January 24, 2011
Gung-Ho
When a person gets passionate about their ministry they want everyone around them to get caught up in that same zeal. I’ve noticed that if I fail to jump on-board someone’s enthusiasm-train, they take it personal…as though I’m rejecting them and their God-ordained ministry. The reality is that when others don’t appear gung-ho about a particular ministry, it’s not a rejection - it’s simply that the Spirit hasn’t laid that burden on their heart. We have a local contingent of folks who want to have a homeless shelter in our community and I’m not a supporter of the project. Not that I don’t wish them well in their endeavor, but I feel a homeless shelter has shades of a safe haven for people who want to avoid taking responsibility. I suppose that comes from having a father who would rather live in homelessness than get a job and support his family.
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5 comments:
Gail;
-----Your analysis of passion and ministry is right on. Each person’s ministry is important because each person is a particular part of the body. But not everyone is the same particular body part. So the whole body benefits from services well done by many different members doing what they are capable of doing and staying out of the way of what they are incapable of doing. This stems from the reality that nobody is in his self wholly capable of everything or completely correct in his thinking, feeling, or behaving. We are each a mixture of sufficiency and insufficiency and of right and wrong.
-----That is why I hesitate to denigrate some people’s efforts to create a homeless shelter in our community. I know the truth of your experience with the availability of free shelter destroying some people’s impetus to work hard for their own shelter. It certainly does that. But there are also many people who have that impetus but lack either a present ability or opportunity to provide their own shelter.
-----Every ministry a person can conceive provides some amount of good and an amount of bad. Which is proportionately more or less depends upon present governmental and sociological circumstances. Concerning homeless shelters, personally, I believe the government has greatly reduced the citizen’s opportunities by trying to eliminate their every bad situation. And the philosophical tendencies of our population are falling in line with governmental misconceptions to the worsening of our problems. We are now dealing with a government straining to provide for a class of people seeking the provision of their needs from the fruits of the hard efforts of another class of people who feel wholly inadequate if they are not earning their own way. The former won’t work because they don’t have to, and the latter produce less because any excess they do produce will simply be confiscated. So both produce less for the economy, and homelessness rises higher whether caused by irresponsibility or incapability.
-----Yet it is real. And more sadly, the number of folks who want to responsibly provide their own housing, but can not, not only grows with the irresponsible numbers, but also systemically grows because of it. Though every homeless person needs shelter, the responsible, incapable homeless ones particularly deserve it. Until we deal with the significant, philosophical flaws of our government and society, homeless shelters will continue to be partially the cause of that problem for which they are needed.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
I agree about not judging other people's calling to ministry. Since I am weak on the gift of mercy I try to cut people with that gift some slack.
Reading Proverbs I also see a lot of verses about sloth and sluggards. Since you have seen it, you recognize it.
Grace and Peace
yah, sometimes i fail to have pity for those at the side of the road asking for spare change. they choose this life as i choose mine, i guess certain people's situations are purely...situational. as they have been dealt shitty cards in life, but iam an avid poker player and my philosophy is that even pocket two's can land a full house, four of a kind, or a bett-able hand. god is the dealer of these cards, it's up to you to call, raise the bet, or fold. those who stand at the side of the road are those who check... check.... check....
Eloquentcoffe;
-----Your blog identity was well chosen. You have eloquently stated a principle as stimulating as a strong cup of good coffee. Many Christians cringe at the idea of anything happening by mere chance. And I think when the idea is boiled down to its final residue, happenstance is dealt by God. But I also cringe at the idea of God dealing bad happenstance, seeing we are befallen both by its good and bad. Since the final residue belongs to God, I leave the matter of His direct involvement in happenstance up to Him. The issue for my concern is what am I going to do with the happenstance of my life, and how much can I help my neighbor with that of his.
-----Some folks say that you make your own luck (another word that will land a person in bad standing with some.) And I completely agree. But that is only a class of luck. And that class does not nullify the other class that completely befalls you no matter what you do. For instance, that I was born in Montrose, Colorado to an up and coming trout farmer was entirely outside my control. I could have been born in New York to an unimaginably wealthy banker, or in Chicago to a sleazy mobster. Shoot, I could have been born in the Ukraine to one of the poor farm families starved to death by Stalin. Fortunately I wasn’t. There are numerous other events and circumstances which happen to us completely outside our control. Some are good. Some are bad.
-----I don’t know much about poker. You would probably whip my socks off within two hands of it. But I do know the difference between the cards in the deck and the cards in your hand. You have enough control over those in your hand to determine which ones provide the best chance of mixing well with those unknown ones to be dealt next. At the moment, all you can do is make the most reasonable decision with what you know then see what’s in the next slice of life to hit.
-----But that is only dealing with the first class of luck, maybe in a poker analogy, the cards themselves. To you the game is even more about how you play it than it is about the cards that are dealt. That is the second class of luck, the luck you make. You know how to make poker luck, I don’t. The luck I will make for keeping my socks on is to not play poker with you, either that or not to bet my socks. I will turn my attention towards what better fits my skills when looking for the next slice of life to mix with what I’ve chosen to hold. Even that is a gamble I’ve got to make courageously. And like with poker, the wider one opens his eyes, and the broader is the mind he applies, the less risk will be in the gamble. Closing the eyes, abandoning the mind, and doing nothing takes all of the luck out of the game, all of the risk out of the gamble, and reduces the uncertainty of good or bad coming next to the certainty of bad.
-----Poker analogies fail here. Poker deals only a few cards. The days of our lives deal countless cards. Ultimately, I view the ongoing flow of cards as raw material. You have to go get it, then you manufacture something out of it. And in that process, there is always a certain amount of byproduct and some total waste before there is finished product. But there is always hard work. Like you’ve said, there is nothing without action.
Steve
Eloquentcoffee,
Thanks for contributing to the discussion and for the interesting analogy.
Gail
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