wonders and reflections in God's presence

My parents have just put their house on the market.  It is the house I grew up in.  My earliest memories include playing in the dirt piles as the house was being built.  We moved in just before my brother was born in 1963.  There were horse farms and chicken farms on that part of Long Island then and lots of woods in which to build forts and play cops and robbers.  The expressway didn’t come out that far yet, and our hamlet was the last regular stop of the Long Island Railroad.  My grandparents lived next door, and my Dad was born in the old hospital there only a couple blocks away.  I lived in that house for 16 years before going away to college; then I’d come back to visit at least a couple of times a year.  Over the last 40 years, that community changed from small town to New York City suburb; I moved to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Texas.  And in the midst of all that change, my New York “home” was the pride and stability in my life.  Now, as my parents prepare to sell the house and move to Texas, I feel pangs of grief.  Usually, I’m one who embraces newness; I get bored with the same old same old.  But that house has always been there just as it was, and it hurts to think of losing that tangible source of security.

I have a sense that’s how so many of us feel about our churches.  Life whizzes by us at ever accelerating speeds, and our church offers us stability through it all.  Our church stays the same when jobs change, when kids grow up and move away, when we get ill or when loved ones die.  Through all of life change – Church keeps us steady.  So, when a pastor suggests that we change our order or worship, the music we sing, or even move to a new building, we feel pains of grief and anger.  No!  It’s like selling the old house we grew up in.

Stability in faith doesn’t come from meeting in the same building, worshipping with the same people, or singing the same hymns.  Real security doesn’t come from holding on to the past, but from surrendering to the winds of the Spirit as we move into the future.  At a conference recently at Grace Presbyterian, Reggie McNeal reminded us that God is already planning for the future.  God is already at work ushering in His kingdom in new and changing ways.  The question is – is the church willing to go where God is leading?  Do we have enough faith to give up the old and allow God to create the new?  Can we really trust that if we let go and let God, God will provide for us?

On the day my parents signed the contract to build a new house in Pflugerville, we shared dinner at The Melting Pot in Austin.  As we dipped our bread into the cheddar cheese fondue, I looked across the table into my father’s eyes and asked, “Are you really ready for this, Dad?”  And with an uncanny sense of both human vulnerability and spiritual strength, he looked back lovingly and confidently, “A year ago I would never have believed I would be moving away from my life-long home, but I have a strong sense the Spirit is in this.”  He went on to explain that if he stayed, he felt his spiritual growth would become stagnant and, in effect, his life would be done.  He is confident that God is leading him into a future filled with possibility, growth, and a new life.  “Are you scared?”  I asked.  “Of course I’m scared.  I just signed a contract on a $250,000 home without having sold the old house yet.  But I’m sure that God is in this, and that gives me a deep peace about it all.”

I am so proud of my Dad and my Mom.  I don’t need a house on Long Island to give me strength … I have my parents, and they have me.  And, together, we rely on God, and we live confidently into the future God is unfolding and we help shape together.

This will be printed in the April 2006 issue of Connections, a publication of the Presbytery of New Covenant.

At a consultation with a church session (governing board) a couple of weeks ago, I was asked about the end times … what does the Bible say we should expect of the church during the end times?  Being a good Presbyterian, I evaded the question, thinking it came from a “Left Behind” mindset and not well grounded in Reformed Theology.  But, I have to admit, despite the fact that the whole end of the world thinking is not considered orthodox by most Presbyterians, I do sometimes wonder … the things going on in the world today make our time seem so … dangerously potent.  Change is occurring more rapidly than ever before, and there are now global implications for decisions we make … if not the “end times” we are definitely living through a time pregnant with possibility.

We’ve all heard that we’re in a time of “emerging”, both in the church and in the so many other aspects of our culture.  This week’s Futuring study brought about a huge “ah ha” for me … if it’s a time of something new emerging, then it’s also the time of something old dying.  I know … it takes me a while sometimes   One of our leaders presented some information from a book about the natural cycles of generations, with the opinion that we are currently in the “fourth turning”, a time of crisis.  But times of crisis are always followed by the birth of something new.

Everything has a season the verse says in Ecclesiastes.  Everything runs in cycles.  There is time of birth and a time of death, but the death always leads to a new birth.  There was a huge transition from the hunting/gathering/tribal times to the agricultural times which was the birth of “civilization” as we know it.  We are now in a similar shift from “civilization” to “globalization.”  If he’s right, then we are at the end of civilization.  The question I raise, though, is that so bad?  I think globalization is where we ought to be headed,  Knowing where we’re headed means we have the ability to not just forsee the future, but to shape the future … and how we shape it is so vitally important.

But … I am also very much aware that for some who don’t embrace change and who can’t see a glimpse of the global/Kingdom vision of the new millenium, the end of civilization as we know it, IS the end of the world.  It’s catastrophe; it’s the end times; it’s judgment day.  Perhaps that’s why fear and violence are so rampant.  Perhaps that’s why there are so many in our churches hoping to wake up tomorrow in 1959.  Because the future will be so different; the end of civilization means the end of christendom, the end of denominationalism, the end of the Christian Empire … but I’m wondering … even with that, could our future be just a little closer to the Kingdom?

So,  I’m wondering … what do the “end time” Bible readings have to say to us in this time of re-birth, transition, paradigm-shifting, a new millennium?  Maybe The Book of Revelation and other apocryphal passages are meant to be metaphorical and speak directly to all of us going through “the fourth turning.”  Or any “end time” such as the fall of Jerusalem, the fall of the Roman Empire, and, now, the fall of the American Empire.

It’s funny … when I read the first few “Left Behind” books, I thought it would be a huge responsibility as well as a great adventure to be left behind … to be the ones interpreting, discerning, and leading into a new future … but isn’t that what we’re doing now?  The emerging church movement and others … we are the shapers of the new age.  It’s time to pray.