Various comments from a group of seniors regarding the Christian Religion.
God and Jesus, who am I to doubt
My prayers are answered – there is a God
This is the only religion of love – Jesus never pushes, or leaves me or forsakes me
I grew up in Poland – we were all Christians
There are a lot of divisions
Have you heard of the phrase: Social media echo chambers?
With the opportunity to live in a global village, we can find enough people whose voices are the same as ours. As we converse online, the soothing words begin to echo more and more – around the chamber that we have decided to make our home. And we isolate ourselves to escape our fears.
In another twist, we are invited into the “fun” of escape rooms – a game you can play at selected venues near you! In this game, you look for a key to escape the dark of the prison you are placed into. These rooms would be the opposite of the echo chamber (or more rightly, the echo chamber that we didn’t want to be in). And we desperately seek to find the key to the exit.
New games, or old configurations imagined for a new generation?
A shout out to Luseland Alliance Church.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to preach and lead in communion. You are great people.
I spoke about the opportunity to boast – and we boast because we know God (Jeremiah 9:23-24). Then I moved to the one thing approach for this year – one word, one verse, one habit (with the example – one word: listen; one verse: Proverbs 4:20 – Pay attention to what I say, turn your ears to my words; one habit: whenever you shower, let the water clean your ears so you can hear – and ask God what he wants to say). And finally I pointed out that our God is too small – we need to enter this year as the year of the impossible.
Made for a good segue into communion where we remembered that Jesus gave us a new covenant – that everyone who follows Jesus is a part of this good news.
Then out to lunch with Minnie Kreizenbeck and a whole crew – around a round table at the local Chinese restaurant. What entertainment to talk life and to reflect on the past as we considered the history of the early days of the Luseland Alliance Church (which has been around for 90 years – beginning as the Prairie Gospel Tabernacle in Heart’s Hill, SK).
Thanks for the day!
I’ve been sitting in on an online forum these past few days.
Sponsored by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the forum looks at various topics that are current in the church realm in Canada. I was going to say the evangelical church, but that is to restrictive.
From a good statisticians/mathematicians standpoint, online forums are great. I can figure out how many comments each issue garners. I can review each topic. I can enter into a thread of conversation that is unlike the topic that originally attracted me.
This has been an education. And a bit of feast, if I say so myself.
I’m eating lots of alphabet soup. My old dictionary is being updated with each conversation.
The topic on welcoming refugees includes acronyms I don’t know or understand. How about IRCC, SAH, CBAC, UNHCR? The topic on Engaging the LGBT+ community redefines words or parses them very minutely. Emerging Leaders thread has been trying to define what an emerging leader is – by age? by influence? by predilection? . . .
What recipe book is best suited to your life right now? What words do you know that the “general” public doesn’t know? Does that help to determine what you focus in life is?