Room temperature. That’s what we’re at. “But since you are neither hot nor cold, but only lukewarm, I want to spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16)- we are loogies. Rich, fat and comfortable. Even our poor. What percentage of the homeless that you see, those viewed as the poorest of our poor, are overweight? In another light, how many of the homeless you have seen bear any resemblance to the poor in Africa? India? Anywhere but the Northwestern Hemisphere? Let’s face it, since we’re so good with our faces, we’re loogies. Products of a culture where success is equated with excess. Sunny with a high of 75, year round (except this last year thank God), living lives swamped (paradoxically) by sunshine and ipads.
And Survival? That thing that has dominated human ambition for thousands of years and still dominates the lives of (almost) everyone but us? It has become associated with “making it through” a long, 8-hour day sitting in a chair, staring at a blinking screen, where the air has been so conditioned that you actually can’t feel it on your skin.. But that’s not the end of the story.
We have been called. Elected from eternity in Jesus the Christ. He spoke, speaks, and will speak, bringing a new reality into existence by His very word. And we are called to be a part of His story, not defined by our conditioned air, blinking lights or sunshine, but by our Lord, our Father, our Creator, His dance, His plan, His reality. How? Only by his grace and his mercy, the overflowing, ever-spilling out of His love.
So tell me. What now? How will these two seemingly separate stories/realities meet? Will they clash like tectonic plates, producing mountains and valleys? Or like the ocean on the rock, always smoothing, always shaping? Will we boil like the frog on the stove? What can break us from the numbness, the routine, the comfort? How/will/can we hear the voice of the crucified God in our padded rooms?
