Today’s Readings: Psalm 5; Nehemiah 6:1-19; Matthew 13:36-43; Revelation 10:1-11
Many of us pick up lenses during the course of our lifetime that influence the way we interpret certain words. Take the word “all”, for example. If I were to ask you, “What does the word all mean?” you would probably say something along the lines of “All means everybody or everything. No exceptions.” Put that same word in another context, however, and suddenly your interpretation of that word might change.
Let’s say, for instance, you put the word “all” into a sentence like the one found in Psalm 5:11 – “but let all who take refuge in you rejoice”. Because of your religious background you might unconsciously read that sentence as if it said “but let all Christians who take refuge in you rejoice”. That’s just one example of how the lenses we picked up along the way can cause us to unconsciously change the meaning of words.
Today I am blessed to be able to attend an event at Pepperdine University titled “Finding Common Ground: Reconciliation Among the Children of Abraham.” It’s an exciting conference designed to bring Christians, Muslims, and Jews together to explore some of the ways we might reclaim a more inclusive understanding of the word all.
I would invite you to think about how you interpret the world all. Is your faith one that would truly let all who take refuge in God rejoice; or do you claim a faith that would let all (those who think/believe like you) who take refuge in God rejoice? Til next time…
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1 comment:
Might all mean everything thing, every being, every moment, movement energy -or as they say on Public Radio when trying to get people to subscribe "the whole kit'n'kaboodle'?" Wht if every thing, every energy, action, discreet being, etc.etc, everything is all one thig-one energy, that we, in our, limited understanding cannot comprehend at least not completly. what if/ we all abide in the sacred field of energy, the contiual evolution of destruction and creation, renewing itself --perhaps in a mobious strip, that isn't really a strip, but an endless ongoing happening and even describign it is limiting. And It might be called the creating spirit, the energy field , the unknown God, etc-which we try to funnel into our own understanding, an understanding theat may ehange and evolveor not. I am, of course, basing this on my own experiences, which are funneled through my own limited vision and experience. Tonite, I walked around the block and bumped into two women who live at opposite ends of the block walking together. One is Mexican who adopted an illegal young Mexian girl who was living in the park nearbya young teen, who had been raped while sleeping in the the park. she brought her home and helped her by providing her a place to stay, to raise the baby and to lern to sell food from a cart in the neighborhood. the other woman told us about wht happened when her mother died and we shared that ephiphany of the monet she and her mother moved into that work of dying and then she saw a star outside. I told them of my ephiphany when the Jerusalum pine next door was sacrificed and the mystical experience I had within the tree the night before. the point of my story is the reason these stories got shared this evening is that someone left astyrofoam box on the sidewalk outside in front of our house which was full of a nice chinese chekcen dinner. It had not been touched. I did not want to eat it, but I knew someone might, so I got some plastic cutlery and walked a few blocks to the area where a lot Mexican s hang around the iced juice truck. There was a man in a wheel chair and I asked him if he would like to have the dinner. He said yes and then on the way home I bumped into the two neighbors I described. We each shared the moment where we felt God had been speaking to us through the incidents I described earlier. That experience brought us all closer toegetjer though we do not see eachother on any regular basis-it just happened to happen and "it was good."
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