November 6, 2017 Chapter 11 From Ugliness, A Beauty Emerges.
It’s always been somewhat of a struggle for me to reconcile parts of the Old Testament with the message of Jesus in the New Testament. I like how McLaren weaves the story together as one story. I guess I’ve always know that to be the case but I think his way of explaining it makes a lot of sense. The beauty of the life of Jesus was born from some of the ugliness of the Old Testament story.
I think we also see it played out in our world today. Unfortunately, far too often it involves tragedies like Las Vegas or Orlando or 9/11 where heroes emerge amid tragedies. A stranger pushes someone in a wheelchair to safety: ugliness to beauty. A man falls on a stranger to protect her from bullets: ugliness to beauty.
The more I think about it the more I realize that maybe it happens all the time and we just don’t notice it. The other day I witnessed an accident and four different people stopped to offer assistance: from ugliness to beauty. At the All Saint’s Day Mass last week, a time in my parish where we remember those who have died in the last year, I saw a woman crying as she grieved the loss of her loved one. She was sitting by herself until another parishioner noticed and went over and sat next to her: from ugliness to beauty.
Perhaps this week might be a time for us to be more attuned to it. Perhaps you could share a story of where you have witnessed it in your day to day life.
Henri Nousen talks about the wounded healer the ability to empathize with others who have experienced the same kind of pain.After Jonathan died Bob and I became a part of Compassionate Friends, a support group for those who have lost a child. When a new person came to the group for the first time you could feel the grief, the anger, the confusion, the despair coming off of them like a storm. We stayed active in the group for many years because when you see their faces you know you have to be there to see them through just like others were there to see us through.. And in the process we made friends and moved to a new normal. From the ugliness of grief to the beauty of healing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I often say to people is that we minister best when we minister from our pain and sometimes from our weakness. I think that is why 12 step programs are so successful. People start where they are weakest and then they grow from there. Too often in our Christian faith people are led to believe that in order to belong they must behave a certain way and believe certain things. Sometimes, I think, this causes people to give up on Christianity because they think they can never "measure up." They never feel strong enough. Jesus said go into the highways and byways and invite EVERYONE to the feast. Do we really believe that? Are we really willing to do that?
ReplyDeleteMy insight from these readings came from the connection of the stories with the perception of God by the society of the time. The stories help paint better picture of the idea.
ReplyDeleteIt's a new world to start thinking about the context of the time and how do the reading connect to others in the Bible.