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!
