Tonight because of Charles Ringma’s talk at Central Baptist where I saw none of you I was thinking: if a middle-class Christian like myself gives up ministering from a position of strength, providing services as from afar, from away up, down to the poor, the less fortunate, the lowly, and instead gives up what wealth, status and influence he has and identifies with the poor in their poverty, sharing that pain on the level, seeking justice because injustice would be a lived reality, not a word on TV, then he would find out whether the holy spirit is in fact there with him, whether Jesus’ name is in fact powerful – when stripped of all he now relies on, his only strength and advantage would be that name.
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I live a bit far away.
from what/whom?
I know just what you’re talking about.
The First Principle Is Relocation.
Thanks for the article Baus, I’ll read it now. My first thought though is that the first principle might be Staying About Where One Finds Oneself.
Like Moses, Matt. Exactly like him.
I don’t think I quite understand.
I understand, Aaron. I understand.
Hebrews 11:24-28
Imagine the temptation of Moses to use the power and prestige of his position as a royal prince to help Israel, rather than identifying with them in their slavery.
Yeah, but I dunno if that’s the kind of story that a ‘principle’ can be extracted from. He also went on a decades-long pilgrimmage into the desert during which I expect the Israelites were still having a pretty rought time, unidentified-with.
Principle-who-cares. I was just saying that to identify with the poor (after whatever time doing whatever) is like Moses. Because he did, too.
And presumably he had the option (according to Hebrews, anyway) of doing otherwise.
he was also a murderer
One man’s murder is another man’s unlawfully taking a person’s life. Why quibble?
Which just goes to show, Dennis, how God uses for noble purposes the most unlikely of vessels, and afterwards praises them to bits.
Rather humbling, that.