Ok. So before we get into my life, please open your bibles to Ephesians, chapter five. I recently discovered this dandy little tool on iTunes that will allow one to download sermons for free- its called Podcasts. Sermons come out daily from hundreds of preachers and I'm getting quite a few of them. So the one I heard this morning was by John MacArthur, author of the commentary in the John MacArthur Study Bible on which I have come to rely heavily for historical insight on the Word. John MacArthur was talking this morning about how as Christians we are supposed to act- we are supposed to be worthy of the name of Christ. The first verse in chapter five calls us to be imitators of God. Then it lists a bunch of traits that we would either possess or not possess depending on who we were imitating. Then it says in verse five, "For this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person- such a man is an idolator- has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." There are certian things we should cut out of our lives as Christians- they are all listed in the first couple verses of this chapter- but not because be wont be saved if we dont. Paul says we wont be inheritors of the kingdom of Christ if we live a certain way and Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is right now. Here inlies my revelation- We aren't being threatened with Hell in this verse if we don't obey, I think. We already have our salvation, thats why he is calling us Christians when he writes this letter. We are being threatened with the idea that our lives will produce nothing and absolutely no fruit will come of anything we do. Paul is talking about the result of how we live our lives now will be shown right now- not after we die and we see whats waiting for us on the other side. So thats important thing number one.
Important thing number two. Go back to verse one in this chapter. "Be imitators of God..."
I'm always frustrated on trains because when you ride on them at night, all you can see is your own reflection- because the light on the train is brighter than the light outside. So all you can look at is your own face, the face of the guy across from you when he's not looking and the old lady fidgeting to his left. This bothers me because I can't see outside and I would much rather be looking at the grass and trees and nature and bunnies. The only time I can see outside my own little car and all the nasty dim yellow reflections of myself is when there is a light outside that I can look at. It illuminates everything around it and then I can see all the nature and the beauty but as soon as I stop looking at the light- my own reflection floods my vision again and I have to go all squinty to try to see anything interesting. Look also at I John verse 5. "God is light and in him we have no darkness at all." Do you see where Im going with this? We can produce our own little nasty dim light that only shows the reflections of ourselves, because we we made in God's image, so we can at least get a match's worth of light out of us even though God's light is like the sun. There's still that image. But when were making our own light we end up staring at our own reflection and not physically being able to look beyond a fake reflection. However, along comes God's light and we see through our own reflection to what actually exists. Back to Ephesians- if we want to be imitators of God we have to look past our own reflection out into the real light- because if we are looking anywhere but straight at God, we will only see a distorted reflection of ourselves. Yeah, good so what does this mean? How do we turn this rediculous metaphor into something material that we can do, Victoria? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you. Go read James 1:22-25. Meditate on it. Focus on the whole idea of where you look. This will be exciting. Go do it.
Okay. So this afternoon I went out to Alcala to visit Jonathan and Tiffany (official shouting out). We went to this crazy renaissance fair and saw this falcon lady whose crazy birds almost pecked my eyes out. Not really, but really, who lets their falcons just fly around like that? Then all these dudes had their kids up on their shoulders because, "no really honey, get closer to the falcons, they dont have incredibly large, sharp talons or beaks and they probably aren't hungry after entertaining people all day." Although it was funny at one point- one of the falcons (really, how many times in your life do you get to type, or say out loud, "then.. one of the falcons..") one of the falcons flew on to the top of this merry-go-round thingie and would spin around and around and around- thats the kinda falcon I would be. Then we walked around to all these places and saw all this midieval spanish stuff that was cool, lots of wooden toys and food. Tiffany bought this bow and arrow thats supposed to be for her young nephew or something like that but those arrows offer no protection. I could kill a deer with one of those. Or a falcon. Then we went into this "tent of meeting" where we drank this mystical tea and ate these mystical cookies and I spoke some mystical arabic with the guy so he was happy at me and then he asked me for my mystical number... everything seemed very mystical. There was some dancing guy too, that was exiting. and mystical. While we were in this mystical tent, it started to rain, which made it seem more mystical, although that could've been the amount of sugar I had consumed up until this point. So after it died down we went and Jonathan bought the biggest loaf of bread I had ever seen, it weighed about as much as a small child, which is why he kept calling it "baby" and stroking it. After some cheese buying and the 'fake' bow and arrow buying we walked to the train station. I for some reason decided to wear these flip flops I have that have this tendency to suction to the ground when it rains. So about twelve times I almost tripped and fell and died. But I made it home okay and had theological revelations in the process.
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