Newton's Cradle, God's Voice

I don't know if you've ever had the experiences I've been having, but lately I feel as if God has been persistently trying to get my attention. Or perhaps to say it better, I feel as though God has been trying to reinforce some key ideas to me. Recently I've found in completely different setting the same teaching from the bible being taught, or a specific topic being discussed in separate circles that surround me. At first it seemed to me that I had to change my pattern, seek out another church to avoid such overlap. But today I felt that there was something I wasn't seeing the first time that prompted a second, or third look. When I finally concluded that it wasn't just sheer chance or a lack of variety content I began to feel God pushing towards something, propelling me to something.

The image of Newton's Cradle(the metal spheres on strings that swing back and forth as energy is transferred from one to the next sending the last sphere in an upward arc) has been stuck in my head all day. The spheres in the middle are what God wants me to hear, and I am the spheres on the ends. Once God sends out his message, I am sent flying: considering, praying, acting, and processing what He has for me. But where I've previously felt no attachment, moving on to something else, now I move back toward the same teaching and I collide violently with God. But you know what's funny: even though I slam into God's Word IT DOESN'T MOVE. But I am stopped in my path on the one end, like God is seeking to remove what is useless and unnecessary, and then he propels me once again on the other side. Growing what is good in me, keeping what will bear fruit.

So what has God been saying to me? What has been on my mind? What can I not escape?

- Community: I should have bruises and broken bones from how hard God has been trying to hammer this into my brain and my heart. Community is so much more complex and difficult than I had previously thought, and probably what many people have thought. Maybe this is obvious but it is not present just when we surround ourselves with like-minded Christians. It takes EVERY OUNCE OF ENERGY to thrive in community, to lay everything bear for all to see. To bend farther than you've ever had to, to sacrifice what you once held on so tightly to. Community fails almost instantly when there is any falsehood among any of its members, and that is why so many "communities" are drowning. The saddest part is that we have access to everything we need to experience real, true community. But we don't live by it, we move away from communities for another goal, another pursuit. I know God really wants me to think daily what my community looks like, and how I am strengthening or weakening that community.

- God's Love: I know for certain that God could put this on my heart for every day for the rest of my life and I still would not get it. This SCANDALOUS love, this unknowable love will always evade me in its entirety. But I know that like pastor Greg Boyd says that this love that "requires a supernatural revelation from God" to understand is a love that I must CONTINUALLY ask God to make known to me. Because the second I think I have a grasp on it, it out-does me. The minute I think I have God's packed in a neat little box, the seams of the box burst open. In fact understanding that I don't know it may be closer than I can get by trying to understand God's love. But just because I can't know or understand God's love fully, doesn't mean I can't EXPERIENCE God's love fully. God sent his son Jesus, and his Spirit after, so that we "may have life and have it to the full." So that we can see God for who he is, because we know that if "we have seen the Son, we have seen the Father." Even then our minds fail us. Our heart is what brings us to God. It DOESN'T say believe in your mind that Jesus is Lord, it says "if you confess with you mouth 'Jesus is Lord' and believe in your HEART that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

I could go on, and on, and on...but I think I should stop. Err, not stop. I can never stop, even if I wanted to. But I can cease writing tonight