Church Stopping: God of Wonder

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You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that  you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:17)

For one whole year were were a fallow field, resting, listening, waiting, fermenting. We put up a bulletin board - a big one - with dayglow orange and chartreuse letters saying, "People with a Passion for Jesus".  If somebody had a nudge from the Spirit or a passion they's write it out and post it on on the board and if somebody else wanted to join in that with them they's sign their names. I, frankly, didn't think it would work for a minute. I was wrong. People signed up for all kinds of things - people who'd never worded on a committee or done anything. I kept having to sit back and trust God to run the church because I didn't have a clue about what was going on. (Pastor David Digby in A Concise Compendium of "The Ames Story"

It really isn't that big of a deal, is it? We don't really die after all when we reach for the tree of knowledge of good and evil...do we? Our hearts keep beating. Our lungs keep breathing. Our blood keeps pumping. So why does God make such a big deal about the tree of knowledge of good and evil anyway? Isn't knowledge...especially of good and evil...a good thing?

These are all questions I have asked of the Fall.  After all, I like knowledge.  Maybe you do to. I like to know what I am doing and why and with what results.  And there are a lot of things I know and there are a lot of things you know...we delight in knowing. We know praise and worship music. We know high-church liturgy. We know that we are right on a particular theological or social justice issue.  We know who has the authority to preach and serve communion and baptize.  

And this Room of Knowing in which we live is not a bad place.  It is just small.  There is a library in the corner with a book we have read again and again. Again, we reach for the knowledge we know so well and die to the wonder of what we don't.

The Unknown Country, just outside the Room of Knowing, is vast and full of wonder. It is a land wild and free, and sometimes fierce; where Jesus walks on water and prophets run for their lives. It is a place where axe heads float and herds of pigs rush into the sea.  It is a place where the dead are raised and the the mountains quake and the sea monsters roll. This is the place where the dying believe and the child plays by the cobra's den and the lion lies down with the lamb.  This is a place where Santa still makes his midnight ride and God still whispers that some day, and some day soon, and in some way that we cannot plan or coerce or program, they will no longer hurt or destroy in all His holy mountain and the knowledge of God will be like oxygen-completely filling the earth and quickening our hearts.  

I'm not suggesting that the church operate from the seats of our pants.  I'm not suggesting that we don't plan and meet and figure out how to do all things well.  I'm just suggesting that maybe, sometimes, we stop, put down that book and reach for the door.  Let us venture out where we "don't have a clue what is going on" and see what God might be up to.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.