Abi's Lent: Day Two

Since Scot's book The Jesus Creed doesn't have 40 chapters, I will be taking the liberty of blogging about a few chapters more than one day--depending on what I'm thinking. And since my first day's post was late at night after a very busy day, I'm going to finish up my thoughts about that first chapter today.

I'm using the Jesus Creed Journal I created to go along with this 40 Days Living The Jesus Creed Challenge, so this is all turning out very nicely.

Yesterday's post talked a bit about the Hebrew word used for love: ahab. Part of my word study revealed that this word means the ardent and vehement inclination of the mind coupled with tender affection. It goes on to reveal that ahab may refer to the unspeakable love and tender mercies of God in the covenant relationship with his people.

(By the way: I just love my Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible (NIV) published by AMG International, Inc. -- it is the perfect "workhorse" Bible for word study freaks, like The Abbess!)

For any of you familiar with The Abbess and her cHesed glasses, you will probably now understand yesterday's revelation that ahab and her favorite Hebrew term/concept cHesed are synonyms.

During this introductory chapter about the Jesus Creed, Scot notes Jesus' revolutionary twist to the ancient Hebrew creed: Not only are we to love God, we are to love others as well; and to love God means to follow Jesus. It is important to let that sink in a bit....

No longer can the Jews hide behind fervent love for God (yet taking advantage of, and frequently "othering" God's precious Eikons). Jesus tied the love of God to the love of others. And more than that, he said that if you want to practice really loving God, you must follow him.

This would be why he quickly became so very unpopular with the Jewish leaders....

This is also why the Jesus Creed and its focus on this ahab love of God and others reminds me so much of New Testament cHesed. Faithful covenant-keeping is just as important as making covenant. And Jesus and Paul defined entry into, and faithful keeping of, the New Covenant with terms and concepts that have been boiled down to this simple formulary:

In Christ + Like Christ = With Christ.

• If I am In Christ, I am part of the New Covenant, an adopted child of God and connected with the Father and the Holy Spirit--I am part of the perichoretic, interpenetrating Eternal Community.
  
• If I am Like Christ, I am loving God and loving others--thereby faithfully keeping covenant.
• If I am In Christ and Like Christ, then the promise of being With Christ -- now and forever -- is mine.
  

This is so simple yet so important. Please take time to do some hard and deep thinking about this in context with what you know about being a follower of Jesus Christ.

I'm sure that there will be more opportunities to get deeper into cHesed as I read The Jesus Creed ... so I don't want to put too much into any one post.

Go with God.

Abi's Lent: Day One

Well, I hadn't intended to wake up at 3:45 this morning (if I had done so on Tuesday, I could have had one of Scot McKnight's books for free ;^) ), but the first thing that popped into my mind was The Jesus Creed--so I said it in my heart, along with a prayer for returning to sleep.

Sleep did not come for a long while, so I had plenty of time to ponder Lent and The Jesus Creed. I ended up repeating it a number of times before I got back to sleep. Fortunately, the boys had a two-hour late start for school, so waking up at 8:30 was not catastrophic. God, as I often say, helps me because I am so pathetic.

After everyone got off to school, I picked up Scot's book and read chapter one. Had some great thoughts about "love" ... and had to do a little word study to see just which word for "love" was used in these two passages (Deut. and Lev.) -- it was ahab. I could spend my entire day, every day, doing word studies!

Of course, Scot's definition of "love" was so much like my definition of cHesed, that I had to make that note in my margin. And then I went on to study the word ahab and notice that one of the synonyms for it is cHesed. Not surprised at all. I'll be pondering this more.... but it's late and I've got to get to sleep (and, hopefully, stay asleep).

I did, however, have to stop and mourn the horrible irony of the sullying of this word for outrageous love by that most notorious King of Israel: Ahab. Sigh....

I'm not sure whether I'll post every day, but I just might ... so stay tuned! It's not too late to join us for the 40 Days of Living The Jesus Creed Challenge. Check out the tools I designed here.

Go with God.

Loving God with All My Mind

Wow, my friend Michael Kruse has posted a very dynamic challenge to the Pollyanna-mentality raging, especially in this time of political changing of the guard. Please do read it...and spend some quality time at his blog whenever you can. I mean it!

The Abbess frequently bemoans the simplistic thinking raging everywhere: church, education, economics, politics -- you name it! I remember reading how M. Scott Peck, M.D., said he was once talked into giving a seminar on how to think. He said he'd never do one again because it is very difficult to think well and the people who attended the seminar complained LOUDLY about how difficult it was -- which made it utterly exhausting for him to lead.

I know the feeling! :^(

Somehow, we must embrace the difficulty of thinking well. I'll add it as another dimension of the Purple Martyrdom. I am grateful that the Lord has brought some very good thinkers across my path, but we must be diligent in our pursuit of this oft-neglected discipline. None of us alone can do it. We must intentionally look for those who think deeply and diversely and ask God for wisdom and discernment.

Besides Michael Kruse, my brother Abbots at The Abbey help me in this arena...as well as those you will find in my sidebar. The challenge is to not be overwhelmed with all the conversations out there, but to focus on the ones that make you think about something in a different or deeper way. Loving God with all our minds is part of our worship and brings us nearer to The Truth.

That's where I want to be, closer to The Truth every day. Then, what I say and do has a better chance to ring True -- give a more accurate reflection of the God whose Image I bear -- to each of the "others" that I am commanded to love, even as I love myself.

Christ, have mercy.

As I contemplate tomorrow and the beginning of the Jesus Creed Lent Challenge, I will ponder this especially as I ask God to show me how to better love him with all my mind.

Go with God.

Abi's Lent Challenge Tools

These are the PDF files I've developed to go along with Scot McKnight's 40 Days Living The Jesus Creed for Lent Challenge.

The Jesus Creed 40 Day Challenge--Accepted!

The Abbess is joining Scot McKnight and the tribe over at Jesus Creed for 40 Days Living the Jesus Creed for Lent...starting on Wednesday.

For those of you who have not read Scot's book, The Jesus Creed, I've included it here from his original post:

Here it is:

Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

Scot has a new book coming out in a month or so with this same title, not necessarily meant for Lent, but for any time.

The Jesus Creed resonates with me strongly because it is at the heart of both cHesed and Covenant. Taking 40 days to intentionally bring these words and the resulting actions into our lives is a wonderful foundation from which to strengthen one's discipleship.

Here's the rest of the Scot's challenge, which I've divided into the three separate steps:

I am asking you to begin and end each day of Lent (beginning Wednesday) by reciting the Jesus Creed.

And, whenever it comes to mind throughout the day, I am asking you to recite it again.

In your evening recitation of the Jesus Creed, we are asking you to give some moments of recollection to confess any sins against the Jesus Creed throughout the day.

So there you have it. I'm going to be making up a number of 4x6 cards with this printed on it and place them at strategic places so that I'll see them throughout the day.

I'm looking forward to what God will be doing in the hearts, lives and neighborhoods of those of us who embrace this challenge.

Go with God!

1-2-3 Meme...Spreading Like Wildfire!

Brother Maynard tagged the entire internet, first. Then, VikingFru tagged me (and Kingdom Grace had tagged her). And then Sonja tagged me...and so here I am, with the rules for the Meme ... although I'm not tagging anyone else, because almost everyone I know has already been tagged ;^) ... except I am going to tag Annette!

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

I’m reading Clinton E. Arnold’s “Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians” page 123, paragraph 2, last 3 sentences (you didn’t say which 3, did you?) [Note: Brother Maynard's rules were slightly different from what I have gotten from the others.]

“It cannot be assumed that the fears of these converts about the evil spiritual realm were immediately allayed by their new-found faith. It would also be erroneous to assume that their conversion to Christianity would have brought about a complete forsaking of all their former means of protection from the hostile “powers.” Even if many (or the majority) of Christians did totally turn aside from their former apotropaic practices, some at least would have faced a great temptation to combine their Christian faith with magical techniques.”

Annette...did you see that you have been tagged, sister???

Reproduction: Nature or Nurture?

Well, I am sorry that it has been so long...that's what happens when one is hibernating, I guess. ;^)

I've been collecting snippets of things in a place for when I have time to blog...and thought that this one would do for such a time as this--that being a time when I still don't have time. :^)

Anyway, Brother Maynard posted an interesting tidbit about The Reproductive Environment.

Here is the majority of the text of the comment I left:

The Abbess, being a bit of an entrepreneur, believes that the "entrepreneurial spirit" is another manifestation of the "apostolic spirit", as it were. And I concur that encouraging and supporting this spirit in one will tend to awaken it in others, while squelching it in one will often squelch it in others.

There are, however, always those "mavericks" who will move out with no support (I tend do be in this category) and build their case from scratch and then find ways to convince others of its merits. The "organizations" from which these mavericks come would not tend to reproduce more...and the maverick's efforts may not necessarily reproduce others--unless they are successful at "reverse mentoring" (a phrase coined for my chapter in "Voices") and encouraging others where they were not themselves encouraged.

I guess I would say that there are "group mentoring" environments and then mentor/apprentice environments. Group mentoring environments continue to "spontaneously" produce innovation and replication--what I would call "unconsciously competent" in that they don't have to "think" about doing it. But there may or may not be any intentionality fostered either.

The mentor/apprentice environments, on the other hand, are ones that must begin very intentionally and must continue to build very intentionally so as to always seek to recognize, encourage and release the entrepreneurial spirit latent in others in and near the environment. For disciples of Christ, this "apostolic" spirit must be recognized, encouraged and released as the Holy Spirit disperses it throughout the Body. And I would go so far as to say that the rest of the five-fold gifts must be treated in the same way.

This is certainly part of the vision for CovenantClusters--which has risen from within a very "Christendom" environment and been recognized and encouraged by many over the past two years...and is hoping to be released very soon.

Nature or nurture? I'd say it must be a bit of both--and I bet no one is surprised to hear The Abbess say that, either. :^)

Go with God.