Why can't we all get along?--by Linden Malki

We all value different things! This is the basis of most personality analysis programs, to recognize what we value, what we expect of others, what we are willing to offer others, and what we don't want. The Enneagram is one tool that can help us clarify and understand what we find important, what annoys us the most, and what we are willing to do about it. Another similar tool is Gary Chapman's "Love Languages", which help pinpoint what we like and expect of our relationships, and what we do not care about. In the real world of conflict, I think there are at least three things going on.

One is the content of the disagreement or hard feelings--what was said or not said/done or not done that set off the reaction. Often it is not clear or not understood why someone took offense at something that happened (or didn't happen), and someone else didn't see why it was important. Chapman describes five things that can be easily misunderstood in a relationship: the value of words, works, things, time and touch. In addition to whatever triggered the conflict, people have different ways of expressing their displeasure. Some people yell, some people clam up, some sulk, some leave the scene, some nag. Some people won't explain why they are angry, some people tell everybody.

Then if you recognize what is happening, there is the opportunity to do something about it. If you're ready to settle, compromise is a Good Thing.  An apology and asking forgiveness can be a growth experience. Agreeing to drop it is another possibility, especially if there is the commitment to actually let it die and not dig it up when somebody's being crabby. Some things can't be fixed, and have to be lived with (and hopefully learned from.) What is not pleasing to God is letting them simmer on the back of your life forever; this can become a generational cold prickly thing and take the joy out of your life. A grudge can poison your relationships for a long time.

What I have learned is obvious, but we don't always think of it. Prayer is a great healer! And I don't mean telling God how horrible someone is, but shut up and listen for His wisdom. He can give the strength to deal with the tough stuff, and the grace to let it die. He really is smarter than we sometimes give Him credit for!

God's Wisdom is better than our conflicts!--by Linden Malki

God's Wisdom is better than our conflicts!      Sept 22                                     

God didn't create our lives to be easy. Apparently we need to learn from Him, from His world, His word, and each other. The main command that Adam and Eve had to deal with wasn't objectively difficult, but their curiosity got the better of them. We can assume that Cain and Abel were informed of the requirements for an acceptable offering by God, but only Abel paid attention. The conflicts that resulted in our racial history were results of reality that didn't match the ideals we thought we could get away with. We have always faced the issue of our perceived needs vs the needs and realities of our lives and the lives of the others we share a planet with.

Have you ever known someone who grew up with an absence of pain and frustration? I recall a cousin who as a child was totally indulged--I was at their house at dinnertime once when he was about three, and he decided he didn't like the supper his mom had for him, and she actually ran to the store to buy what he demanded and cooked him a new supper. They were at our house at about this same age, and he was picking up stuff in the house (my mom didn't childproof a house, she houseproofed the child; I had learned very young to not get into anything without specific permission, which also meant they could take me anywhere).  When my mom tried to say something about this behavior, his mom's reply was "oh, let him play, if he breaks it I'll pay for it." Mom told me later that she was about ready to spank not the kid but her sister. He developed diabetes, which turned into a good thing because my aunt had to put appropriate limits on him.

God is like this: He gives a lot of rope, but also the information to deal properly with it. If we listen and learn, we will avoid a lot of the conflicts of life. If we don't learn in this life, we will have a harder life than we need, and pay for it in the

long run. He has given us good advisors, and when we still didn't listen well, He sent the wisest Teacher, who paid for our unwillingness to learn with His life. He will help us learn the smart answers from the evil and foolish advice if we ask; and we may be surprised at some of the ways we learn. Historically, we have paid for our stupidity with conflicts and pain;each one of us has our own lessons to learn in our own ways. It still comes back to the advice of a wise missionary aunt who told me when I was about to get married, that things worked better when we put God first.

Relationships--we are not alone! by Linden Malki

John, in his vision of God reaching down to Earth and preparing the end of time as we know it, tells of Jesus at the door of His church, knocking for His people to answer and invite Him in to fellowship. This invitation is not for strangers, but for people who should already know Him. There are those who claim to know who He is, and what He requires, but He is still remote and not involved in their daily life. He had already spent two thousand years speaking to those who would listen, but even after another two thousand years there are still those who know about Him, and may even spend a lot of time talking to Him and but don't actually listen to Him.  There are times when He approaches us, and we realize that we are not walking alone; and there are times when we need to stop and clear our cluttered minds, and do it His way from the start rather than having him straighten out the mess we made on our own.

He also wants us to know ourselves--it's easy to take other people's valuation of us, which can be anywhere from dirt underfoot all the way up to too good to be true. St Paul advised the Romans: "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you." (Romans 12:3) This applies in the other direction as well; we occasionally see the poster that says "God doesn't make junk". This is true, He doesn't, but we don't have to look around much to see that we can do that on our own. Jesus said to "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you." So if we keep our eyes on Him, He will have His eyes on us, and we don't need to worry who we are because He knows us better than we do.

And He gives us a world--a creation that is wild and beautiful, and that helps keep us "grounded". We should be constantly aware of the beauty of the world, and our place in it, the incredible place He made for us to live; and we also need to be aware of the world of people, those who He put in our lives for us to relate to as His sons and daughters, both for good and for challenges. We need to be aware of our blessings--a God who wants to be in relationship with us; who made us and blesses us; and a beautiful world that is full of His children, for us to share His blessings with!

Do we recognize God's call for us and our world?--by Linden Malki

Isaiah had it easier--he didn't question the vision he was given of God's calling. He did have a choice, however; God did ask, rather than demand. Jonah didn't get the choice; he tried to run the wrong way but got sidetracked by a fish. Noah was already in an obedient relationship when he was called to build an ark. Abram's father Terah got halfway to where God wanted him to go, but Abram heard God's promise and followed it, to become the father of a nation.  God spoke to Jacob, to Moses, to Joshua, to others in many different ways, but with a common message: I want you to know Me, and be committed to My Word. 

We are called as individuals, but we are also called to community. When Moses was called, he was called not to serve God by himself alone, but to go and call his extended tribal families to not just listen, but do something. They were offered an escape from a life of servitude, to a land where Abraham had originally been called. Their call was not only to go somewhere, but to be a demonstration of God's plan for the creatures that He had created. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah and others recognized God's call to all the nations, but it didn't happen in their day; in fact, what did happen was the development of a very ingrown society, that recognized God's works but saw them only applying to their own "chosen people".

What it took to break out of this impasse was Jesus, who didn't limit His message to His own society, but went out of His way to respond to Samaritans, Greeks, and even Romans, the despised imperial overlords. As Jesus' story spread beyond His own people, we see all sorts of different people responding to the call that Jesus brought. We also see followers of His followers who responded to call, recognizable as from the same Source as that originally given to Noah and Abram/Abraham. We see it coming to people like St Patrick, St Boniface, Martin Luther, and others down through generations, and we see it coming to each of us as well, if we are open to His call to live His life and pass it on!

FIRE:Connecting with God--by Linden Malki

The first mention of fire in Scripture is in connection with worship: the instruction given for the offering that God required of Noah after the flood.  We can see several points of it's being a "burnt offering"; one is that it is destroyed in the process, and the smoke rises upwards toward God. In some cases, the roasted offering became food for the priests and for those celebrating Passover.  We can probably assume that the original Passover celebrations, if any, happened at Shiloh or Jerusalem. After the split in the Kingdom, there appears to be a revival of Passover celebrations at the time of Hezekiah and later, Josiah. It appears that the celebrations were observed more regularly after the Second Temple was built under Nehemiah. A central part of the celebrations was the sacrifice of the Passover lamb (or young goat) until the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

It is interesting that this tradition lasted up through the whole of the Old Testament period, until the second Temple was destroyed.  The decision was made by the Jewish leadership to discontinue the offerings until the Temple was again available. When the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, was recovered in the 1967 war, a small organization of religious  Jews began preparing for the reestablishment of the sacrifices and other traditions, even though the Temple area is still under the control of the Muslim authorities and not available to Jews.

The traditional Passover sacrifice, however, is not dead. When the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians in 700 BC, there were still Samaritans living in the original area of the cities of Samaria and Nablus, maintaining their old traditions. At their largest, under Roman rule, it is estimated that there were about  million Samaritans still holding to their traditions, similar to but not identical to the Jewish communities.  There are about 800 left now, overlapping the line between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank.  Their annual Passover celebration still maintains the tradition of  sacrificing a young sheep or goat per family in a communal fire pit as part of the Passover meal. They also attract visitors interested in observing this 3600 year old celebration.   
                                                                                                                 
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We may Hide, but God Seeks--by Linden Malki

The first reaction to the first breakdown between God and His creatures is that they hid. Why they thought that would accomplish anything is not clear--it seems like such a trivial thing. They knew, however, that the bite of the fruit wasn't the point--the issue at hand was obedience.  This was also the point of the offerings that Cain and Abel made--Abel had made the effort of doing what God had asked, and Cain apparently didn't bother, and then took it out on Abel--and then tried to avoid admitting it,  and was banished; he was marked and then banished from God's presence.

There were times that God hid Himself from people; in cases where people had rejected Him the relationship was destroyed.  Most often, though, it was God who chose  the people who He had plans for: Noah, whose contemporaries were so disobedient to God that He made that separation permanent; and the Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph who were called to be the ancestors of a nation. God revealed Himself to Moses and Joshua, and they were called to lead God's people out of captivity to a Promised Land (with a few glitches on the way). The next few centuries were tough, as the people were learning to become a nation; there was a century where the tribes did build a thriving society, and then it fell apart. The Northern tribes rebelled. and were absorbed by the Assyrians and a whole string of later empires, and only a few Samaritans kept a thin thread of knowledge of God alive to this day.  The Southern Kingdom, where the royal line of David lasted a few more centuries, with their relationship marked by high and low times; to a point where the words of God that had survived in hiding were found in the Temple, and kept the traditions and laws alive. What is amazing is that as forgetful and evil that people have been, God has never allowed them to be totally lost, without hope. The survival of the Jews through the Greek and Roman centuries and then exile for 1900 years, and the survival of the Church from a few followers who spent various stretches under persecution to a community that has touched a good percentage of today's world, are reminders that God has not forgotten His people, no matter how rough times have been. 

We need to remember that God has never forgotten, even when we as human beings have treated each other badly and have been forced into hiding, both as communities and as individuals. It may be tempting to just lay low, not make waves; and that has been appropriate in some times and places. In this past century, both the Jewish community and the Church have been driven into hiding in some times and places; but it looks like God's not through with us yet. 

Seeking His Perfection in an Imperfect World --by Linden Malki

Even Jesus had to deal with people who hated him--so we shouldn't be surprised when people are unhappy with us. Sometimes everybody knows why somebody has it "in" for us; sometimes we have no idea what the issue is.  There was a girl in our high school youth group that I had been good friends with for several years, and somehow I started hearing from other people that she was trying to sabotage me for no good reason that I could ever find out.  At a recent high school reunion she was my friend again..  This seems to be life in this world; we can't please everybody all the time.                                                                                                                           

There are different attitudes behind different people.  There are some people who have no idea of right and wrong; and if we get in their way we can't predict the result. Sometimes we can apologize and clear the air; sometimes there is no way to explain why something is unacceptable to someone who doesn't have the concept. About all we can do is stay out of the situation as much as possible and pray hard (and privately)against the evil we see.  And of course be open to the other person to mellow out and listen--it can happen. One thing that doesn't help is arguing--this sets up a defensive reaction that can make things worse.                                                                                                               
                               

Another kind of person we can have to deal with is someone who does "know the rules", but is determined to do it themselves. On one hand they can be very judgmental about other people, but convinced that they've got it all together by themselves and don't need anything from anybody--not even God. (Remember those Paul mentions in Galatians 2 who were so sure they could be justified by the Law?) Sometimes we find these folks inside the church, so sure they know what everybody should be doing; and sometimes we find them on the outside;,convinced that they don't need us.

What makes the difference between the self-sufficient believer and the one who is truly justified in Christ is accepting the knowledge that we cannot live the "good life" on our own; that it requires our dependence on Christ and the presence of the Spirit to forgive each other and truly know His forgiveness. Yes, we are still living in an imperfect world, and will be imperfect on occasion, but we have the answer in Jesus's sacrifice and the power that we have in Him to truly seek forgiveness for our own missteps and to truly forgive those who have tripped us up.