This afternoon I walked past a Chinese restaurant that had pictures in the window displaying their various meals. The pictures were old and faded into a monotone brown. The food looked, I was going to say unappetizing but that isn’t harsh enough. The food looked wretched. Everything looked spoiled and rotten. If you were hungry before you looked you certainly were not after you had looked.
How like some churches. The music drags and hasn’t been majestic in decades or has been replaced with campfire songs. The saints look as if they are ready to leave earth. The message seems more appropriate for 1945 instead of 2014. When we sing “Tell me the old, old story” that doesn’t mean we want the same details and the same adverbs and adjectives. Old stories are wonderful when presented with a new set of imaginative modifiers.
In John 21 Jesus told Peter to feed His lambs. The lambs need fresh food. Fresh doesn’t mean new theology. The old theology is pretty good stuff. Fresh means challenge my mind with an idea that is practical and applicable to now. Lift my soul out of my lethargic brain numbing routine of life and make me long for the courts above. Open my mind to the power of the Holy Spirit that will not make me speak gibberish but instead fill me with deeper understanding of God’s ideas. This can only happen when we are willing to recognize and acknowledge that we don’t have all truth and there are mountains of intellect and spirituality to climb.
Tell me the old, old story that I might see Jesus not only reaching out to touch lepers but reaching out to touch me.
Written by Roger Bothwell on April 28, 2014
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org