…when we are in different surroundings, or

…when we get back on our feet, or

…when I start (and hopefully complete) my PhD work, or

…when, when, when

Each time that sense of longing for a different future arises, the Spirit has a way of directing me back to the present.  And I’m blessed to remember (again) that God’s goodness is not out there somewhere, but right here, right now.

A passage of Scripture I’ve been meditating on daily this month will be a lifelong touchstone for remembering God’s goodness.

I’d like to share it with you.

“If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people’s sins,

If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,

Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.

I will always show you where to go. I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—firm muscles, strong bones.

You’ll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry.

You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past.

You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.”

–YHWH, The LORD our God as rendered in Isaiah 58.9-12

The goodness described here is a very specific goodness, from a very specific God, in a specific context.  This specificty requires my response and involvement; and the involvement of my family and community.  This specificity graces me with light and thanks.

–

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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Here’s an excerpt:

God is weaving something beautiful, even when all seems lost. God is faithful to love us and care for us, even when we feel abandoned. God is relentless in his activity to create wonder and hope, even when we feel like he has nothing to work with.

This is the God I worship. This is the God I serve. This is the God I’m anticipating will surprise me again soon in wonderful ways.

I need to be reminded of this faith again these days.

What about you?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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… lest we forget that our Triune God is the definition of diversity without dissonance.Related Posts:

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Trinitarian theology is just about as interesting to me as sacramental theology. And I’ve been noticing of late how the Trinitarian lens through which I see the world has shaped me for missional life.

For example, God’s inner life, God’s relationship with the world, and God’s role as the source of all our understanding of who God is are threads woven together by God’s own producing of God’s self.  God is eternal and thus time is always present-tense from God’s perspective.  There can be no ordering of events in specified orders–”whether temporal, logical, or otherwise.”[1] To maintain a trinitarian grammar, there can be no producing without a producer and a product.  As David Cunningham states God’s activity of producing: “God produces God . . . God produces the world . . . God produces our knowledge of God.”[2]

In God’s producing of God, there is not mere self-duplication.  God gives over God’s self to an Other, so that there might be an Other.  Cunningham uses the example–a vestigium, perhaps–of pregnancy to illustrate this internal self-differentiation.  The Father, as Source, produces the Son, as Wellspring, and the Spirit, as Living Water.  Yet, verbal forms of these processions would be even more accurate, though more abstract.  Because, the differentiation within the Godhead is relational; the processions consist of relations constantly relating within each other.

God produces the world as gift.  And God awaits the return of this gift with our ‘Yes.’  God enables us to sustain this ‘Yes,’ as God continues to create, redeem, and sanctify the world.

God produces our knowledge of God.  No authentic understanding of God is possible outside of the “communally-normed reading of the biblical narratives that is made possible by the Spirit-filled Church.”[3] The vestigia trinitatis are supplementary to intimate corporate knowing of God.  God has already revealed all of God’s self.  God now continues to illuminate our hearts and minds to his truth and revelation.

It’s this understanding of God’s producing of reality that paves the way for incarnational living.

[2] Ibid., 58.

[3] Ibid., 83.

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We stayed with some very good friends who just a few months ago lost their baby an hour after he was born. Several late-night talks with them were difficult and sad and heart-wrenching.

We had some extended family news come our way that shook life circumstances for Heather’s side of the family.

A good family friend, mentor, and church leader at my old stomping grounds unexpectedly took his own life.

All of this during our “vacation.”

I have been experiencing a lot of sadness, brokenness, doubting, and feelings of helplessness of late.

Yet here’s what I’m learning … God has a way of weaving beauty out of brokenness and despair.

I’m not one of those who blames God for everything. I mean, if God really controlled everything with the way the word is today, that’s not a God I could worship, much less serve. No, it seems that scripture and experience tells us that evil just happens. Yet in the midst of evil, God longs to be in relationship with his creation. And if we let him, God will create something surprising and wonderful out of the shards of sadness, grief, despair, and hopelessness that invade our lives from time to time.

For instance, with the happenings I mentioned above … We got to spend quality time with some best friends during their dark days of anger and despair. We got to hug and be present and just listen. All in all experiencing a deeper level of friendship … and they did too.

We see my wife’s family pulling together with others in their faith community to truly seek God’s leading in their situation.

We were able to be with and comfort the family of our friend. We remembered his actions of love and compassion throughout his life. We saw his young grandson turn to God’s story in the days that followed in order to make sense of the situation.

God is weaving something beautiful, even when all seems lost. God is faithful to love us and care for us, even when we feel abandoned. God is relentless in his activity to create wonder and hope, even when we feel like he has nothing to work with.

This is the God I worship. This is the God I serve. This is the God I’m anticipating will surprise me again soon in wonderful ways.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How is God taking your brokenness and making something surprising and wonderful out of it?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
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But this seems to be a false–or at the least, superficial–dichotomy. If we are examining life within the Triune God, displayed as God with us in the life of Christ, and continuing in the Church, then a fully trinitarian account of power and authority must not ignore the role of the Spirit as a relationship of perpetual disturber and innovator.

God the Holy Spirit is always opening up new possibilities. This even takes place through the power of suffering; a power that is able to change events. Non-violent actions are not synonymous with non-forceful actions. The Spirit is always disturbing our status quo. For newness to come, we must be stripped–sometimes forcefully (violently?)–of the old.

When the Triune God acts, when God directly participates with his creation to create and re-create newness, it is a violent act from the perspective of the created. God’s triunity is maintained when God’s authorship is displayed in opening up spaces within the divine dance for new participants. This is how God swallowed death into himself.

This does not give the Christian license to act violently. But it does mean that all Christ-followers must not squelch their roles as prophets in the biblical idiom. Prophets speak newness into existence, sometimes tearing down and destroying the old. Also, the church must continue to defend the defenseless, most often from the ‘nation-states.’

How can this be done without appearing forceful to the nation-state? Violence must be carefully defined. When God acts to create newness, God does not act violently from God’s perspective. It is God’s love that is in action, to create, redeem, sanctify: to reconcile.

This same love must be in us as we participate in the community of divine love that brings newness.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you see the Triune God informing coercion and persuasion?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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Eat this bread, filled with life    

Hunger no more

Drink this cup of living water 

Never thirst again.

I am the bread, I am the wine 

Children taste and see 

Here is all of me. 

God has consistently, faithfully offered all of God’s self to me.  I know that our spiritual ancestors were unable to be faithful to covenant … and so am I.  What could I possibly covenant to God in response to God giving all to me?Though it was more wordy than this, I basically told God “I am yours, every part of me.”Now, I know I will break covenant and seek restoration.  That is the way of humanity.  But I know that God longs to enable me to keep this promise.It’s a promise to serve.  To serve my only Master however he chooses.  To serve when I don’t feel like it.  To serve when I’m unpopular.  To serve though everyone desert me.  To serve in the face of conflict.  To serve in the throes of doubt.  To serve … and to serve … and to serve.This promise is a covenant that depends entirely on God.  And I trust him.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:

What are you covenanting these days?

——

Brian Niece

www.brianniece.com

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

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A good question for me to wrestle with (being a vocational pastor and what not).

First, let’s look at this question from the perspective of “religion.” Now by religion (specifically the Christian religion) I mean the system of organized doctrine and practices instituted by human initiatives and based on an underlying story of God’s initiatives. And an individual who looks at the world through the eyes of religion tends to separate the world into two parts: sacred and secular.

This is not the lens through which I see the world.

Instead, my worldview is filtered through the person of the Triune God. This means I’m adverse to the definition of “What Is a Minister?” that follows.

The religious person expects to see the minister as profoundly serious and deliberate in his/her approach to life. The minister shoud be dignified in his/her denouncement of the world. The minister should attend to the needs and wants of the religious under his/her care and separate oneself from the world.

The religious person will be decidedly disappointed with me as a minister.

Seeing the world through the lens of the Triune God means I don’t see a separation between sacred and secular. All is of God. All is good. All space and time is sacred space and time. “For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever!” (Romans 11:36). I confess being influenced by Aquinas and his theology of glory.

Consequently, the world is my parish.

Part 2 will answer this question from the perspective of “the world.”

SO TELL ME:
What is a minister to you?Related Posts:

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Tags: minister, pastor, Christian, religion, doctrine, practices, story, sacred, secular, Triune, God, sacred space, Aquinas