Potters and Pots

We have this treasure, writes St. Paul, in earthen vessels . . .

It may seem to us sometimes that the biblical analogy of God's being the Potter and we being the clay pots that he creates and shapes for His purposes, make Him and His Province to be such that we are mere, passive, almost inanimate objects.

Following the insight and words of the prophet Isaiah (in chapter 64) again we may think that in the 'working with clay analogy' we are passive and God is totally in control/charge.

Apparently one might think that, until one starts working with clay. (I've not done that: I'll take the word of others who have).

An initial steps involved when working with clay is called Wedging – where you work hard 'to beat the life out of the clay.' Actually you are beating and kneading out air bubbles. If you don't, the bubbles will make the new creation crack when it hits the kiln. Or, it may blow up and, potentially everything around it. There are ‘bubbles’ that need to be removed from our lives if we are to be and achieve the purposes of our Creator.

Another step involved is something called Centering – a difficult process because (who would have known?) clay is naturally very resistant. One’s whole body weight has to be pushed into the play until you feel no anomaly as the clay is going around in your hands – until you know it’s ‘centred.’ If it isn’t centred, it will be wobbly or collapse entirely.

God is always wanting us to centre our lives in and around Him. What in our lives need to be centred around the Lord?

In Jeremiah 13, we find that the pot that was created became marred in the potter’s hand so he crushed the clay and formed into another pot. Similarly, God moulds us into different shapes and purposes, painful as that often seems to us. It is His doing even though we often (usually?) resist the process.

Am I accepting of God’s God’s centred will and priorities for my present and future? How am I active in working with, rather than resisting what God is doing in shaping me (or other aspects of my life and ministry)?

Can we discern and welcome the changes He is bringing?

Do they indicate that there is a lack of alignment, a difference or out-of-step aspects to my life in general, or in some particular are

How do we listen, look, trust and acquiesce more without giving up our responsibility and part? Could even our brokenness, resistance and doubt be part of what is repaired strengthened for the good as we the clay sometimes wrestle with the Potter in what He is doing and in how He is doing it?  

 

Hiding in our Hearts God's Word

I suppose there are some obvious ways of hiding God's Word within our hearts, as did the Psalmist. I would think it has to do with:

1.  Time:   to do with time-spent (how much, how long, how deep?); when and where and how(?) might also be factored in here. Would reading from a book be better, say than reading on-line (with attending links and distractions)?

2.  Understanding:  to do with seeking to understand what one is reading (inductive study, comparison, reading whole bits, getting time, order, history right . . .); what does it say? what does it mean? what does it mean for me? - for others? . . .

3.  Meditation:  to do with contemplation, musing, entering the story, personalizing (here Lectio Divina would be helpful)

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Lectio Divina (Latin for divine reading) is a traditional Christian practice of scriptural reading, meditation and prayer intended to promote communion with God and to increase the knowledge of the Bible. It does not treat Scripture as texts to be studied, but as the Living Word of God in which God addresses one personally.

Traditionally Lectio Divina has 4 separate steps: read, meditate, pray and contemplate. First a passage of Scripture is read, then its meaning is reflected upon. This is followed by prayer and contemplation on God's Word (and His words to me, as one might discern and seek to live and apply them).

The Mind and the Deep Heart - Influencers

'Your Word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You,' wrote the Psalmist.

What is the deep heart, and how can we 'hide' things there that will influence what we do - and don't do? Is this related to the 'renewing of the mind' to which St. Paul refers, in Romans 12? Is 'the heart' and 'the mind' different references (one Jewish and the other more Hellenistic) to the locus of thought, feeling and action?

Is this another way of talking about 'the centre' of our being, the depths of our soul, the deep well, the place within from which springs all thought, feeling and action?

To really make yourself go, 'hmmm,' read Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains.' (See Amazon's blurb to this book, at the bottom of this article)

Contemporary research reveals that our brains are very 'plastic.' Rather than being programmed and fixed with thoughts, impressions and feelings for life, they are constantly being rewired, with new 'rivulets' of the mind being formed by what we take in, and how we take it in, seemingly making new ways for interaction within and then responses without.

We are constantly being 'programmed' and reprogrammed in new ways. Various areas of the brain light up, expand to increase capacity for the unique interactions that fire there and that are being stored there. As this happens, other areas of the brain, those not being used (as much, or any more) are taken over by the new and expanding synapse-interactions.

What we put in, allow to come in, look at, hear about, think about, changes our brain, changes our mind. (Our eye is part of the brain. We take in through the eye and the image(s) cannot be filtered. The images are noted and stored within. Added to, stored in our brain, it changes us, whether we want it to or not)

If we don't keep up with our apprehending of the 'good' then the 'bad' will take over.

Hiding has the sense of 'the secret' - even of something precious. There is almost a 'sneaking' something out of the external world and bringing it within to be stored, protected and treasured. If we allow our minds to be filled (and filled up) with that which is not of God, not of the good and of the best of creation and of the plan and will of God for true human-ness, then there will sooner or later be no room for the good and the best, nor for the redemptive cure for the curse that ails us and the confusion that besets us.

This is not to hunker down and not think, nor some spiritually-inapt way of bubble-wrapping our lives, either externally or internally. It is to say, however, that we should be as careful as possible as to what is allowed to gain entrance to our deep heart, of what we look at, think about - and the ways we do it, and that despite our best efforts that we can't filter everything harmful out (we need a Redeemer, a Forgiver, a Healer to cleanse and set us free), and that we should seek to treasure and hide the those truths that God has revealed, both in Creation and through Revelation of Holy Scripture.

Above all, we need to invite into our deep person, to hide in our heart the Word that is Christ, the One in and through Whom God 'became flesh and dwelt among us for awhile' and who continues to indwell each follower of Jesus by His Spirit, those who have opened and who continually open their lives to His entrance-knock and entry.

If we hide God's Word in our hearts, God's Word will become fleshed out in our daily lives. If we don't, it won't; someone else's 'word' - will be lived out by us. With all that we take in, and when we don't pause or allow reflection for filter, to consider whether we agree or not with what is being presented to us, then we will be 'molded' into the ways of the world.

(The 'world' in Scripture (which we are not 'to love') is that which is in rebellion to God. It is 'all the areas of creation and human being and becoming' that have been influenced negatively, are broken and only show God's plan now in a distorted way, much as does a cracked or curved-out-of-shape mirror). There is 'total depravity' in the world in that everything, every place and every one has been influenced, shares, suffers, is broken, experiences sin. That is not to say that everything and every place and every one has been 'totalled' by sin and is the worst they can possibly be.)

But much of this is to talk only of individual disciples. The Bible speaks more about the collection of the People of God, the Commonwealth of Israel, the Community that is the Church, to and in and through whom He wills to set His world ('the cosmos' He so loved) free. This is another article. Yet also, however, the Church needs to hear God's Word and to store 'within its heart' too the eternal truths of God, so that the Church, re-membered and through all of its parts, may live out in our times the ways of God and the will of God. In this sense too, how we (as the ,) hear, listen, store, treasure and hide God's Word to us and for us and for our day, is as important as 'what now is that Word(?)' for our day. The 'what' and the 'how' of God's Word's entrance will influence the depth or shallowness of the way we live out the Message so desperately needed in our time.

Whose 'word' am I allowing primarily to shape my thinking, my life, my living? Immersed in what 'word' do I spend most of my time? Is my way of seeing life, my world-view, a product of God's Story - rich, diverse and compelling as it is, or am I being nuanced, courted and romanced by ways of thinking that I take in, which become my ways of thinking an acting, who's ends are 'Death' rather than the Life that Jesus called 'abundant.'

And not only 'am I hiding God's Word within' - but how am I hiding it, and what difference does this make?

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'The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains.'

“Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.

Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection.

Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.

Three Seeds

The Seed of the Woman 

Genesis 3:14f - Garden of Eden - So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

We think of the promises to Adam and Eve, in God’s purposes as revealed back even in the Garden. Right there in Genesis three, God speaks to the woman, and to the man, and to the serpent. That the seed of the woman will bruise the serpent’s head. The seed of the serpent will bruise the heel of the woman’s seed. One is a death blow – a capital blow (head = caput), which happened to Satan in the death of Christ and in His resurrection, victorious over the grave and sin and hell – over the old Serpent, the Devil. That’s one seed.

The Seed of Abraham

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

This involved & included: covenant: promises, covenant blessings (and curses)  - land, health, prosperity, long-life; covenant responsibilities – love, defend, worship, fight for, honour; covenant symbols – Sabbath, Circumcision, Passover

There’s another seed where God. Finlay Edge talked about this when I was a young pastor. Through you and through your seed I will bless all the nations (the ethne – the peoples) of the earth.  God comes to Abraham one day and says, in effect, I have not given up on this old world, I want to fix, to reclaim the world, I want to bless the world, I want to bless all the peoples of the world – and I want to do it through you; will you be my man? In fact I will bless you and make you to be a great people; and through your and through your seed (note singular), I will bless all the nations of the earth.’

It’s not talking about nation-states as we might today, say the way some colonial power divided up countries without awareness or care that they were dividing traditional tribes and provoking new problems that they thought they could solve but doling out pieces of geography on a map as if they were pieces of a game of RISK. It’s talking about different cultures, sub-cultures, people-groups in the world. We’re talking about Somalis as opposed to Oromos.

We’re talking about ski-crowd, as opposed to horse-back-riding crowd, or hockey moms and dads who are elsewhere other than church most winter Sunday mornings. The ways in which humanity slices and dices society – and also some aspects of the way that God has made us.

Abraham believed / obeyed God – and (says Paul in Romans), God credited righteousness (right standing and rightness) to him. Note ‘seed’ is singular and Paul goes on about this in Galatians to say that, really, Jesus is the promised ‘seed’ of Abraham, and – if you and I are ‘in Christ’ than we are blessed with faithful Abraham, with Jesus heir to all the covenant promise and blessings AND to join with Jesus (and God and Abraham, in spirit, in blessing all the ethne (the peoples) of the earth.

Ours is a missional task because, in paying attention to God (His Word, His will) and seeing that he so loved the cosmos (Jn 3:16 – that is a holistic word: of people, places and things – holistic, the whole of the world and all of its life, structures, purposes, outcomes, etc.)

Paul takes great pains in his letter to the Galatians to tell us that God was not talking only about, or primarily about Old Testament Israel, as the seed of Abraham – as sons and daughters, as servants of the living God. Of course, they are the children, the seed of Abraham (physically speaking), but Jesus in the Gospels told the heart-harded Pharisess of his day that God was well able to raise up children of Abraham the very stones around them (afterall he has already made all of us human creatures out of the dust and elements of the earth and the rest of us, in fact the larger part of us, physically consists of water.

Paul points out that the true circumcision, the true Israel, is no longer physical Israel but the Church, the NT Israel of God. It’s no longer physical, national but the spiritual seed. (That’s why Baptists only baptize those who by faith and repentance come to Christ as the spiritual seed of Abraham, rather than baptizing (in an Old Testament, even Judaizing way) those who are mere physical descendants of believing parents). The church is comprised of those who are circumcised in heart and who have been baptized as a sign of that being ‘cut off’ and that ordeal that implies may I be cut off and my progeny; may I be cursed and drowned if I renege on my covenant commitment and promise to you, O Lord Christ.

Paul in Galatians that ‘the Seed’ is singular, not plural – and that it refers to Jesus the anointed one (Messiah, the Christ). And if we are ‘in Christ’ we are the children of promise of faithful Abraham, to us now resound the covenant promises, blessings – and responsibilities. All of the covenant promises and all of the covenant purposes now are ours who with Christ are called bless all the ethne of the earth.

Paul sees the church as inheriting the corporate vocation of God's covenant people, Israel. Paul is concerned with defining and maintaining a corporate identity for his young churches, which are emphatically countercultural communities. His letters should be read primarily as instruments of community formation.

A loving, purpose-full God sends human messengers forth to declare his truth and reveal his plans - and to model His loving, righteous ways. As with Abraham, the father and founder of the by-then idolotrous, wandering-at-heart nation, Israel, God reveals that He wants to bring all of the world's peoples (and all places and things) back in line with God's original creation purposes - that He wants to bless all the peoples of the earth; and that He wants to do it through His People, all of them His servants - individuals, a nation, a Church that unique reveal and bridge His mercy and grace to all.

This calling and sending of individuals, a nation, pre-eminently in a Son and His Church, reveals the mission-heart of God, who through such frail instruments is re-creating all that has been distorted, marred or thwarted, vis a vis original Creation purposes. Isaiah is to speak for God - and so today are we as His Church, Christ’s Body on earth. Like him, we too are to go and (by the total witness of our lives and our lips) to call out to those who will hear, who will see their own need for cleansing and restoration for (and to) the purposes God has uniquely called them.

God comes still to us - as individuals, as His People, the Church today. We worship His holiness and power. We bow before Him. We acknowledge again our unworthiness to be near Him, let alone to serve Him. We are in awe that in fresh and powerful, still compelling ways, He reveals Himself and ourselves anew to us. And we remember that He comes near that (such privilege !) He might again release us to the tasks of showing and telling His purposes - His love, mercy and grace - everywhere, in all of life, to all people.

Abraham was ‘called out’ before he was ‘called to.’ Perhaps one cannot live a mission–shaped life if one does not leave somewhere, some people, some family, some friends, some things that are precious. One cannot go without having a sacrificial heart, willing to do without, do with less; willing to strike out in a new way for God along Life’s Journey – following, heeding, obeying.

One can live in the same house and with the same people and have ‘gone out’ and one can travel miles away and never really have ‘gone out’ in obedience and faith. The geography is not necessarily the point; the obedience, the heart-attitude, the inclination and intent is.

Abraham – God called – I want to bless all the peoples of the earth; and, guess what? – I want to do it through you. Through you I will bless all the peoples of the earth. Will you join me in this great reclamation project? Will you be my man in this? Will you dare to believe that through you and through your ‘seed’ this will be accomplished. You will be the father of faith, the father of peoples, the father of this faithful/obedient way of joining in what I am doing – called, elect for these purposes; unique, set aside, special, holy and active instruments and conduits of my grace, forgiveness, mercy, new starts – so that people through the second Adam (indeed the true ‘Seed’ of Abraham) can be fully restored to true humanity, to original creation-mandate purposes.

 The Seed that is Jesus

I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  (John 12)

Jesus – ‘seed’ (singular) - not seeds. See Paul's argument in Galatians 3:16 - The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ.

This means that all who are ‘in Christ’ are called not only to the blessings and responsibilities of Abraham and the People of God. We are also called to mission - the Mission of God; Jews and Gentiles by the Spirit of Jesus as a Light to the World.