Second Cup of Coffee

I really need to update my computer skills. I wish I could show you my second cup of coffee. I did a pressed pot this morning. (4:09 am now) It is an old cafe mug. I have about 10 of them. They are small and hold the heat well. Restaurant cups. Ceramic but so thick that if you drop them, they generally don't break. The house I live in now is larger than the house I lived in when I was married, but is not as nice. The floor in my kitchen in the other house was softer. When I dropped things, they generally did not break.
I can hear Fr. Gabriel's oboe in another tab. Music soothes the savage beast. Better said perhaps, the savage beast within us. The argument of the movie was that if the indigenous tribes of the southern Americas did not have souls, then it was right and proper to enslave them. That was the argument of the Portuguese government during the colonial period. The Jesuits, however, had another idea. At the time, the battle between church and state was very hot. In this movie, the Church bends itself to the state to retain the power it still held after the Reformation...
Ah, religion and politics. We keep forcing them together.

I don't understand why. God trumps everything. He doesn't need to be written into man's law for that to happen. We are so arrogant to think that God can't do it
without us! He wins. Every damn time. I know. I have fought Him and fought Him, and still He wins.

I also know it is a fine line I draw. Yes, our faith should inform our political structure, but I think perhaps, when we 'write it down,' we are actually trying to limit God's involvement in our activity. I'm not saying that I'm right, but it is how I feel.

Jeremiah tells us that God says there will come a day when the Law will not be necessary, that He will be written on our hearts. We won't have to look up in a book to find out how we are supposed to behave. We will know. And Paul tells us that as long as we live under the Law, we will die by the Law.

So why are so many Christians using their energies to change the Law? Shouldn't we be working at turning hearts and minds to God instead? I don't know.

In my understanding of God and God's grace, He works from the bottom up, not from the top down. He went to the tax collectors and the poor. He cured lepers and healed the blind. He didn't go and have long conversations with politicians...well, he did once and we all know how that ended.

You change the world by being the change the world needs.

Like in the movie "The Mission." You climb the cliff, even when the water is flowing in the other direction...and its dangerous. And you don't start telling them all the things they are doing 'wrong,' and give them a prayer book or a Bible and say "this is the real law." You sit on a rock and you play music for them. You sing to them. You pray aloud and let them hear your prayers. You hold them, you feed them, you listen to them.

And they have every right to tell you to go away or even kill you. But I am so naive that I believe if you do your work with a pure heart, and maybe even if its not pure, you help open a door or a window for God.

John Wesley came to this country to evangelize those 'poor native Americans' and was pretty much thrown out on his ear. Hubris. Pride. Arrogance. He thought he was going to teach them about God. But instead, others taught him about God.

I came to love you, but somehow, somewhere along the way, the tables turned, and you loved me. And things will never be the same again. That's how God works. He takes our little agendas and turns them on their head. And everyone gets blessed.

The undercurrent here is obedience. As long as I remain obedient to God's will...or as obedient as I can to what I think is God's will...and then be willing to bend like a reed as He needs me to...then it all works for and to the glory of God.

I can't believe I am writing that. But it is true.

Time for a third cup of coffee.

And I am so very much not finished.

I have come to love you.
Maybe that's not what He said, but that's what He meant. A woman knows those things. Mary knew. Even at the foot of the cross. She knew. And she knew, with her Son, it worked.

Love, Cindy