Rewritten

This Sunday was pretty eventful.  It started off with a great church service where I was again reminded that my faith will not simply work to change me unless the darkness that resides in my heart gets dumped out .  I guess that's the need of Bible Studies, church service and life groups, missionary work and the other ways we can be stewards to others that eventually works its way into your bloodstream, and then after time, you become changed.  My pastor said that whatever seeps into the well eventually has to come up in a bucket.  Why do we need God?  Because we leak!  Duh.

So here I am Sunday night, walking into Bible study.  There are two elderly people attending class.  One had a hard time turning around from a condition in his neck and the woman who entered had a facial expression that to me signaled the remnants of a stroke.  My "well" has been filled with pre-judgements and misguided stereotypes before.  When I served on team the first time on Emmaus, I know the Lord placed a certain man in my table simply because He was telling me that I needed to stop realizing on my eyes to see the qualities of someone.  As a teacher, I can easily pigeonhole my kids into groups of success and failure.  I used to cram through the records folders of future students so I could know everything about them.  But, the more I dug, the more I found out about their disciplinary or attendance history, I began to lose my passion for serving them.  Easy excuses permeated my thoughts.  "He'll never come to school anyway."  "He's not going to pass."  Etc.  The teachers lounge became that refuge for these thoughts, and what came out of my mouth were the result of infected well.

So my mind goes to these elderly few, and it wasn't a thought of sympathy or respect, but "How are they going to get through this class without keeling over right here on the table?"  But class started, and soon they had a chance to share their thoughts, and I thinking of how wrong I was.  I began to wonder if becoming older somehow would make everything in our lives calmer, more faithful, easy.  No kids to wrangle for bedtimes, no worries about work, a cat sitting in your lap purring the time away.  Perhaps when I am older the well in my heart will become filled with different priorities.  The frustrations of work, that kid that just wont listen at school, that girl who walks by at the mall wearing the yoga pants and the low-cut shirt (hey, I'll be old, so what would it matter what pretty girls wear, right?).  She mentioned a son she had who had once been a cocaine addict, and who now serves others get off drugs.  She says that peace comes from coming to terms with the parts of the Bible that you don't agree with.

Our sermon series this month, "Stuff Jesus Wouldn't Say," has a promo picture of someone erasing an unknown verse from the Bible using white out.  How true.  There is so much worldly conversations about what sin is bigger than the others.  Homosexuality, gay rights, gay marriage, divorce, pornography, abortion, women's rights, creation v evolution and poverty.  Both sides use various quotes, Biblical verses, and scientist to stake their claim for your vote, your money, your time, your blog space.  The Bible is filled with people acting badly, and lowly people becoming great.  What it doesn't do is contradict itself or always tell you what you want to hear about yourself.

In the Bible study I am taking, there is a section titled: The Human Condition.  This week it read, "The world was created for man."  This one line drive us into different tangents of world religions, Biblical truths and the peace quote from above.  What it made me realize was that the world wasn't made for me, it was made to glorify Him.  It wasn't made for me to squander my resources, my time, on endless quests and mindless journeys.  I was made to serve, to be a steward, to use the resources of time, family, my church and all my mind and facilities to further His glory.

So for this Bible study we are on a quest to rewrite the human condition.  Who says it's going to be easy?  Anyone with me?