Heaven…

When you think of heaven, what comes to mind?  Puffy clouds.  Angel’s wings.  Shiny halos.  An endless supply of whatever your heart may desire.  Reunited with people who have passed on.  A golden gate with St. Peter as guard deciding whether you “get in” or not.  Pop culture feeds us an endless supply of imagery to keep us captivated as well!

We probably all have a lot of images of heaven, but what are biblical texts that can guide our way?  This week we will be talking about the kingdom of heaven through the len’s of Jesus’ parables.  Matthew 13: 24-52 gives us various images to use to re-imagine this heavenly place.  Come to Bible study this week to explore the puzzling but illuminating images of heaven through this gospel.

Relationships

Having a relationship or relationships is just a part of life.  We have friends, family and loved ones that are a part of our lives.  These people challenge, support and encourage us.  Hopefully, the people that we are in relationship with know us well and will be with us, thick and thin.  These deep relationships can show us what life with God is like…and vice versa.  It can be messy or beautiful, but human beings are made to be in relationship!

Since we had so much reading last week,  come to Bible study ready for discussion with one another.  No preparation necessarY (and that is true for each week, anyway!).  We will be asking  what being in relationship with God entails and how that is a model for our lives with one another.  I hope like last week’s discussion of “Hope and Evil,” we can wrestle with the challenges of being in relationship with God even in the times when faith and relationship are intangible…lack of mountain top experiences like Joy preached about this Sunday.

To explore this challenge, click on the link below for the video of The Fray’s “You Found Me.”  Issac Slade, the lead singer of the band, said this about the song:  “You Found Me” is a tough song for me. Its about the disappointment, the heart ache, the let down that comes with life. Sometimes you’re let down, sometimes you’re the one who lets someone else down. It gets hard to know who you can trust, who you can count on. This song came out of a tough time, and I’m still right in the thick of it. There’s some difficult circumstances my family and friends have been going through over the past year or so and can be overwhelming. It wears on me. It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obhdTlImFBo

How do we, in the midst of an intangible relationship, still hold onto our faith?

Getting out of the duldrums…

Well, if you were at Bible study this week…we (maybe more specifically, I) dug ourselves into the depths of some pretty heavy stuff!  First, let me give you some background on the book of Lamentations.  It’s a collection of 5 poems in the Old Testament coming out of the period of exile.  The Israelites were out of their homeland and couldn’t even look to Jerusalem as their promise land anymore.  Imagine what this must have been like for them!  They carried their faith in its concreteness of God’s presence and yet were now finding themselves outside of everything that they believed was promised to them…it must have really rocked their faith.  This is no where clearer than in the book of Lamentations.  While the writer and various voices within the poems go through a circle of emotions (from anger to acceptance to regret to…), the book really keeps its reader in the tough moments they experienced.  It was within this contextual understanding that we asked ourselves these questions:

• How do we/you respond to traumatic experiences or major life turns in your life?
• Are these responses helpful?  Ineffective?  (The book is all about truth-telling and attempting to be as honest about our feelings in the moment as possible.)
• Does the writer’s grief seem realistic to you?  Can you place yourself in these experiences?
• “Hope is for those moments when it seems that the fabric of our lives has been ripped and torn beyond repair.”  Does this fit with your understanding of hope?  Do you see it as something practical or impractical for what can surface in everyday life?

Here’s an exercise I want you to try.  After reading these laments, write something on a piece of paper about grief.  Write one sentence of a couple of them describing the grief.  Now, write a brief lament on the basis of this line or lines.  Allow yourself to fully express these emotions.  Put it away for a while…and when you return to that piece of paper, write a line or two about what it means to hope in the midst of that lament (or give your paper to someone to have them write these lines!).  This can be a helpful way to pray in times when you want to free yourself from finding the “right” words to say.

Hope?

“The time of the kings ends disasterously as Judah, too, is detroyed.  The Babylonian Empire desecrates the Temple, burns the city of Jerusalem, and carries away many of the people of Judah into captivity.  Despair descends on the downtrodden people.  The future seems bleak, as God’s unconditional covenant appears to have collapsed.  Those who remain in the land live in poverty and gloom.  Those who have been carried to Babylon think that their homes have been lost forever.  Living through such pain and disaster, the people are forced to learn the meaning of the deep and abiding hope, hope that can resist trouble and overcome seemingly overwhelming evil.”  – Journey Through the Word: Exploring Biblical Themes

This week we will be talking about hope through the lens of the Israelites’ experience depicted in the Old Testament.  In the midst of leaving their homeland and feeling absolutely lost, the people were still called to hope through the God whom they believed would not leave them…much easier said than done, though!  Little has changed for many of us now thousands of years later when we continue to hope in a world that seems so far from what we would like it to be.

Texts for the study: Lamentations 1-2  The book of lamentations is a perfect example of laments before God in the middle of exile.  As you read the text, the feelings of loss and sadness are palpable. 

Join us as we walk through the feelings of sadness, loss and exile to a life of hope.