About walking with God

This post is dedicated to my brother Renan, is his birthday today (yesterday, as a matter of fact =P). Renan, may God give you peace that exceeds all knowledge, strenght to bear the future and grace to keep walking. We are together in this stuff.

My grandfather used to enjoy very much the story of Enoch (Gen 5:18-24). Enoch is introduced to us very briefly on the bible, seven verses to be precise. He is, anyway, cited on the book of Hebrews as one the men of faith. My grandfather used to say that Enoch used to go for long walks with God. One day, on one of their walks, he turned to God and said: "God, is late and far, i need to come back home". God, on that day, promptly answered: "Enoch, we are nearer to my home than yours, just come to mine", and so God took him away.

This story amazes me, to be honest. At the same time that from, time to time, i am more and more convinced that faith is really something complicated and hard, i remember of Enoch, the one that walked with God. It's so simple, walk with God. I'm not despising the tons of books about Theology and Spirituality, but it is, in a certain way, just walking with God. I wanna write some about that.

I've heard sermons throughout my whole life. Almost 22 years of sermons. Just some got stuck in my head, and those i remember each and every point of them.I often have experienced that the sermons i'm listening to are concerned with subjects such as God, promises, mission, how to make this and that, how to receive this and that... It kind of concerns me sometimes. It concerns me how we have been refering to God, how have we talked about Him. I get amazed how often we fall on the temptation of talking about God in a indirect or unpersonal way. We refer to God as this figure that's above, that have guided Abraham, Moses, the prophets, Jesus, Paul, John... This God that has given us the 10 commandments, that has forgiven our sins and saved us from damnation.

It's right, indeed. He did all this stuff. Or when we preach about seeking the will of God, of being light and salt of this world. It's right too. But i'm afraid that we've been missing something here. God is here, God is with us now, God is talking. Those stories in the Bible, they are alive, they are happening everyday all around the world. God is alive, God cries, God suffers, God loves. In the present tense, He is, now. We should refer to God as this one that is here,not just as a concept, and object.

More than just being alive, He is calling us to walk with Him. So many people are living their lives taking God more as a tool than as a Father. Others have lived their lives following rules, and some are quite good on that, but not realising that God is not about rules or commandments. And there are even people that live as if in between heaven and hell, living with Him as their Lord but not realising the blessings of being a servant. I guess i've been a bit of all of these profiles. I've misunderstood my calling to follow Him. Of course asking him for deliverance, following the commandments and living as His servant are part of following Him, but by themselves they don't make the walk.

"Follow me", that's what He said, in all of His callings on the Gospels. The Lord Himself calls us to follow, to walk with Him.

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I pause for a moment and think about what i'm writing now. Yesterday i went for a walk at night, past midnight. I've talking with the Lord for some minutes, pouring down every piece of me in His hands. I realised how much i was taking those moments for granted, how much i was filling myself with this follow this, follow that talk, how much i was taking more than i could on my shoulders. I realised that i was trying to live my own life, in a very sutil way, hidden in the appereance of a holy and God driven way. Living my own steps, outside the fellowship of Christ.

It's an easy trap for all of us: to take God as a principle, a machine, a thing, or whatever you want, but not taking Him as a person, as a Father. The excuses are infinite. I don't need God for this, i'm too young, i'm too old, i'm too busy, i'm too stressed... Enoch walked with God. That's enough. David walked with God, Jacob walked with God, Paul walked with God.

Let's walk with God, for His grace is enough. Enough for our doubts, our fears, our weaknesses. He is enough. We don't need self righteousness, we don't need methods, we don't need experts saying what we should do, we don't need church growth... We need to walk with Him, that's all. For in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28)

Peace be with all.

Oh Jerusalem

Hosea 11

Oh Israel, what have you done of yourself? The beauty of your features have abandoned you and now all that's left is the scars of your lovers. You've sold yourself so cheap, all your riches are gone. Listen to me this time. Money has made you ill, you rely on pills to make through the day. Can't you see this? There's no man in this city that does not know your body, all of them have tasted of your youth. Wake up while it's still time. I loved you since you were a newborn, i taught you to walk as a kid. Oh Jerusalem, Stavanger, can't you see?

About sunflowers and answers

I would say my preferred painter is Van Gogh. Among many others I love, Gogh achieved something in his paintings that I just can’t describe accurately. And if I were to choose a painting, it would be his “Sunflowers”. It happened that I saw it at the National Art Gallery in London. I have spent some time staring at the colors, the textures, the flowers themselves. There’s no big deal on the flowers, one would say; still it’s the most amazing painting I’ve ever seen.

Van Gogh was an ill man, mentally ill. For everyone who, like me, have experienced or experience that kind of thing, even the slightest depression, knows how hell must look like. It might have seem a bit dramatic, but the suffering is real and intense. Sunflowers… Why on earth would Van Gogh paint Sunflowers? Going through pain, despair, loneliness, emptiness, he paints sunflowers. Looking at the original on the wall, I felt sucked in that yellow universe… This is not just sunflowers, is an entire life put on a painting. Still, it’s just sunflowers. It says to me that is something deeper and profound on those flowers, something I can only grasp and, perhaps, try to categorize on my poor, shallow, limited view and conception of things. I could never, ever get a grip of those flowers. I’m not capable of that.

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My time in Stavanger is about its end, something like 3 weeks or so. I’ve seen things and people, I listened to them, walked to them, touched them. I wandered on the streets smelling of decadence at night and were struck but the rain that covered it all y the morning. I don’t think I’ve seen so much happens in such a small time. People falling, getting up, drowning, asking for help, rejecting help… Reality is big and complicated. Simplicity is a lie, nothing is as simples as we think, even a sunflower. Everything is as hidden as It could be, our intentions, longings and wishes are behind our prosaic conversations and other actions. Always something behind something.

It’s a great mystery, nothing is like it seems. Brasilian author Guimarães Rosa would call this the “mystery of things” and I find no more appropriate name than this one. “Living is very dangerous”, once more quotating the author. I’m speechless when it comes to these things. I just can never enter those infinite universes called human beings, I could never grasp that. Relationships, memories, stories… All of this is just too much.

This is something the world keeps lying to us. It says that all we see is all that is, that reality is as big as you see/live it, that things and people are as simple as you get. So we keep on categorizing stuff in order to tame reality. We tame our own experience so we don’t freak out. The world is scary, indeed, and our lives are tough. Our relationships are broken and there’s no one to trust, even ourselves. Too harsh, perhaps, but that just seems like the real stuff: life is not a movie and doesn’t have a nice end, even a funny one. Welcome, anyway.

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I could never believe in something that just ignores this reality; it’s just too painful and untrue to ignore it as a way of evading the responsibility. Our answers, or something like that, should be coherent to what the world demands. We should face the demon as it really is, no excuses. I’ve never seen such an answer as Christianity. Jesus goes to the questions at its core, nothing less than that. We are nude when faced against God, no excuses for out lack of meaning, loneliness, emptiness. We are left with our own broken lives with no protection or way out of it, we need to face it. Christ talks to us in the deep, no in the surface. God talks in the level of the sunflowers, in a raw and pure state of things.

If there’s an answer for our lives, it should address the most inner and profound of our existence. It should address to our infinite desperate void, our dead ends and broken patterns. Nothing is more despicable than an avoiding religion or spirituality. It has to portrait sunflowers. If It is just a way out of reality, it’s a lie.

Grace be with all.

About coming home or Luke 15:11-31

So it is.

Daylight came through the window. Obscured by the clouds, the sun just looked like any other freak on the main street by midnight. Still, she enjoyed when the sun covered her with its warmth and yellowish color. As a kid in third grade, she used yo draw little animals in the summer afternoons of July; her world's garden was never so big, anyway. All her drawings included a tall white man she used to draw, always with a smile and old clothes. Its big hands always were as big as her. On that particular morning, she looked at her fragile hands and half painted purple nails and remembered of those other hands, big as her face. Perhaps she had learned some lessons from those big ol' hands. No point realising the past, actually. Her past never mattered for anyone, anyway.

But there was something on that cloudy sleepless morning that, despite the bleak sun, reminded her of the white house in the fields. (Talking about past again...) Called John the one by her side, at least that was what they've told each other for some days. John never knew, and will ever know, about the white wood house, homemade toys and those big hands. She used to sleep on those hands, so small as she always was. John had medium size hands, as she measured once, very discrete as she was, on some other evening. His fingers were not so big and, surprisingly, were as neatly done as hers. Anyway, that suited well for her, exactly what she thought she needed.

John, as far as she knew, was another dreamer, the one that write poems and have a long curling hair. And medium size hands, of course. He even wrote a poem for her, meaning that she was just what he needed. At that morning she looked at the poem, somewhere between her books, and read through it once more. He was smart, indeed. Cute boy, so talented. There were something usual for her on those words, something she always kept distant. Words are too easy, are a matter of negotiation. John is such an easy word, along with many others.

John, your hands are not that big. Still, you are here, and it is all. John's words could never touch her, that was the truth.

She never slept that night by John's side. There was something heavy on her. She never found that big ol' hands, whenever she was. And she just realised she would never find them apart from home.

And so it was.

About God being a marginal

I'm pissed off.

John the baptist preached and baptised on the desert, out of Jerusalem. He wore camel’s hair, a leather belt and ate locusts and wild honey. Jeremiah preached words the people never gave attention, day after day, and found himself in exile on the end of his life. His lamentations are a gathering of poems and tears turned into words, just after Jerusalem’s fall. Amos was a shepard, the first missionary in Samariah was a prostitute, the 12 apostles were fisherman, Jesus himself was a carpenter. Who told us God is mainstream?

In my years of Christianity, I’ve never found God in the crowds of Christians, never found Him in the big preachings with raised hands and people shouting Halleluja. Never found Him in the places people told me He was. It makes me sad how church is not the best place to find God. I don’t know, but something went wrong, very wrong. We were supposed to be Jesus feet on earth, we were supposed to walk, welcome those who are not accepted, love the unloved, listen to those who have no voice… Instead of it, we are too busy concerned with our own programs, our own agenda, lost in our own mediocre reality. Too busy trying not going to hell. I’ve never seen such a bigger lie and ilusion than this.

Jesus never went to theological school, had no diploma, wore no fancy clothes, never had a hype hair, was not a preeminent person on his local church and had no speeches on famous pulpits. Instead of it, he was considered a heresy, a crazy folk with some new ideas of love and forgiveness among a very religious and right people. Let us be frank, we as Christians would like so much the Pharisees… They had the right speech, the right attitude (they didn’t even say ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ and all these unholy words!), the right reasons.

And we say that we follow Jesus. If we followed Jesus, we should embrace the streets as he did, we would embrace the poor and unholy as he did. God is not where we think He is. I’m sorry, he is not mainstream, he hates the latest recording of your favorite gospel group, the latest book of your specialist on gospel stuff… God loves all the prostitutes that walk in the Stavanger sentrum after 22h, and I bet Jesus would be their best friend. He loves the ones we despise the most, the ones we judge unholy and filthy. Jesus rambles on the parties every Friday night, seating on the table with the ones we insist to despise. God is the one that carries the drunk back home.

“ I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24)

“Your eyes are closed when you're praying/ You sing right along with the band/ You shine up your shoes for services/ There's blood on your hands/ You turned your back on the homeless/ And the ones that don't fit in your plan/ Quit playing religion games/ There's blood on your hands” (The song, here)

They say there’s a revival coming to Stavanger. I pray it comes from the streets, from the dirty Christians are denying so much. I pray the drug addicts, beggars, helpless, hurt and depressed students, mental handicapped, party folks, drunks and broken families fill the churches with their need and thirsty for a God they heard about, a God that can bring reconciliation to their families, a God that can heal their scars, their pain, that can listen their voices when anyone hears them. A God that can love and save them from their own selves, even though they have trashed and drowned in a lake of sorrow, pain and sin.

This is the God I believe. Please, let us, Christians, be marginals as Jesus was. Otherwise, the stones will cry out (Luke 19:40) .

Grace be with you.

About Guantánamo, Evil and Christmas time.

Before i start, for those who are wondering how i'm doing, i say i'm very good, still going late to bed, waking up late and in a hurry and late for the bus. =)

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I caught myself reading Wikileaks until late at night some days ago. I was reading some prisoners’ profiles on the guantánamo’s files. It struck me how much injustice and pain I saw behind those hierarchic and burocratic papers, men’s destinies on four or five pages. False accusations and people being imprisoned under lies (you can read more on this link). When I read the section “detainee’s conduct” inside the prison, I started to think on how I would act on the same circumstances…

Let’s say Norwegian prison: individual cells, tv, nice bed and sheets, bathroom… Still, it’s hell. There’s something within these four walls that can take away one’s life, consciousness. I wouldn’t be surprised on ex-detainee’s stories on how hard it is to come back to the real world after spending years inside a cell. In a sense, it’s like being born again.

Some days ago someone asked me what I was afraid of when I was a child. Darkness, mirrors and snakes. I was afraid of looking steady in the mirror for a long time, afraid I was going to see something I wouldn’t like or recognize as being me. I couldn’t be with myself in a mirror for more than some seconds. I wonder about facing myself in a cell, for days, months, years. There’s something bad that threatens me inside those four walls. That’s, I fear, myself.

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I won’t be silly on this, I know how bad I can really be. I’m not as good as I picture myself. In a matter of fact, I know pretty well I can ruin my best relationships, my best attempts and myself in some few seconds. Evil is easy, tempting and appealing. At the same time that I try to avoid it, I like it. I’m a victim of my own nature, but I’m the one looking out for bad. Fiona Apple said it right when singing “Criminal”. Evil is on the streets, you can see that. It’s out there… And even when I try to do good, I fail miserably. Reality is much complex for a foul like me to go on with my messianic project.

I picture that a escape from this estate relies outside me. And this is a eternal paradox: human beings perfectly made, God’s best creation, beautifully and amazingly complex on their feelings, stories and deeds, doomed by something they cannot control. Still, there’s hope, longing for peace and mercy. Though, men are looking for a way out inside themselves, we are searching for something inside four walls, but there’s nothing there. It has to come from outside, from someone out there. These urges for hope and mercy do not belong to me; perhaps they are echoes from outside there, something that echoes inside me and make me feel like home, like I should feel.

I remember Paul’s words from his letter to the Romans, on chapter 7, verses 21-25, here . “I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?” Paul asks. In a very clear way, he said what life has been proving me day after day. Also, reminds me of that man’s words on the cross: “Forgive them Father, for they know what they do”. Truly, I know not what I do.

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Yesterday evening I was walking downtown, seeing the Christmas trees and lights. Sometimes I think we’ve buried that voice… I hope not.

Grace be with all.

Some words about our longing and search for meaning.

Hey! =)

This are some thoughts made into words, about John 6:25-29.

You can find the text here.

Jesus, after his miraculous multiplication of bread in the shore of the sea of Galilee, goes to a mountain in order to escape the crowd, eager to make his king. By the evening he meet the twelve crossing the lake towards Capernaum, and join them walking on the water. The next day the crowd realizes that Jesus is missing and go towards Capernaum in search of Him and His disciples. Attention must be given to the fact that Jesus, for more than once, is faced with the crowd and runs away from them. That mus tell us something about the nature if them. Jesus knew they wanted to make him king, and he avoided them. "It would be awesome", they thought, "let's make Him king! Those miraculous signs don't lie, He is the prophet that was to come!". In answer to that desire, the gospels always told us that "Jesus knew their hearts", also He knew His mission and His time on earth. He was to be killed, to be a living sacrifice in order to justify sinners, not to be held as king on earth. The crowd didn't rule His heart and will, he never gave space to the crowd's will, but He himself repeatdly affirmed that He came to earth to do God's will, not His own (which is, in some way, paradoxal), nor crowd's will.

The crowd reaches Him (6:25) and Jesus promptly says: “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” (26-27). Again, He knew the nature of the mass: they were not interested in listening to Him, they were not interested in what endures, they were seeking bread. There's nothing wrong about longing for bread, but Jesus wants to teach them a lesson, wants to show them something. Actually, the miracle of the multiplication on itself remembered them of the times of Moses, which would lead them to think that Jesus was the actual Messiah they were to expect."Do not work for food that spoils, but for the food that endures to eternal life", He said. The human being is in a constant search for food, something that fills his sense of meaning, belonging, existence. Jesus knew that very well. Our attempts of sucess, of being accepted, loved, wanted are all a reflex of our longing. There are "food" for that, none of them endures. None of them fulfill our desire. Buying, selling, addictions, endless events, nights, lovers, studying, working... Salomon said that's all vanity, meaningless, striving after wind (on the book of Ecclesiastes). C.S Lewis compared it to a car: if you don't use the right fuel, it might work for a few minutes, but you will notice it doesn't work at all. "You are using the wrong fuel to your lives. Strive for the fuel that doesn't end, that endures to eternal life", He says.

"Sir, from now on gives us this bread", the crowd said. Did they really want it?, i ask myself. "Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. (...) For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life” (35-37;40). "I am the bread, I give meaning, who fulfill your strive, I am here to give you the right fuel, and that's me", He says. The longing, exhausting, meaningless, ends in Him. In Him our longing turns in a new life, on which He starts to write everything again. Our striving is towards a new goal: it's to walk with Him, to rediscover everything, without the need to use the wrong fuel, without having food that spoil. Our constant efforts to fill our longing without Him just end in the same longing for love, meaning, acceptance, mercy and forgiviness.

The crowd was scared and skeptical. "This man's crazy, He's going against our traditions and history! He's the son of Joseph, no son of God!", thought the Jews. It's a hard and sometimes long way until we admit our stubborness. We think we're big and strong enough; we're not. Jesus knew them: "You've seen me and still you do not believe me" (36). But He keeps going: "Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (49-51).

Again the crowd rise again: "How can this man give us His flash to eat?" He answers: "Jesus said to them,“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me." (53-57) Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood, you have no life in you. He's refering to His death and rising: if you believe in my words, you'll have eternal life, now and forever; "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." (Matthew 4:17).

Jesus is saying something like "You know you don't have life in your lives, I don't need to prove you, look at the mirror and you'll see you're longing for something the world can't give you. The fuel always ends, the bread you eat always ends". He is talking about life in concrete ways, life now is gonna change. So, the one who feeds on me will live because of me, He affirms.

This is in the core of Christianity, living in Jesus, because of Jesus.

If He doesn't fill us, there's no life, no Christianity, nothing at all. Meaningless, meaningless!, Salomon screams. He invites us to give away our attempts to continually eat what spoils, what doesn't fill our appetite for love, acceptance, mercy, peace, forgiveness. That's called grace, an invitation, free, to come and eat of the bread of life, the banquet of life in abundance in and though him. "... And whoever comes to me I will never drive away". That's an invitantion. No need to be well dressed or to use polite speech. He's gently and kindly calling us.

Grace be with you.