "Word on the Street" version of the Bible. And don't forget, "holy", too... a holy spirit of creative play.

I love that. I need to hear that, now and then... that play is a vital part of life. Vital as in full of energy. And absolutely essential! When we take ourselves too seriously as accomplishers, workers, succeeders, strivers... then these are the gracewords we need to hear: And floating above it all is God's Holy Spirit, ready to play.

Last week I had the privilege of going on a retreat with 20 or so other ministry-types, people who needed a break, a chance to hang with friends and be with God. And what did we do? We played! We played with all kinds of creative arts and craftsy thingies and we played with words and images, embellished with laughter and aha(!) insights. We let the Creator and the creation story guide us in letting loose, in switching from "doing" mode to "being" mode. Needless to say: it was great. Just what I was hungering for.

What kind of creative play do you crave? What are you doing or being when you feel so at one with the Creator that you could just burst with joy? Or has it been so long since you felt that way that you wonder if joy will ever come around again? Feel free to let loose your story of how creativity oozes from you or completely eludes you, how your spirit is fed when you play or how you wish you could find a way to be a creative play-er.

Jesus played plenty with words and images that have given us lasting views of how we can be floating with God's spirit. From Matthew's story (chapter 6) we hear Jesus asking us to stop everything, lay flat on our backs, watch the birds soar, smell the wildflowers... let all the striving go, long enough to loosen your worried souls and learn from creation, from all the creative play-ers around you. And when it's time to start striving again, strive not for piling up accomplishments but for lining up with God and God's creating ways.

It's a breath of fresh air, this creative play. Slurp in a deep one now and then, in between all those working hours. And be ready to play when the spirit floats you.

~ Kari Henkelmann Keyl

Dialogo: What’s Love Got to Do with It?

This weekend brings Trinity Sunday, an ancient holiday to mark the three-fold nature of one God. Christians believe in a God of love and traditionally name God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So what does love have to do with how we see or experience God?

God as parent loves us enough to have created the whole universe, including you and me. God, who breathed life in us, loves creation enough to come in the human form of Jesus to save and redeem us from sin, sorrow and brokenness. God through Jesus dying on the cross and rising from death joins us to God’s love forever. God as Spirit guides us and works in us inspiring, strengthening, advocating, and making holy our daily lives.

The bottom line is that God loves us no matter what we do or don’t do. God loves this world; God loves everyone everywhere and welcomes us all into God’s loving embrace. We are wrapped in the amazing unconditional love of God throughout our lives. We then can draw on that love in times of joy and pain, success and failure anytime, anywhere.

God our loving Creator, Redeemer, and Spirit reminds us that our relationships are wrapped in that gracious and abundant love. This is because God participates in and cares deeply about us, our relationships, community and all of creation. So in light of this abundant love, how come we often forget about God’s love when we are blown off by friends, turned down, rejected and feel all alone?

I invite you to ponder the title/question: “what’s love got to do with it” in terms of the three-fold nature of God this week. In other words, what does the love of: 1.) God the Creator, who loves you and gives you life, 2.) God the Redeemer, who loves you and holds you in that love forever, and 3.) God the Spirit, who loves you and brings warmth and comfort to your heart and soul, mean for your life today… for you in the future… for this community, the world and all creation?

+ Bill Petersen

Steve-o's Devo: Listening to Live

The one thing we do a lot of at By The Way is listen. Even our primary phrase, "listening and exploring faith together" empashizes this very important piece of Christian community. We still are an early community. A community of people on the fringe who have perhaps had an encounter with the holy and desire deeply to discover what truth looks like after that encounter.

It is in our human nature to want to test everything to see just what it might be about, or if the people we meet are who they say they are. We see this played out in our daily lives at school, work, in our relationships. The hardest thing for many of us comes when we discover the truth that we are loved, just as we are, where we are at in our lives. That seems almost unbelievable. And yet, it is a core reality of God's grace.

In Paul's letter to another early church, one in Corinth, he reminds the people that it is less important to worry about the testing of our faith or of living in community. He reminds them it is not so much the fact that you are tested, but that you had the opportunity to pursue what was right. He hopes that the people followed the path laid out to them by Jesus--a path that can lead to the ability to listen to one another, come to an agreement and live in peace. This happens when we are able to accept God's love as always present and manifested in those around us called to live as followers of Jesus.

The path is not an easy one and this weekend I was reminded of this when I saw a bumper sticker that said: No Jesus, No Peace....Know Jesus, Know Peace. I laughed at first because as a person who works with other Christian communities, often ones in conflict, it seemed that this "peace" had been forgotten. But then I realized something deeper that gave me pause for reflection throughout the weekend. When we forgot who we are, and whose we are, peace is a difficult thing to come by. When our communities get bogged down in what we think, instead of discerning together and listening to what God may have in store, peace cannot exist. Conflict will begin to arise and we enter paths that cause more problems for us and our relationships. Is it any wonder so many people have come to church to discover Jesus and the peace that passes all understanding, only to discover a surly bunch of frustrated and distracted people. As I thought about this, I realized, it is our responsibility as disciples of Jesus to remind these communities that they are forgetting whose they are as they descend into bickering. And it is our responsibility to encourage them to rediscover Jesus.

It's not easy living in community. There will always be frustrations and contentions and I do not expect even our community of By the Way to be without them. But I think if we practice listening to one another, trying to discern what God is loving us into, we have an amazing opportunity to re-discover a world overflowing with grace and abundance. My prayer is that we can be one of those glimmers of hope that calls others, even those already connected in Christian communities, to re-discover and revitalize their lives in Jesus.

If you are stuggling this week, finding it hard to focus, perhaps feeling unsettled or frustrated, I hope you will consider stopping by to regroup your spirit, and discover how you can truly know peace. Or perhaps, you may just have to turn off the noise...and listen.

Dialogo: How much water does it take?

While traveling a couple of weeks ago, I caught comedian Lewis Black's stand-up routine on The Comedy Channel. Black has a kind of matter-of-fact, agitated style that reveals microscopically the weird and crazy things people do, both individually and as a society. When I read Bill's devo this week, it reminded me of Black's observation about water.

Black reflected that when he was a kid, if you were thirsty you just went and got a glass of water. No one was telling you you needed to drink it, you just knew that you needed it. He went on to say that now we have people telling us we need to drink water and that these people are often selling water as well. Water that is bottled, in many cases, by soda companies--"This is the water that they won't even put in Coke, people!" Well, that made me laugh, but it also made me think a little bit.

Too often we are thirsty for something different in a landscape that wants us to quench are thirst with something not always good for us. We can mask our own desires and needs, or suppress our own insecurities for only a moment by staying constantly in motion, or by filling our lives and homes with stuff.

So, my question to ponder this week, is when did you realize you were thirsty for something more than the same old bottled up stuff available on any street corner? What helped you to see a deeper, more refreshing way to look at life?

If you are still seeking, join us one of these Mondays or Thursdays. Together we will explore the deeper refreshment available through the Spirit of God.