Discipleship Letters 83-84

Discipleship Letter 83                                    April 18, 2010

“When we are dealing with church we are dealing with Christ. When we are dealing with Christ we are dealing with the church. We cannot have one without the other—no Christ without church, no church without Christ” [Eugene H. Peterson, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), p. 148.].

This is a hard reality that we have to accept. Whoever wants to deal with Christ, he must deal with the church. Whoever wants to grow up in Christ, he must grow with the church. In order to grow up, we have to grow with. I personally find it difficult; however, I find it so necessary to grow up in Christ along with growing with the body of Christ, for the body of Christ makes you think and rethink about how Christ has sacrificially dealt with the body in ministry.

Paul wrote particular letters to particular churches to exhort particular groups of believers to live (or walk) worthy of the calling. “When our walking and God’s calling are in balance, we are whole; we are living maturely, living responsively to God’s calling, living congruent with the way God calls us into being…God calls; we walk” (p. 32). Each particular group of believers walked out God’s calling in their local churches. Paul told them to grow up in Christ; Paul also told them to pay attention to the church—the place where we don’t want to pay attention to. Why? Because the church is so much like us—messy, imbalance, and ordinary. Can we say that when we pay attention to our messiness, our imbalance of life, and our ordinariness, we are growing up in Christ?

I think this is what it means, “When we are dealing with church we are dealing with Christ.”

--

Discipleship Letter 84                                    April, 25^th, 2010

“Boredom is a sentiment of disconnectedness. While we are busy with many things, we wonder if what we do makes any real difference. Life presents itself as a random and unconnected series of activities and events over which we have little or no control. To be bored, therefore, does not mean that we have nothing to do, but that we question the value of the things we are so busy doing. The great paradox of our time is that many of us are busy and bored at the same time” [Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1981), pp. 29-30.].

Our lives are filled with things. Yet we feel unfulfilled. I guess this is an invitation to the spiritual life. The un-fulfillment of life propels us to ask, “How should we truly live so that our lives are not only filled with, but also fulfilled by?” Our unfulfilled longings invite us to look for more. It invites us to look beyond our lives that “often seem like overpacked” (p. 23).

When our lives seem like overpacked, we feel bored, for we don’t find true value in most of the things that we are busy or preoccupied with. We then try not to do much. We feel guilty being unproductive. “Many of us are busy and bored at the same time.” I guess boredom is also an invitation to the spiritual life. In boredom, we are no longer preoccupied by external things. Rather, we are preoccupied by the self—the authentic self. It’s in “boredom” we have space to think about Jesus’ questions, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?” (Mk. 8:36-37 The Message)