Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year from the Foster family. May 2009 be blessed!

Living Carelessly

The Hebrew word for trust can at times be translated as careless. (It can also be translated a few other words but I find this one particularly interesting.) Trust being synonymous with careless. Hmmm... in other words, when you are in a trusted relationship you don’t have to worry about how to take care of yourself because your friend is worried about it.

The older I get the more I realize how difficult it is to find a friend you can be careless with. Proverbs tells us to be cautious in friendship. I didn't get that so much a decade or two ago. When it was time for a friendship to dissolve or part ways it was more difficult for me. I've always said that friendships are formed for a reason, a season or life. But it's taken me a while to learn it first hand, embrace it and be prepared. Oh, and that's usually what it takes... a while... and then you learn to metabolize the friendship in a healthy way. Be energized with the good. Eliminate the bad. Ultimately keeping your eyes on Jesus, a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Recoverability

I had lunch with a friend of mine this week who has lost a few hundred thousand (maybe millions) in this interesting economic environment we are currently in. I asked him how he was doing. He told me that for a time he felt pretty low but then decided to "do something about it". I perked up not because of what he's going to do (I have no idea what he's going to do) I perked up because of his attitude. He had taken a pretty big blow but then decided to deal with it, which didn't surprise because one thing I know about my friend is that he might get knocked down but he won't stay there. He has what I like to call recoverability. OK, so I think I got that term from Dr Henry Cloud who might have gotten from some computer data company because that's where it sounds like it came from but the point is, I like it. Recoverability. The ability to rebound, get up, start over... to recover. My friend has it.

Dr Cloud says as our bodies metabolize food, using the good and eliminating the bad, so we have to learn to metabolize our experiences. Use the good, learn from it. Get rid of the toxic bad. Don't dwell on it. Don't live there. Recover.

Matthew 11:28 - "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life."

The Religious Caste

Galatians 3:22-23(the message) - For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time.

Rule-keeping doesn't have the power to create life. But it does have the power to create a religious caste and... the religious caste has the power to make the rules. The system will give high scores to those aware of the big rules (i.e. sins of the flesh) and give low scores to those aware of the lesser rules. (i.e. sins of the spirit) It is these religious-score-keeping, rule-makers that, I think, Jesus was most upset about. Check out what Jesus says about them in Matthew 23(the message) As John Ortberg says, "They actually thought they were paragons of spiritual maturity because they avoided the sins of the flesh. They had no idea that their sin crippled their ability to love - which makes the sins of the spirit the most dangerous and destructive sins of all."

Blaise Pascal said, "Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from a religious conviction."



(This whole thought also brings to mind the apt and descriptive phrase, "holiness by subtraction." I believe I have heard this before but I'll attribute it to Mark Batterson as I know he's written about it)