No Surprises, Please!

No surprises (Photo credit: Pincel3d / Daniel)

I had the privilege the other week of assisting with a friend’s wedding in a Catholic wedding service.  One of the many surprises and joys of that experience was meeting and serving alongside Father Pablo Migone. He is a great guy.  I’ve enjoyed following some of his blog posts and found this one in particular to be very illuminating (Link to the whole article below).

On the nature of being surprised by God:

“I am convinced that God loves surprises…Unfortunately we oftentimes dislike surprises because they tend to destabilize things.  We want everything to be under control.  We get flustered and aggravated when things do not go exactly according to plan.  Yet consider this, had the Virgin Mary not been open to surprise and had she wanted to retain control over her life, she probably would have said “no” to the archangel.  The more open we become to the presence of God in our lives, the more He will surprise us through ordinary and extraordinary events.  The more we trust Jesus Christ has truly overcome the world, the more moldable we will become, gladly allowing His surprises to mold our will according to His own.

via Labyrinthine Mind: God of surprises.

What happens when prayer requests and acceptable sins go beneath the socially recognized surface?

Stained glass at St John the Baptist’s Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales. Illustrates Jesus’ description of himself “I am the Good Shepherd” (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). This version of the image shows the detail of his face. The memorial window is also captioned: “To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of William Wright. Died 6th November, 1932. Aged 70 Yrs.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I wonder what would happen in my life, and the life of those in the church, if we really believed that God knows everything about us and our sins, and still loved us enough to send His Son to die for those sins? And what if He really did love us enough after that to also send us His Spirit to be free to struggle with those sins, and gave us the gift of community to help us bear up under that struggle without having to fake, hide or pretend we’re anything other than redeemed men and women?

Saw this posing by a friend on Facebook (HT: Jeff Kerr) and thought it worth re-posting here for further discussion:

In a discussion elsewhere on the interwebs, I saw this statement. I think this gets directly to the heart of why most Christians in most contexts are afraid of confessing anything beyond “disorganization” and the like:

“I visited a Mom’s Bible study at a friend’s church years ago. When it was time for prayer requests, all the other moms said, “better time management” and “get organized”. This was met with understanding clucks and nods from the other moms. When it was my turn I said, “I yell at my kids.” I got a lecture about how wrong and damaging yelling was and how concerned the leader was that I would start “hurting my kids.” There was a moralistic lecture because there was no possibility of repentence and forgiveness.

Here’s what I’ve thought since then: Since grace is so cheap these days, our sin isn’t allowed to be very bad. That leads to confessing things like disorganization. Jesus’ blood can cover that one. But REALLY bad things? There’s no cure for them, so let’s not bring them up.”

via (5) In a discussion….

Public Service Announcement: Helping a brother out

I rarely will do this…but a friend of mine has asked for some help in getting support for his cause. Go here and then leave a comment saying something to the effect of “Keep it”.Thanks for your help on this matter!