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Disoriented Beginnings

Disoriented Beginnings

Today, I get to enter Relevant’s blogosphere. We’ll try this little experiment and see how it goes.

Interacting with Scripture requires alot of humility, I think. We’ll probably understand a good bit, but we’ll probably be befuddled just as often. As much as we might come to the Bible to find answers, Scripture often leads us to a whole new slew of questions.

Yesterday, in church, another pastor and I were teaching via a shared conversation and opened the discussion up to everyone. One guy stood and said that he has been reading the Old Testament and is disturbed by what he has found. “I’m having to ask myself: Do I like God?”

Good question. If we are honest with ourselves and with the God of Scripture, most of us will have to face this same question some time or another.

So, what I hope to do in the space I’m given here is to help us ponder a few good questions. Sometimes, we might find an answer. Sometimes, we won’t. Hopefully, we will always find more of Jesus.

Inevitably, though, Jesus will disorient us. I think my friend who expressed his bewilderment on Sunday is in a healthy place. If we always uncover the God we expect to find, we ought to be concerned: self-delusion is almost certain.

“By the end of a poem,” says poet Billy Collins, “the reader should be in a different place from where he started. I would like him to be slightly disoriented at the end, like I drove him outside of town at night and dropped him in a cornfield.”

That’s what I hope for this space, to carve out a (perhaps at times) disorienting space that will offer us the strange grace of moving us to a different spot than we where when we started. Isn’t that a good description of spiritual formation, anyway? Taking us where we are, moving us beyond ourselves, flipping us upside down, and planting us smack in the middle of grace?

I hope to post every week or so, usually on Mondays, we’ll see how it goes. I might piece together some kind of schedule; but the usual fare will be normal Deeper Walk-type reflections, a few book reviews, certainly some random thoughts. And questions – I dig questions. So, ever so often, we’ll do a little Q and A. If you have a question you’d like to throw out there for discussion, shoot it to me: [email protected].

But have grace. I’m just beginning, and I’m quite sure to be disoriented.

peace,

Winn

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