New Painting in Office

I have been meaning to post this for a while, but my amazing wife, Joanna, did a great mixed media painting for my office!  It is about 30" x 40".   She used paint and paper and tissue to make it happen!

The Tension Between Justice and Love...

It is so easy to feel excited that we have been able to kill Bin Laden and are rid of this terrorist leader.  It is so easy to cheer with the next person with American pride that we have hit Al-Qaeda right where it hurts. It is so easy, but still deep within us we are disturbed… It feels as though this can’t be right…right?

I think that the hardest place for Christians to be right now in light of recent events is to struggle with the tension between Justice and Love.  It is in the place we struggle with the feeling of “God is a just God” and “Love your enemy.”

I think we have an innate understanding of justice.  We know that it should work out that good people have good things happen to them and that bad people deserve the bad things to happen to them.  It is this exact understanding that makes it so hard for us to accept it when a great loved one who was an amazing person gets cancer.  Why? 

I am asked a lot “Why do bad things happen to good people?”  My response has become, “Bad things happen to everyone, we just notice when it is opposite of what our justice understanding would think.”  In other words, bad things happen and good things happen to everyone; we just take note when they happen to the wrong kind of people.

I think that this is where we find ourselves with Bin Laden.  We celebrate the killing of someone because we understand him to be bad, and therefore he deserves bad. 

Then I challenge us to hear again Jesus words in Matthew 5:43-48(NIV) in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

I must be perfectly honest, that I struggle with these words today.  I want to say, yeah but do you know what he did?  I find myself in the tension between Justice and Love, and if you find yourself there today, I want you to know that is ok.

Much Love, Grace, and Peace,

Chris Cummings

Rob Bell states his beliefs...

Thoughts about God and Love wins from Rob Bell

Watch live streaming video from lovewins at livestream.com

Trying to find Sabbath...

It seems like forever since my wife, Joanna, and I have been able to find a day off.  We both work at the church, shes is a children's minister and I am a youth minister, and to top it off we are both going to seminary for our masters too.
We have set Fridays as our day of rest from work and school, and for the past year until 2012 we have been...ok at keeping it.  It seems that in 2012 we have gone none stop with little light at the end of the tunnel.  It is not that any of it is bad stuff, but when we find ourselves with a lack of time to rest, refuel, and spend time with God, then that is a problem no matter what you are doing.
I have found it hard in working at a church to find good ways to even take Sabbath as going to church well isn't always, although great and filling in other ways, we are in need of different ways of spending time with God.
In the past couple weeks, I have found Sabbath in music.  I love to listen to music and play the guitar and sing, and I have had a renewed growth and time in music.  Music is one of the best ways I have found that I connect with God.  It helps my soul relax, let go, and just be in the melody.
Today was a little different.  We finally had the whole day off, which was different in itself, but instead of music, I went outside,and I put out the hammock and just laid there. It was one of the first warm days of the year.
I had planned to journal, read, write, all sorts of things while I was out there; but when I got in the hammock...I just laid there.  It was finally a time where I was simply being in God's creation and worshiping God through it; and worship in whatever way always fills me.

Now I am not one who sit still very long, but as I laid there, looking up into the two trees the hammock is attached to...I could not help but rest.  After a few minutes, there came a cold breeze and as I was thinking I might have to go in, the sun came out and shined right at me.  I warmed up immediately and it was as if God was saying, stay still a little longer.  It was a beautiful moment and felt amazing.
I feel refreshed, renewed, and redeemed.  I know that I need to do things like this a lot more, and my hope and pray is that we can be more aggressive about keeping our Sabbath.
What a different world it might be if we all took more time to just be with God in creation.

A prayer for the new year...

Loving God,

Give me compassion for all

Compassion even to those who hurt me

Give me the words to speak truth

Truth to all in the words they need to hear

Give me passion to live for your Kingdom

Passion strong enough that nothing will quinch it

Give me your eyes for the world

So that I might see it as you do

Give me your unending love

So that I might share it with others

Thank you that through your amazing, unending grace

you have already given me this and more

May your Spirit guide me to live it

Amen

Opening your heart through prayer...

Pain is a funny thing sometimes.  It can do just as much harm in the long run as in the short run.  In fact, it is the pain that adds up over time that seems to threaten to close my heart to love. It is through all the small little jabs that seem to add up over time.  I think about this comment that someone made and that comment someone else made (it’s mostly the bad ones I remember), and it all becomes an open wound.  A wound which I just end up protecting myself from so much that I end up closing my heart more and more to loving.

It comes down to my struggle to forgive, I think, and not taking time to work through it all.  For me, it is easier to just build a list of enemies to avoid than to truly see through their words to the pain they are expressing as well. It seems that everyone most of the time is living out of their pain that they have experienced as opposed to their love and life. 

I guess it is because it seems we have been trained to focus on it.  When we got grades in school, the ones we focused on were the bad ones, not the ones we excelled in.  It is this societal mold that we each try to fit in with no one ever doing it well, so we live out of this pain.

It is when I embrace my uniqueness, that I often time find I am able to live out of the life, and even start to see others life offerings as well.

This is very true in regards to my call as a youth pastor.  If I focus on the mold the church people think I should fit in, then I find myself leading to pain.  But, if I continue to focus, in my call, to the Imago Dei, I can truly begin to lead others.  Not only because I can see how God sees me more clearly, but also I can begin to see them more like God does too. 

I find that this is what prayer does.  Prayer, time and conversation with God, is the way I am freed from the mold that society has placed on me, and reminds me of my true mold, the Imago Dei. The mold I am called this the image of God.  This mold brings life and unconditional, redeeming love, but society’s mold brings pain.  May my prayers, our prayers guide us to life!