Beautiful Folly

I'm at the big, downstairs table. Seth has fish stick crumbs all over his hands, just waiting for a turn at the computer...

I love this chaos.

The mess is ubiquitous.

The systems too thin for the weight of our human debris.



The earthly man in me--the one who loves order, ease, consumption--recoils at humanity smeared all over our life.

The heavenly man in me--the one who has the fresh smell of rescue on him, demolished in humility--cries out "Grace to it! Grace to it!!!"



I've been looking into websites of people who are far down the road in establishing Christian communities, house church networks, and other "progressive" types of embodiments of the "Way".

Frankly, I'm humbled and I just want to cry for the blessing that God is giving us.



You see, I've been struggling for years with a yearning, a hunger, an emptiness that has filled me...

A thirst that killed my taste for fine wine...

I've been rendered a limping pilgrim--Jacob's trouble--school of the prophets and whatnot... "Ruined for the ordinary" as some have put it.



I was exposed to something.

Now I'm changed.

It has been passive, in a way. Yet I'm addicted, too.

Like when someone contacts with radiation and has to deal with aftereffects. Rosewood. Whatnot...



This morning, I was talking with some fine folk at a local coffee swill.

The topic of help was the focus of discussion.

How helping is a huge manifestation of love... then we got into it and started talking about the poor and the people who knock on our doors, once they find out we give.

We were talking about "wasting" on them. "strategizing" how to love them well in meeting them there, at the door.

about how love looks in the grind of the world...



The thought of wasting on the hopeless reminds me of Christ, and how he wastes on me. And how is it that I'm not poor? I love the reminder.



It's rubbing the rock in my pocket. The white one with a new name on it. The one I can't take out till the last day...



And what is hopeless, anyway? And don't we learn more as we go? And hasn't enough fear and selfishness constrained our money to ourselves and a little for the plate for long enough?



We discussed a "what if"What if you gave 10 dollars every week to a guy you know is a drug addict. You figger he's spending it on drugs, but you're not smart or motivated enough to come up with something better... You just have a bit of cash and you give it. And after four years, you've spent about 2000 dollars, right? And he knows you better. And by then he knows you know he's just lying and he starts to really think you might be someone he can talk to... And then he really lets you know what he needs... And things get changed!



Ten dollars a week is truly a dumb way to give to God. But this is the kind of thing it breaks loose.



No kidding. Oh, add in that a few times, he got angry at you and curses you... and that he robbed you (but you didn't know it was him).

When you get to heaven, your constant, durable kindness will be rewarded, no?



One of the people I was with this morning said, "yeah, but if I waste on the poor like that, what will I put in the offering plate?"



Do you think the world could see Jesus better if we kept our giving to the level of plate action we see today?

I think we need to spend our livelihood on each other.

Giving to get each other free!

And helping all the poor in our neighborhood!

Giving to all who ask.

Lending without expecting in return...

This comes from the Bible...

It's beautiful folly. beautiful folly.



and we're banding together to get beautifully foolish, here.

I visited a group of beautiful fools about a year ago.

they were a community of Christians, bound together to reach their city, living in community, loving and worshipping Jesus in a deep, real way.



I expected a warmer welcome. I found them selfish, closed, cold, and blind. I criticized them. They seemed haughty and self-satisfied (like I feel I am). They were cool and they knew it. I was an outsider to them, just like in the churches where I've seen JEsus pushed to the side.

I was disappointed.

They didn't know some of the things I thought they should.



But I hope I can be like them. Because today, I see that they're way better than I am. That I can only hope to make the kind of mistakes that they have. I'm way behind them. And as for all those churches I mentioned--Grace to it! Grace to it! They have made all their mistakes trying to serve Jesus. May we make ours with them...



I'd be honored to make twice as many mistakes and fall short at half their distance!