Friday, February 1, 2008

Keep Moving

Sunday we invited some friends over, and had a great time doing just about everything you can do with Christian friends: sharing, praying, worshiping, hanging out, eating, telling stories, joking, laughing, staying up late. It was a good day.

At some point in our discussion, the importance of movement in the church came up. "Movement" as in "not stagnating." Not getting stuck on one particular aspect of God, or in one way of doing things. Movement is part of life, and if things come to a standstill, there is death-- if your heart stops, or your digestion stops.

So I thought to myself, the kingdom of God is like a bowel movement? I almost laughed out loud at the incongruity.

Then I remembered: several years ago, a friend of ours was caring for her elderly mother, who began to lose her appetite and be unable to eat, and began to slowly die. Finally our friend took her mother to the doctor, where it was discovered that the woman's digestive tract was completely plugged from one end to the other. There was no room for more, therefore, she was not only not hungry, she was nearly incapable of eating at all. (Some heavy duty laxatives soon put her right.)

And then I saw it. I was not having a teenage-boy-brain moment. I was being given insight. Bowel movements keep you hungry, and healthy. And alive.

I hear a lot these days about spiritual hunger. We are supposed to be hungry for God, to stay hungry. We even sing songs called "Hungry" and "We are Hungry." I think the way to stay hungry is to keep moving. To not get stuck in the last thing God did, but be child-like and adventerous enough to go where He's going next. To keep learning, and changing, and growing, using all that's gone before as nutritional building blocks, not monument building blocks.

To allow the Holy Spirit to do those things in us could be a little bit like taking doses of cod-liver oil. Isn't the anointing of the Holy Spirit often compared to oil? Well there you go.

Holy Spirit laxative for what ails ya.

Just keep movin'.

'Cause who wants to be part of the Constipated Church? Never heard of it? It's a new movement, I mean, non-movement.

(Ugh. Sorry. Couldn't resist. That really was a teenage-boy-brain moment.)

5 comments:

carrie said...

ROFL non movement...

Ok, I had to enjoy your little boy humor ;)

Now for the reality...that is an AWESOME insight...thank you for sharing it...

PrayerMom said...

I just read a very frustrated e-mail from a friend on the state of the church and her decision process relative to what she saw. I think the ways to respond when we see problems is to 1) check ourselves (as in take the log out of my own eye) 2) pray for the church that Christ loves to grow up in all things in Him 3) decide who and where your brethren are with whom you can function in harmony, and stay closest to them. God has amazing methods for forming connections over distance and other gaps to assure that we have a reasonably like-minded "family".

S said...

Heh. This is funny -- and wise.

Ice Cream said...

Ha ha ha! Oh man! It isn't often that I get to read profound spiritual ideas and potty humor at the same time.

What you say is so true. My mom always said (in reference to people saying they had learned all they needed to and they were just going to enjoy what they already knew) that if you think you've learned all God has to teach you then you don't understand God.

orneryswife said...

Well, I could go along with all of that except the cod liver oil part. Yuck! :-) I agree that we need to keep life in Christ new and even the Word says his mercies are new every morning. While there are aspects of God that never change, there are others that, if we allow them to, will continually transform our lives. My new favorite phrase from the Uppercase Living stuff is "Never let yesterday fill up today."

That is such a good reminder to me, not to let the traditions, the hurts, the fear, or even the successes of yesterday fill today so that I have no room for the new mercies God wants to cast in my life today.

Loved the analogy in this post, despite the "teen-aged boy brain" aspects. :-)
TM