Friday during my lunch hour I decided to go for a walk. I packed pb and j - my personal fav. and so my lunch was pretty mobile, and it was a gorgeous day. Right across the street from where I work is an awesome walking path and a pretty neighborhood and some incredible views of the mountains. So it all added up to an easy decision to go for a lunch walk. The neighborhood that I walked through was a really wealthy neighborhood - actually the most expensive homes I've seen in Denver so far. Crazy-money homes. I was thinking "oh, this will be fun to look at the nice homes..." and I expected it to be so. I was kinda surprised at my feeling though as I walked past these houses - these huge, beautiful, scenic houses. I was sad. I was kinda irritated too. The idea of living in one of these houses, in this ridiculously "nice" neighborhood has become so so unappealing to me. I see loneliness and greed and self-centerdness. I see the American dream laid out before to perfection and I'm thinking to myself "isn't it obvious how dumb this is? Isn't it obvious how empty all this stuff and money and isolation leaves people? How has this become what we value and pursue with our lives?"
I think the thing that was interesting to me was that I wasn't just thinking these things with my mind....I was feeling them. I'm grateful though - really thankful that God has given me the gift of being able to see the emptiness and lies represented by something as simple as a huge empty house in suburbia.
And yet while the alternative i think reflects so much more truth and beauty and I really believe is the way God made us to live, it isn't always easy. Living in community in a poorer neighborhood without my own room, sharing each and every meal, learning to give and serve as a primary action over own and take, having people over all the time, never knowing what God will bring that day....it's challenging. sometimes grueling. It is at times like this that the appeal of security and independence and privacy becomes magnetic.
In the Sunday morning House-Church we were discussing 1 Corinthians 4 today. I think part of this chapter is somewhat appropriate.
"For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong, You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things."
What kind of lifestyle produces a description like this? yikes.
6 comments:
But think about how different it will be in heaven than here on earth. In the Bible it says there will be no more death or sadness or tears or loneliness. So I think it will be worth it in Heaven to live in a mansion because it won't leave us feeling empty...and how much time will you actually spend there in Heaven?? Won't we all be worshipping God all the time? Which is greater than any mansion that we could ever imagine! Hope you're doing all you planned in Denver! We all miss you here in Wisconsin.
My dad and I discussed this very issue today. However, I believe he and I have different view points on it. Right now, I think he's scared of change. With a slight lack of conviction, he said, "But I LIKE my middle-class American life... I LIKE my middle-class American things!"
I've been trained to like "my America", too. Except I've been having that physical reaction thing you're talking about. I've decided not to like that life, those things.
And you're correct my friend, it's not easy. (Maybe that's why I should move back to Romania, eh? It's so much easier there concerning issues like this!) :)
I love the hideously ugly picture you just posted. More and more and more I'm loving cardboard box living. I thought I'd grown out of it, but you know. I think it means something special.
hey
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yes, you know me.
Yeah, I'm definitely hoping for(and get a picture from reading scripture) The Mansion with many "rooms", shared in perfect community, where there's no loneliness, and no sin because there is no hiding, no lack of one-ness when we have been perfected, no lack of meaningful tasks and unfathomable adventures that will never be labor but always be worship. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly, the house in the burbs is far far too often our own little towers of Babel to testify to our greatness and show God we have no need of Him, nor anyone else...
Yes, I would not want a "mansion" like here on earth, I hope that I see trees, and more trees. When I think about what the Lord has for us I feel so much peace and have no idea and it doesn't matter as long as I can go home one day.
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