You! Jonah!

By Thomas Carlisle

And Jonah stalked
to his shaded seat
and waited for God
to come around
to his way of thinking.
And God is still waiting for a host of Jonahs
in their comfortable houses
to come around
to His way of loving.

I keep a bit of a journal beside me when I read so I can jot down my thoughts and some quotes from whatever it is I happen to be reading. I usually also write down the author, book and page number when I do.

But sometimes I forget.

The above poem, I believe, was a quote from a quote. I think John Piper quoted it in his book Let the Nations be Glad from Thomas Carlile's book You! Jonah!

Every once and a while I like to go through my notebook and read through my notes. I find it interesting to see what it is I was learning at that point, what really struck a cord in me at that time, and how much it strikes me now. I also like to read them because I not only forget to write down where I got the quote, I tend to completely forget the quote. Like this one!

I like this poem a lot. I think it describes us as a society and a church quite accurately. But there's a bit of irony in all of it. We might read this poem and agree; we need to love as God loves us! We need to get out there and be love!

But then we don't.

We feel we've changed by reading this poem. We think we're different.

But we're not.

We're still sitting in our comfortable houses.

Like right now. I can't speak for you, but I'm sitting in my house and I'm quite comfortable.

The same goes for movies. We watch a movie like Shindler's List, Water, Bowling for Columbine, Hotel Rwanda, Life is Beautiful or even Crash and we feel changed. We feel like we've made a difference in the world just by watching this movie.

And the same also goes for our reading of the Bible. How often do we read over the end of Matthew 25, agree that Jesus is saying something important, but then don't actually change anything in our lives. We may feel different because we learned something, but we don't act any different. And if you're not acting any different,

did you really learn anything??

Jesus tells us that when the Son of Man comes, He will separate us into groups.

Group Sheep will be those who fed the hungry, who gave the thirsty something to drink, invited strangers into their homes, gave clothes to those who needed them, took after the sick and visited inmates.

I think the other group (Group Goat) will be full of people who just watched movies, read books and this passage - but stayed in their comfortable houses.

Group Sheep showed love.
Group Goat just watched movies about love.

I'm not dissing movies, especially not these ones. These movies are awesome.

But the next time something really strikes you as true and Biblically sound, don't hold yourself back! Don't contain it! Jesus tells us that HE is the one we are helping when we show love to those who don't normally receive it.


Jesus is hungry.
Go feed Him!

Jesus is thirsty.
Go give him a drink!

Jesus is homeless.
Go give Him a room!

Jesus is shivering.
Go give Him clothes!

Jesus is sick.
Go look after Him!

Jesus is in jail.
Go visit Him!


PS, I've realized my blog is a bit on the dull side visually, so I'm hoping to remember to upload a photo or two from now on with each post. But I'll probably forget...

This is the sun through the trees at the ROOTS day. Was pretty awesome.

Other picture is a baseball at my church picnic. Also fun!

hmm

I went to a mission conference in Ancaster tonight. I plan on going all day Wednesday and Thursday as well. Should be pretty sweet. Tonight, the speaker (Rev. Victor Atalla) mentioned something that I thought was neat. Something that Donald Miller kinda refers to in Blue Like Jazz and I think I've kinda mentioned in a blog or two.

He was speaking about bringing Christ to Muslims, and he specified, not to bring someone to Christianity, but to bring them to Christ. I think that's such a good way to look at it. If you're trying to bring someone to Christianity, you're trying to bring them to YOUR definition of Christianity. And the chances are pretty good that they don't share the same definition. They may have been hurt by Christians or not view them very well, so why would they WANT to become one? Even still, your Christianity may not 'work' for them. Even MORE still, Christians have messed up a lot in the past. We don't have a good reputation to everyone. Christ, however, is perfect. That's who WE should try to be like and who we should show/tell others how to be like.

Instead of bringing them to become a Christian, bring them to Christ.

Don't try to get people to be like you, get them to try be like Christ.

It's who you're trying to be like anyway. Skip the middleman!


PS, if you want to read a really good book about how Christians are seen to the average Joe, read the book unChristian. It's pretty interesting. The title refers to how we call ourselves Christians, yet often act unChristian, and how the world notices our unChristian behaviour.


Anywho, I posted some pictures of Irish-land. Stopped off there on my way home from Nigeria. Find them here, here, here and here!