It's Time to Connect

[HKHaugan]

Now what I laid out in the previous posting were some “…ponderings (there are many more) about the dynamics of human nature without God but yet a built-in plea to face what we have been given and that is being an image of God. Thinking, believing, trusting, faith, perception, individuality, emotionality, personness, searching both externally and internally, being moral; all these are built into us from birth. The question is---what do we do with the equipment we’ve been given?”

Exactly---what do we do with the equipment we’ve been given, basically our mind, heart and spirit, which we contend make up the image of God in us?

The average person, if that is a valid assumption, struggles with surviving in a world that is anti-heart. It is an unforgiving, uncompassionate, unfeeling social and spiritual environment. In other words it is an unjust environment. It has no ability to be a heart-feeling, mind-understanding and spirit-recognizing organism appreciative of the individual. It is an atmosphere incapable of perceiving the full apprehension of each person’s mind, heart and spirit. In fact no individual in the world can apprehend the totality of what is going on inside themselves much less anyone else’s. What does this tell us? Three things:

First, atmosphere is simply a non-personal reality we can’t put our finger on or read accurately. It’s an invisible reality. It’s there, like it or not. We have to deal with it.

Second, since this atmosphere is invisible it is spiritual. That is, what takes place within it is filled with a variety of motivating forces that influence our responses. When we look at our social environment, it’s what we believe about what we perceive is going on around us from day to day from person to person. That’s our spirituality.

Third, every perception I have within this atmosphere is processed by my mind, heart and spirit. Each perception demands a response and the basis for those responses tells me where I am in the search for stability and survival.

Given these three factors it’s up to us to discern in which area a person is influenced most and be ready to be guided by the Spirit to respond. Examples: you’re in a conversation and you notice that a person seems distracted by a song or a passing image. Or they have related an incident about the past that has great significance to them. The incident was an emotional trigger touching something deep from their past that has been part of what has shaped them to be who they now are. That is an open door to pursue a little bit about who they are and what they believe.

I know when I hear a song from West Side Story or Les Miserables or the radio plays Cheatin’ Heart or I pass a lake and remember fishing with my parents or the feeling of guilt for an unresolved argument from years ago, it is something that my memory holds as a key to who I am. Maybe it’s a spoken political reaction of anger to something I see on TV I know immediately it opens an attitude I’ve developed over time. When these things are shared it’s because you have been personal enough with someone to have them share themselves with you.

One of the great literary masterpieces is Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” As I look back I am sure it was one of the building blocks in my childhood the Lord used to bring me to Him later in life. I couldn’t wait when Christmas rolled around because on Christmas Eve it played on the radio and Lionel Barrymore was the absolute quintessential Ebenezer, the ‘everyman’ doused with sin.

I listened to every word and could see in my mind’s eye Scrooge’s cold dreary office Tom Cratchett worked in, the hovel poor crippled Tiny Tim endured and the crusty Ebenezer snarling at requests for charity. I scarily envisioned the three ghosts who confront Ebenezer Scrooge with His past, present and future. If you adjust carefully to what they exposed in the drama you’ll feel the guilt aroused in Scrooge’s memory, then his deterioration into a miserly unfriendly grinch in the present and the finality of where all that could lead in his future. When he awakes in the morning from what he had thought was a bad dream but clearly his reality, his whole perspective changes and he finds himself freed from his selfish, bitter and lonely world into a bright happiness full of family and friends as he gave of himself to others.

There is no doubt that Dickens was biblically grounded as were most of his literary contemporaries. The three ghosts were the way he saw the Lord working through the Holy Spirit to bring a man to his knees to crucify the old self and be resurrected to a new joy-filled endless life. Tack on your own story and you will have plenty to identify with as you patiently listen to the hurting around you who are desperate for the Lord and don’t yet know it. The real issue is to pray for, listen to and wait for the connection such a parallel will bring. Then trust the Holy Spirit to do the rest, that is, to reflect in your own experience what is similar and how the Lord made a difference for you.

More on this next time.