"Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world." ~Ammon Hennacy (Catholic activist. 1893 - 1970)
Someone once asked me about my choice to follow Jesus specifically in the context of following the crowd, or subscribing to the norm. Without being defensive and without sounding offended my response was this: Being a christian and following Jesus has been the hardest decision I've ever made, but also the most rewarding.
I recently started re-reading The Irresistible Revolution. Below are some things that have stood out and stirred emotion. I just want to share. No commentary, no other thoughts, just sharing. I encourage you to read, and reflect on what I'm sharing.
... Spiritual Bulimia. Bulimia, of course, is a tragic eating disorder, largely linked to identity and image, where folks consume large amounts of food but vomit it up before it has a chance to digest. I developed the spiritual form of it where I did my devotions, read all the new Christian books and saw the Christian movies, and then vomited information up to friends, small groups, and pastors. but it had never had the chance to digest. I had gorged myself on all the products of the Christian industrial complex but was spiritually starving to death. I was marked by an overconsumptive but malnourished spirituality, suffocated by Christianity but thirsty for God.
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"Its not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that scare me, but the parts I do understand" - Mark Twain
Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. ... And then I met Jesus and he wrecked my life. The more I read the gospel, the more it messed me up, turning everything I believed in, valued, and hoped for upside-down. I am still recovering from my conversion.
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Two guys are talking to each other, and one of them says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all of this poverty and war and suffering to exist in the world. And his friend says, "well, why don't you ask?" The fellow shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, "I'm scared God will ask me the same question." Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, "you tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet."
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"We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." - Mother Teresa
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"Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." - John 14:12
... what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus' love. Jesus raised his friend lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember is his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers. And the incredible thing about that love is that it now lives inside of us. In the verses just after the one about the greater things. Jesus assures us that the Spirit now lives in us. Jesus says that he is going to the Father but will also remain inside of us, and we in him. We are the body of Christ, the hands and feet of jesus to the world.
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