What are you looking for?

“Imagine you are going on a journey across the continent.…All you know is that the journey will be long and arduous…Some things you are sure you will need, other things you think you might need, and still other things are packed because you cannot bear to leave them behind. At the start of the journey, you are not certain which is which.…The baggage you load for the journey includes many values…Some are clearly shared by everyone in the group. Others are not. Some are so important to an individual, that, unless everyone shares that value, they cannot be part of the group… Only the journey itself can test which values are most important to all.” [© 2009 Thomas G. Bandy – www.ThrivingChurch.com - tgbandy@aol.com Based on the book Moving Off the Map (Abingdon Press)]

When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" John 1:38

Both of these two quotations, written over 2000 years apart, are really asking us the same question: What do we need in order to become the people we want to be? I can just hear it now…someone is saying, “But that isn’t an easy question!” No it’s not, because if it was it would have been answered long ago, once and for all. The answer for each one of us is different, and is something that we need to work out for ourselves.

It is a little like decluttering the attic. After throwing out the ‘junk’ the first time, the next time you wonder why you ever saved that old book, and the following time there will be still more to go. Decluttering, at least in my house, is a process only completed after many tries.

To come to some understanding of what we are looking for, it is necessary to ask ourselves what values [as mentioned in the first story] are so important to us, that we cannot be part of a group that doesn't share that value. Sometimes personal experience will help us decide. We may have had an AHA moment, when we noticed something doesn't fit with us. Or it may require prolonged thinking, on our part

One way to declutter the mind, is to try and come up with 3 values that are non-negotiable for you at this time, and then to revisit these from time to time. While this sounds easy on the surface, it isn’t - or at least it wasn’t in my case. It was hard to find 3 values that were really non-negotiable. Many that I had thought were proved not to be so on further reflection, only values, that while they are dear to my heart, I could be part of a group that doesn’t hold them.

My ‘AHA’ moment came after attending West Hill United Church for a number of Sundays There the minister, Gretna Vosper declared herself an atheist. This didn’t bother me. The music was mainly familiar hymn tunes with new words. Wonderful! The people were welcoming, and remembered me from visit to visit. Amazing! In effect, this had everything I wanted in a church, yet I wasn’t comfortable. I wasn’t comfortable because there were no readings from the scriptures, or even mention of God or Jesus in all the times I was there. Apparently basing my spiritual values on a higher power is one of my non-negotiables.

If you haven’t given this some thought for a time, perhaps it is time to once again ask yourself what is is you really value, so the you too can answer that question Jesus asked his disciples so long ago, “What are you looking for?”

One of the famous quotes by Henry James, a American-born, British writer is: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”

I think just maybe he simplified it a little..lol.. Do you know what three things are important to you?

Comments

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 ...

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...

"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...

But that's NOT what I meant!

35 years ago now, when I was going to university, I remember having my essays read by someone who I trusted both for their knowledge of English grammar and for the subject matter. I can also remember saying on more than one occasion when looking over their suggestions for changes, ‘But that’s NOT what I meant!’ Somehow I felt that the validity of my ideas was being challenged. I had long ago forgotten about these exchanges, but they came to the forefront of my thoughts again this past week. Thinking about them from a distance, I now believe that my editor wasn’t deliberately changing my thoughts but rather was just putting what they perceived as the meaning I was trying to make into better grammar. At the time, however I saw it as an attempt to actually change the meaning. And how often this happens to us in our daily lives. Someone reads this blog and really likes it because it said …. and I have to go back to the written word to look at it again because I don’t remember hav...

Faces

“Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can’t love what we won’t experience.” ~Nancy Mairs Years ago the women’s group at the church that I was attending was talking about the arrival in the neighbourhood of a home for abused women. As various ideas were put forward as to how we might react to this, a couple of the ladies were very forthright in their disagreement. After all, they said, these women had asked for it! Despite this, the evening ended with a decision being made to start a clothing centre for these women who would arrive at the shelter with little besides the clothes on their backs. Being good Christian woman, both of these ladies signed up to take a shift or two a month. Imaging my surprise when a few months later one of them came up to me after church to tell me the ‘those’ women were just like everybody else! Now a story from a little closer to home. We spent three weeks in Cape Town, Sou...

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 ...

Hope springs eternal....

The season of Advent starts this coming Sunday, the beginning of the church year. I have decided to do something a little different and so for the next 4 weeks, I will be reflecting about a different verse in a well-known Advent hymn. Each Sunday in Advent, a candle in the advent wreath is lit in our homes and during our worship services. The lighting of the candle is usually accompanied by readings and/or singing. Here is the first verse of " A Candle is Burning ", with words by Sandra Dean and sung to the familiar tune of "Away in a Manger" . " A candle is burning, a flame warm and bright, A candle of HOPE in November's dark night While angels sing blessings from heaven's starry sky, Our hearts we prepare now for Jesus is nigh " Or as Desmond Tutu said, "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." As the days in the northern hemisphere grow darker with the shortest day of the year o...

The Reason for the Season

We are now in Advent, the church's season of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus and Christmas is approaching. Each year at this time my inbox gathers various & sundry emails about those terrible people who don't say Merry Christmas, who want to call it a holiday tree and not a Christmas tree, who want to take the Christ out of Christmas! Instead of worrying about what the other thinks and does, it behooves us to look at just what each of us is celebrating, personally. If we are honest with ourselves, I think we just might be surprised! As I listen to the Christmas/seasonal songs on the media and in the malls, I find myself asking myself the question: Just how many different things are we celebrating on December 25? Because I do think there is more than one celebration, probably more than two or three for most of us. Oh yes, we may say we are celebrating Christmas, because it is the birth of Jesus but is that really all….. or is it even one of th...

Resurrection???

I heard a ‘Resurrection Story’ this week … A computer had refused to turn on and so it was taken to the computer doctor. After a number of days the message was received that the computer had died and please come and pick up the ‘body’ for burial. However once it was safely home again, the owner decided that the computer could be resurrected with the help of running the ‘restore’ disc and some loving care. Now I would like to be able to say this story had a happy ending, but alas the next day found the owner in a store buying a new hard drive to replace the one that had died! So why do I call this a Resurrection Story? Because even with the new hard drive installed and the old one gone, those things that had been learned with the old will continue to be part of the new. The core of the ‘Resurrection story’ we will hear read from the Gospel and likely at least to be referenced in the sermon preached from the pulpit on Easter Sunday talks of the bodily resur...

Our Voices

‘ We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.’ -Malala Yousafzai What difference can one person [or one voice] make? That is a question I hear repeated over and over. We feel so helpless, so powerless in the face of whatever tragedy has befallen, whatever need there is. I know. I’ve been there nightly watching the human suffering on the TV news as I’ve seen the women and children huddling in the rubble hoping to escape from the next blast, the appalling conditions on our own reservations where again the children are doing without the necessities of life. ‘How can this be?”, I ask myself and feel even more hopeless. With all the focus on the Syrian refugee crisis in the news recently, my mind has gone back some 37 years to 1978 when I was part of a group that sponsored a boat family. In fact over the next 6 or 7 years that same group sponsored 27 people, at four different times, coming from Vietnam and South America. I clearly recall at ...

NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Search This Blog