Skip to main content

"Nudgement"

As we progress through the season of Lent, we are urged by the lectionary aa well as by the words spoken from the front of the churches to consider how we live and what we do with our lives. Many of us take up a new spiritual practise perhaps denying ourselves something we enjoy or adding something to our daily routine that we think will benefit our spiritual growth in the long run.  What we can seen to be doing is in fact judging our lives and then trying to make them  better by doing ‘A’, ‘B’, or ‘C’.

Quite a while ago I received a note from one of the readers of this blog and it has stayed with me over the time since it landed in my inbox.

‘I just coined the term "nudgement" for myself this morning.  I was thinking of how EFM interprets "judgement" as something that surprises you or that you weren't expecting, which is a gentler notion of "judgement" than some of us grew up with, something that is enough out of the ordinary to urge us out of our ruts or old conceptions of things.  Maybe what we perceive of as a breaking of faith is an urge to a different kind of faith.... not that there aren't enough soul destroying events going on in the world and enough jerks to deceive us and enough rugs pulled out from under us to upset our nice calm lives, too!’

While I really like the word  ‘nudgement’, which seems to be infinitely softer than the word judgement and yet has a sense of forward movement to it, it also seems to express the sense of judgement the reader reminds us of  - ‘something that surprises you or that you weren’t expecting’. The examples the reader gives of just what those things are that surprise her or that she wasn't expecting, are surely things we have all experienced at one time or another.

But my question to myself [and to you] this Lenten season is do we recognize these things as ‘nudgements’? Do they surprise us? Do they urge us out of our rut? But more importantly, what are we being 'called' to do about them? 

 Have they, in fact, made any difference to our lives?

Comments

  1. J!July 27, 2019 at 8:29 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. J!July 27, 2019 at 11:17 PM

    Interestingly, I just now thought of this concept, 'nudgments' while drafting a blog post on the differences between Christ's chastening of His own versus judgments to those who are not in Christ. To us who are saved, Jesus took upon Himself our judgment(s), but as we walk out our salvation, He lovingly disciplines us as disciples and pupils. Here's the rub: when we are not attentive to His nudgments, He ramps up the pressure because of His love. Eventually, with enough pressure, stronger nudgments may very quickly LOOK and FEEL like harsh judgments! Lesson: be daily attentive to learn, hear and follow His voice saying, 'This is the way. Walk in it.' In John 10, Jesus iteratively released faith-filled words about us, His future followers, concerning our ability to learn/know, hear and follow His voice. When we align our faith, words and actions with what He says about us, the FRUITS of His faith-filled words will develop and manifest in our lives. As we do, we will more easily perceive His nudgments, and will no longer require discipline that may look and feel like judgments. His nudgments will become less surprising, and we will more easily/quickly follow/obey them. Hope this is clear. Bless The Lord~
    J!
    Life in the Key of 'J!'

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This, too ...

  ‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.’   -Hebrews 11:8  Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, says this, too, will pass . Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Official of Health for Toronto, says this, too, will pass . Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada, says this, too, will pass . But will it really??? Some days this feels like an unending struggle with just one tiny step forward and not just two, but more like a dozen steps back.  Of course I’m talking about COVID-19 with all its associated variants. We might even be forgiven for rewriting that well known quote from Ecclesiastes to read…. For everything there is a season,…but  just not for this ! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest,  might well have been talking about COVID   when he penned the lines below: We should like to skip  The ...
1 comment
Read more

Challenging Faith

“All giving constitutes a challenge to faith because there is no guarantee of a return.” When I heard this statement as part of a sermon on Rogation Sunday, my ears pricked up and my mind started to spin. The rest of the sermon had things to say as well, but this sentence is still the one that has stuck with me. It made, and is still making me think! For those of us who identify ourselves with the church, whenever we hear the word ‘givings’ our minds go immediately to what we put on the offering plate each Sunday and for that we expect, but are not guaranteed, that the church will be there for us when we need it; for weddings, baptisms, funerals and other rites of passage. However what intrigues me about this quotation is that first word. “ ALL giving constitutes a challenge …” And how true it is! Each time we ‘give’ something away and it doesn’t have the expected return, it is upsetting and we have all had that experience. I remember many years ago s...
Post a Comment
Read more

'God's Presence'

“God's presence is incarnated in the times and places when and where people are willing to be vulnerable and allow the spirit to work unimpeded.”  ~ Quoted anonymously While reflecting on this statement, the story of the woman with the hemorrhage kept coming into my mind. It is told in all three of the synoptic gospels, but with a difference: in Matthew the woman does not come forward to admit  publicly  that she had touched Jesus’ cloak. If we look at the story in Mark and Luke, we see in both accounts that she was unnoticed in the touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, even by the disciplines, and could have just gone away healed and unknown [as she did in Matthew].  But although she was frightened of what Jesus might say to her because, after all, she had made him ritually unclean, she came forwarded and admitted that she was the one who touched him. And THAT act was what made the most difference to her life.  Yes, she had been healed physically...
7 comments
Read more

"A Leap of Faith"

"Leap of faith - yes, but only after reflection"        -  Søren  Kierkegaard "Much of Kierkegaard's authorship explores the notion of the absurd: Job gets everything back again by the virtue of the absurd (Repetition); Abraham gets a reprieve from having to sacrifice Isaac, by virtue of the absurd (Fear and Trembling); Kierkegaard hoped to get Regine back again after breaking off their engagement, by virtue of the absurd (Journals); ... the Christian God is represented as absolutely transcendent of human categories yet is absurdly presented as a personal God with the human capacities to love, judge, forgiver, teach, etc."  (ex cerpt from   Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - emphasis mine) Just what does Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’ mean . . . especially if we consider that,   as he also postulates,  religion is ‘absurd’ [or as the dictionary says, ’ inconsisten...
3 comments
Read more

"Property of Jesus"

Have you seen people wearing shirts that say "Property of Jesus"  Perhaps you have seen them for sale in a Christian book store? Have you stopped to consider just what that motto says about the wearer, or more importantly just what it might say about you? 'Property' in a business dictionary, is defined as: " Quality or thing owned or possessed . In Law: Article, item, or thing owned with the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment,...  " So if we are the property of another, then they have complete control over us. We are in fact their slave . According to the dictionary, a slave is " someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay ; a person who is strongly influenced and controlled " I wonder if the persons wearing these shirts ever consider what they are actually proclaiming? If in fact they are the 'Property of Jesus', does that not mean that they have no choic...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Allegory

Once upon a time there was a knight and his lady, who lived contently for many years in a southern kingdom. As they aged however, their manor became too big for them and so they decided to relocate in a northern kingdom where smaller quarters were available. They left their friends of many years with a sad good-bye and set off for new adventures. They settled quite happily in their new abode, and joined in all the activities and merry-making until one day, they had to drop out of some of the activities because of their declining years.  No one came to ask them why they were no longer taking part. Instead the rest of the folk in that kingdom ignored them and it became very lonely for the knight and his lady The king suggested that they might be happier is a neighbouring kingdom and so they moved a short distance and set up house one more time.  This time though things went well for many years.  Then the king died. The heir apparent had many different ideas about what ...
2 comments
Read more

"On Giving Thanks"

Thanksgiving Is usually one of those ‘easy’ times for me.   It is easy to be thankful living with abundance, in safety, with family and friends – so many things to give thanks for, so many blessings undeserved. Some years and for some people, it is not so. What would Thanksgiving mean to me then? How would I deal with it? I came across this prayer not long ago ~           For that which was           For that which is           For that which will be          Thanks be to God And I began to wonder ~ Is the real meaning behind Thanksgiving not so much the ability to be thankful for those things we have in abundance? After all, that is easy.  But rather to be thankful for everything we have been given or experienced in life, or are now experiencing: the highs and the lows, the mountain-top experiences and the valleys of death, the deserts and the abundant har...
4 comments
Read more

What We Really Need....

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson Not long ago, after helping a friend, they made the comment that they didn’t know how to thank us for all we had done. My answer was not to worry, that it had made us feel useful, adding that was something that didn’t happen all that much in our lives any more. I had realized earlier this year, that we were, in our seventies, officially empty-nesters for the first time with both grandchildren away to university and only their parents and ourselves left to our own devices in the house we shared for 15+ years!  And it was a strange feeling, one of being suddenly less involved in life. However this latest experience with our friend led me into thinking more deeply about the need we have to be useful.  After all we have been useful all our lives. As children we probably had a pet o...
Post a Comment
Read more

An apple a day...

I’m sure we all have heard the old adage “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”. The original phrase ‘‘Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread” had its first recorded use in the 1860, but the concept is quite old going back to Roman and Anglo-Saxon times. I know I heard it many times during my growing up years.  And I must admit that in late years I have tended to relegate apples to an occasional rather than a daily fruit. That, however, is about to change! The following landed in my inbox not long ago and made me rethink my relationship to the lowly apple. Any one of these claims is certainly a reason to add apples back into my daily diet. “Did you know that –according to Medical News Today, which ranks apples as the Number One healthiest food based on research studies– apples can potentially: * Have the same effect as statins in preventing vascular deaths… * Improve neurological health… * Prevent dementia… * Reduce risk of st...
Post a Comment
Read more

To Mask or Not.....

  It was you who formed my inward parts;  you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139:13-14(a)     I have spent most of my life trying to fit in…. sure that there had to be something wrong with me. I simply preferred the company of a book or one or two friends to a  more lively or congregant setting. I found  myself unwilling to take part in discussions as my words were either ignored or met with upraised eyebrows. Over the years I worked at ‘fitting in’ until I finally realized that that wasn't who and what I was. Now the pandemic restrictions  are being  or have been erased, I find that old feeling returning. Perhaps you’re an extrovert and glad to be in the midst of people again, to eat  inside restaurants and bars, to go to indoor parties,  to take a bus trip, to go to the theatre, or to have people to your home. While on the other hand, I am not comfor...
2 comments
Read more