This week I’ve been considering the open-handedness (detachment or rightly ordered attachments) with which our community is approaching all the changes. It’s truly how we approach… just about everything!
Last night, we discussed and wondered about worship: what it means, how our practices bring us to worship, and how our structures can cultivate a rich and flourishing people. And while we certainly care about the words we use and the way we go about it all, I’m impressed by how open each of you are to trying something new. Like Melody said on Sunday, we are not saying “that won’t work.” We are using our sanctified imaginations to imagine a different way from the “normal.”
This has me thinking about imagination and the role contemplation has in cultivating it. A favorite passage on this topic is Matthew 6:25-34. Here’s an excerpt.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you…”
Worry is natural, especially when our attachments are disordered. Jesus doesn’t simply say “don’t worry.” He instructs us to consider – to contemplate – the birds and the flowers. It’s in contemplating how much God cares for birds and flowers that we can imagine how much more God will care for us.
As we continue to reimagine how to be Christian in this world and how to be a Christian community in a culture which expects it to look a certain way, let us rest in the assurance that God is with us, cares for us, and loves us deeply. And when we begin to worry and fret, let’s return to the birds and flowers, take to the window or the park and consider how great is the love of God.