Tipping the world toward Christ

“Keep tipping the world toward Christ.”

My favorite book from my 2007 reading list was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell presents a fascinating idea, “the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves... the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do" (Gladwell 7).

He goes on to share about the critical transition between random events and movements of epidemic proportion. The most important principle of the book is that this transition can be boiled down to one dramatic moment he calls "the Tipping Point." The majority of the book explores various waves of thought and behavior, then traces each development to the defining minute it “tipped.”

Another important feature he examines is contagiousness – that is, something that catches on. He jokes with a trite metaphor: “Yawning is a surprisingly powerful act. Just because you read the word ‘yawning’ in the previous sentence – and the two additional ‘yawns’ in this sentence – a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as I’m writing this, I’ve yawned twice. (Me, too) If you’re reading this in a public place, and you’ve just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of everyone who saw you yawn is now yawning too, and a good proportion of the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in an ever-widening, yawning circle" (10).

As a Christian – one who believes in the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in my life and in the life of each person I meet – I believe there are critical moments for expressing Christ’s Kingdom. I believe this Kingdom is dramatic and contagious to a hungry world. Do I, by my intention and behavior, offer sway toward this Kingdom? Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Notice how we are not led to pray, Thy kingdom come and whisk me away from this God-forsaken place.

Our mission – or, co-mission, one might say – is to spread the Good News.
This is the Jesus story. To echo St. Francis of Assissi, we are to preach the Gospel at all times…if necessary, using words. You see, we are all adding support to something or any number of things, just as a sympathetic droplet of water contributes to a powerful, crushing wave (Dallas Willard).

I want my activity to agree with the activity of the Holy Spirit. Christ longs for our activity to agree with His Holy Spirit, hence agreeing with one another. Let’s tip things the Jesus way. Let’s add energy to the things of God. Let’s tip the world toward Christ.

- Tob Adams

Green for the Lenten Season

These days the contours of the land upon which we live are more exposed than at any other time throughout the year. Skeletal trees lay bare hills and valleys, swells and ravines. Often I find myself envisioning shoulder flanks and round rumps covered in brown fur. Even after the rain, the shape of the land resembles a big, brown grizzly just emerged from the mountain river resting in a heap. It is as if at anytime the monstrous animal could roll over sending us tumbling and scrambling. And we are reminded this thing upon which we live is living itself, practically heaving with breaths, in and out.

It is a beautiful place this earth, this Hebrew “adamah”. It’s funny…we tend to forget with all our technology that we are essentially of this stuff, graced with divine breath. We, Adams, have been shaped and formed from the Adamah. We earthlings were fashioned from the ground beneath our feet. The Lenten Season invites us to remember our mortality, and hence our dependence on the Creator: “Remember. You are dust and to dust you will return.”

Where do I end, and where does the earth begin? I suppose if I had the patience I could plant my feet in the dirt and eventually we would merge right back together. This is actually what happens just between death and Resurrection. We return to the ground, ashes to ashes dust to dust. Rather than call into question the perimeters of the self, though, this affirmation causes me to consider the responsibilities of the self in light of my solidarity with the rest of God’s creation.

I was pleased to see the city I reside in make an official request that its citizens plant more trees.
We Christians should champion all efforts to practice the mandate God impressed upon the first Adam: “to till and to keep” the land; quite literally, to serve and preserve. Just as my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, the rest of creation is blessed by the presence of God and deserves my nurture.

Paul says all creation awaits the glory to be revealed in us. “for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21)”

No agenda, no specific charge…just a spirit of gratitude and reverence for the space where God has placed us. It is good to care for the earth. It is good to remember how God wished things had remained. It is good to seek redemption in the present world.
- Tob Adams

"Yes We Can"

I usually avoid anything political; it tends to be devisive and usually does nothing for our unity of focus (or unity of purpose) as Believers. Politicians can't save the world.

Put your Red and Blue associations aside for just a moment...

By now most of you have at least heard clips of Barak Obama's "Yes We Can" speech. You have probably diagnosed it, disected it, or just loved on it, depending on your perspective or politcal persuasion. I ask you to take a minute and watch this presentation as a follower of Jesus. Ask yourself what could happen if your church, not your political party, not your presidential candidate, but the people you worship with took up this matra and marched out into the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

It was inspiriational to me - I hope you enjoyed it too...
- Matt