Spiritual Revolution

I remember from TV or was it school a rather simple, make that boring song that went 2 plus 2 is 4, 3 plus 3 is 6, 4 plus 4 is 8, 5 plus 5 is 10 .. . I could go on but I believe the point has been made. That song represented a simplified life style which has been by and large become redundant. We have moved from this sort to a reality to one more inclined to the nucleated society where 2 times 2 is 4 but 5 times 5 is 25 and on we go. Our lives are similarly complicated We have learnt that the simplified existence of a+b=c is redundant because of the complicated lives we live. We no longer have integrated lives instead we live nucleated lives where we divide off sections of our individual lives to into functionally separate entities that rarely, maybe never clash, and maybe never integrate. Our lives have become divided into, if you will, our family identity our home identity, our work identity, our social identity, and so it goes on. A man may well be a father but not a husband, A woman may well be a mother who works but does not have a good relationship with the father of her children, she may no longer be a wife to that man. To this point-the text may not have an apparent application but here is where the rubber hits the road. The nucleation also invades the whole church relationship. We are so adjusted to our compartmentedness that when we come to our church life we just make it another another level of our life and apply the same filters we have to other areas of our life. We all do it at some level or another; for example how many of your fellow church members do you know about their work history? I know that for me, my knowledge of the members of my fellowship is sorely missing in this regard. This may, or may not be significant to most of us. It might become more of an issue if we are looking for a particular trades person or qualification that will fill a particular need in the structure of the church. It is also significant when it comes to the Jesus model /New Testament model of community where the believers lived in a community that shared and cared all things. These believers saw the Kingdom of God bursting out upon their human lives based on some of the sayings of the Master that they interpreted as being a very imminent or at least within their lifetime? They went about living the Good News of the kingdom as Jesus had taught them, making disciples, loving the unloved, and showing the love of God through their lives and activities. These believers were spectacularly successful in expanding the kingdom of God as they understood it and the reputation of God's Kingdom was held in high respect right throughout the Roman Empire wherever the believers strayed. Of course the concept of people straying and gossiping the Good News is an exaggeration, the way of Father is not as simple as that. Father directs the the footstep of man, and mankind while we can go astray without help. rarely will we expand the reputation of the kingdom of God without Fathers input. However often on the surface of things we may over look the input of Father in a behind the scenes environment; it seems that, from our perspective, suddenly we have arrived at a pre-determined point to which we were planning to arrive at. Mayhap this is a gross oversimplification, it seems to me that we over complicate Father as some way of making Him significant(??). We tend to create a complicated environment not just for our gods but also for our own life in a vain attempt to give our lives significance. This brings us back to the start of this piece. In out attempt to make our lives special we have been forced(?) to compartmentalise our lives so that when we drop the balls when we juggle we need to be able to stop and pick them up to be able to start all over; Dad will be there when we do drop them and will be waiting for us.