Friends, my only prayers lately have been for the emancipation of all those who haven't awaken to the reality that the law isn't required to experience the beauty of God. They're filling their time with rituals that are slowly strangling them. While they know everything about the law, they know nothing about the freedom waiting on the other side of that same law. By establishing their own rules on how to get-righteous-quick, they're completely missing the point. Jesus taught us that the law was by no means a producer of righteousness, but rather a producer of confusion and chaos. All we have to do in order to wake up to this reality is believe that God loves us independently of how well we follow the commandments.
When we were neck deep in dogmatic religiosity, we were constantly wondering who was in and who was out. We looked at the people around us through that filter. But, we know a new design for living now that completely throws that old framework out of the picture. Now, we look at our fellow humans and ourselves and find the breath of God breathing new life into us each and every day. We find God's heartbeat in chorus with our own. We're not talking about being evacuated from this world. We're talking about being given new life right where we are, so that we can live this life to the fullest!
Our scriptures tell us that whoever believes in God won't be disappointed. We've gotta quit isolating from everyone who believes differently than we do, because there's no distinction between Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Mormon. This God accepts everyone into the family, and is eager to bless whoever is awake enough to see the blessings.
Here's some important questions: If someone doesn't believe in God, how will they receive God's blessings? If someone hasn't heard of this God, how will they believe in this God? If there's not a teacher around, how will they hear about this God?
The answer is this: All of us who are in on this radical way of living get to be spiritual vessels. This God wants to use us to carry this message as far as we can take it. I can tell you right now, there's not anyone out there who God's not already working with. Our job is to wake people up to that reality that's going on in and around them. We aren't asleep anymore, and we get to go wake people up.
As soon as we starting noticing the glimpses of God at work, we start developing faith. We stop worrying so much and we relax more.
But as we all know, we're all on different journeys. Some people aren't ready to receive the message we're carrying. We can look back to our ancestor Isaiah to find a similar experience. When he told Israel about this life-giving and life-saving message, not everyone was ready to receive it. In one of his recorded prayers, he said, "I've sent teachers all thoughout this land. Their voices have resonated all thoughout Israel." Yet, even though the message gets out, only the ones who are ready to receive it will receive it.
The majority of Israel wasn't ready to tap out of the power game. All the while, other "pagan" nations were waking up to the wonders of this God. When the Israelites saw this, they got jealous and angry. The other nations weren't even seeking this God, but were merely open-minded to the possibility. And what happened? This God started working and moving and drawing other nations close to itself.
See where this is going? It doesn't matter how many rules we create. This God doesn't require them. This God wants open-mindedness, not rule following. I know personally how it feels to be living by the book and doing all the right religious things, and then seeing a group of people claim that they believe in the same God I do. What did I do? I tried to kill em' all! But thanks be to God, I was rescued from the delusional cloud I was living under.
Be patient. Don't give up when people aren't ready to hear the message. Remember how long it took you?
Grace and peace be with you.
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