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| photo by Abraham Bates |
our clocks had to be reset
I've come to realize it's the light on their mirowave. I haven't noticed the light until now. That's because the electricity went out for the whole block this week. All our clocks had to be reset, including our microwave clock. This happens so often we rarely reset our microwave clock. It's at least six hours ahead for the day. When I go to heat up a piece of muffin at 8am in the morning it tells me I'm actually having a mid day snack. When I defrost chicken for dinner it tells me it's to late in the day to be eating such a heavy meal.
The clock on our neighbor's house flickers and comes to life. I can see it from where I stand. It's repeating words like the auto mechanics shop that tells me it's time to change my radiator fluid. The problem with my neighbor's clock is that no one lives in the home. The house went into foreclosure almost a year ago. It's been empty since then. No one is home to reset the microwave clock.
heart's abandoned
There are many hearts like this house. What used to be embodied with life, youth, visions of trading the world has now all but been abandoned. What used to breath fervor of a deep love for God has ended up now as a small echo for a time of life all too embarrassing to be drudged up now. Now that they are old, successful, adequately skeptical, the perfect balance between non-faith and spiritual innovation.
What happen to people's heart whose flicker of life in God is all but lost. Like the family who lost their house to the bank. When did it become irreversible? The lost of a job? The impending divorce? The balloon payment unable to be refinanced? When does a person's heart start to tell them that life is better without God?
anti-belief or actual-decision
This is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:5, "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God." He knows that an anti-belief in God occurs well before the actual decision to stop pursuing a life with God. It begins life a foreclosure with poor spending habits or when a person is unable to replace their salary. We must be cultivating a relationship with God in the everyday places of life.
I remember hanging with a friend in Seattle years ago. He was visiting Nancy and I when we lived there. He asked me skeptical questions like: But, how do you know God actually speaks to us?
These are not the questions someone who is seeking to follow Christ repeatedly asked. It's not that we don't or can't ask them; it's that this is not where we dwell. Paul tells us we are to dwell in reminding ourselves that we are in Christ. "If anyone is confident that he is in Christ, let him remind himself just as he is in Christ, so are we."
the dispossessed
When we live in a house, we remind ourselves we own our house by repeatedly paying the mortgage. When our investment in the house wanes (AKA. we loose our ability to pay for the house) we loose our ability to live in the house. We become dispossessed.
This is the same for our spiritual life. When we repeatedly remind ourselves of our life in Christ, we are invested, we own our spirituality. We we show a lack of care, concern, seriousness with which the consequence means inevitable lose of life in God; we are headed on a journey to dispossess our spiritual life from God.
reset your clock
If you began to question God and what he's up to in the world, would there be enough embodied spirituality in your life to reset your clock? Or would it be left blinking in the vacated space left behind a deadened life with God.
AB.
*written by Abraham Bates - Photography by Abraham Bates - Copyright AbrahamBates.com
*written by Abraham Bates - Photography by Abraham Bates - Copyright AbrahamBates.com
