Tea Time

I just finished a post on my academic blog. As I requested, I am being made to really think about some issues. Good things to think about. Deep things to think about. Sometimes dark things to think about. This author lady is an extreme feminist. I am just not. And that's okay. But it's not a case of I'm right and she's wrong. Understanding that and trying to understand where she is coming from is exhausting. So exhausting, in fact, that I had to lock my door, put in headphones and concentrate on coming up with a review of her work. Well, the first 42 pages of her work-- the other 260 pages are for another day. It is important to me to really decide where I stand, so that I can appreciate another angle and be okay with that it isn't mine. For tonight, I'm there. 

I was tempted to put the book away, shut that blog and watch the Office. But I felt a real tug to this blog. Not because being here and posting will get me my "Jesus points" of the day. Because being here requires that for all of the tough issues I am wrestling for academia, I wrestle with and focus on something spiritual. Not religious or pious, but personal. Something Christ-like. An aspect that I've been sorely missing in the past few days. I'm preparing myself to do Beth Moore's Esther study-- an undertaking that will take a good amount of time. It will be another task, another aspect of my schedule. But I am becoming more and more convicted that for all the effort I am putting into knowing more about this world, I should pay a little more attention (a lot more attention) to knowing its Creator. Does that sound cliche? I hope not, because I want more than anything to be sincere about it. Maybe if more people (including me) were, it wouldn't sound so cliche. And a true knowledge of God would be more evident to those around us. I've been a lousy example of this in this first week back, even after the sermon at Bay Area Community Church last Sunday warned of "inoperable faith." The kind that isn't able to love a neighbor, save a marriage, trust finances, carry grief. Grief like that of this woman. Bonnie's husband died on January 5, leaving her with a 23 month old and a baby on the way. I cannot imagine it. But I want to know the God who is carrying Bonnie through. Because knowing Him is the closest I will ever come to being "prepared" for that type of thing. 

I want an operable faith. A faith that produces works, like James talks about. And I want my works to reflect a faith like that of Paul or Abraham. That in everything I do, boasting would no be my final reward. Whatever I may have to boast about on this earth, whatever knowledge I gain is quickly and vastly belittled before God. 

It takes a little tea time to be set straight. It takes a lot more time to set out and do. According to Bay Area Community Church pastor Greg St. Cyr, setting out and begin operable requires three things:

1. reclaim: ask questions, be discipled

2. risk: set a mission, disciple

3. release: give up time and resources

Oh, if I would learn to just hand it over!