Engaging Hearts
Wisdom cries aloud outside; She raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses, at the openings of the gates in the city she speaks her words. Proverbs 1:20-21
At my church's business meeting, one of the elders announced some major construction changes to the sanctuary. He likened the leadership's reasoning to that which keeps Wheaties among the bestsellers on the cereal shelves. Partly because what's on the outside of the box keeps adapting to the tastes of the culture, what's inside the box goes home with consumers.
Likewise, the Gospel adapts its idiom in order to be where the culture is. Even within the relatively brief Earthly ministry window within which Christ demonstrated so many aspects of His righteousness, He applied the Hebrew Scriptures by quoting them directly, He used events current to His listeners, He told stories, and He engaged bravely in direct confrontation. He was not wedded to fondness for a particular format. Instead, He who stood and stand astride time and trends used the passing fancies of men in order to engage our attention in our desperate sin problem, and to point us to Himself as the solution.
Steve Stockman both roots our position as Christ's own and heirs to His engaging heart's desire and challenges us to do likewise. Stockman exhorts, "Let the systematic theologian spell it out. Let the artists throw out thoughts and slants, maybe even slants no one else has thought of. They should give another view of something familiar to help us learn more about it. They should deal with love, life, good, evil, God, the world and faith. Many of the biblical writers were poets more than they were theologians. Poets and prophets ranted and raved, and storytellers wrote great yarns that all had different slants on God and life and faith."
Instead of letting our speech be unreflective, therapeutic spillover of our vexation of the moment, we can choose words, timing, and formats from a deep love for our Lord and those He has put in our lives. Maturity, observes Richard Rohr in Falling Upward, means we have a range of responses, and not all of them are predictable.
At my church's business meeting, one of the elders announced some major construction changes to the sanctuary. He likened the leadership's reasoning to that which keeps Wheaties among the bestsellers on the cereal shelves. Partly because what's on the outside of the box keeps adapting to the tastes of the culture, what's inside the box goes home with consumers.
Likewise, the Gospel adapts its idiom in order to be where the culture is. Even within the relatively brief Earthly ministry window within which Christ demonstrated so many aspects of His righteousness, He applied the Hebrew Scriptures by quoting them directly, He used events current to His listeners, He told stories, and He engaged bravely in direct confrontation. He was not wedded to fondness for a particular format. Instead, He who stood and stand astride time and trends used the passing fancies of men in order to engage our attention in our desperate sin problem, and to point us to Himself as the solution.
Steve Stockman both roots our position as Christ's own and heirs to His engaging heart's desire and challenges us to do likewise. Stockman exhorts, "Let the systematic theologian spell it out. Let the artists throw out thoughts and slants, maybe even slants no one else has thought of. They should give another view of something familiar to help us learn more about it. They should deal with love, life, good, evil, God, the world and faith. Many of the biblical writers were poets more than they were theologians. Poets and prophets ranted and raved, and storytellers wrote great yarns that all had different slants on God and life and faith."
Instead of letting our speech be unreflective, therapeutic spillover of our vexation of the moment, we can choose words, timing, and formats from a deep love for our Lord and those He has put in our lives. Maturity, observes Richard Rohr in Falling Upward, means we have a range of responses, and not all of them are predictable.
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