A Reflection on the Appreciation of Discipline

I was talking with an advisor yesterday and he quoted Kevin O'Leary when he reminises on how his step father would ask him, "What are you going to do to be who you want to be?" It's a twist on the old, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It reminded me of the words of my own father when I would ask how you he kept up his daily reading and prayer schedule. He replied with, "Patrick, it's all in how you train your body." I would admit that my conversation challenged me to apply some discipline to some financial practices.
Then this morning I was struck by the abruptness of Psalm 94. It begins in such a harsh, almost repugnant tone. "O LORD, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance shine forth!" I was caught by the fierceness of these words. Definitely not a "Love Wins" understanding of God. He is a judge that exacts justice and perfect vengeance on the wicked. It is most definitely a psalm calling out to God to judge those who are wicked, those who measure out injustice upon injustice. In the midst of this psalm are four verses which also awakened me. There is punishment for the wicked, but there is discipline for those whom the LORD loves. And blessed is the one who recognizes the discipline of the the LORD.
There is such benefit in discipline. I can do just about anything I want. But, is what I'm doing leading to what God desires for me to be? Discipline actually focuses my attention to do the things that are necessary. The hard things and the good things. Sometimes that discipline needs to come externally and be pressed upon me. More and more my desire is that the discipline comes as my desire for God and his purposes grows. I used to lament about the fact that slowly my bucket list in life was getting shorter and shorter, not because I was so adventurous and successful, but because life was moving on and opportunities were passing me by. I'm starting to think that the bucket list mentality with the "you can do anything you set your mind to" mentality is perhaps missing the point. There is perhaps a greater goal which challenges you to eliminate the distractions to only seek those things which help to achieve the goal.
I need to learn to be more ruthless with my resources and not wish I could do anything, but do what I know I need to do.

Hmmm

File under: never caught that before.

And Moses said, "I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned." (Exodus 3:3 ESV)
- reading that again this morning it dawned on me that the initiation of this encounter was God revealing himself in the bush. Yet Moses needed to respond to the prompt before he it was revealed that it was God in the bush. The world is hungry for that personal encounter with God. Perhaps if we would stop to look at some of the amazing things around us, we might actually meet God in the midst of it.

Moses was doing his job and got distracted by a bush that was on fire. I'm far too busy to get distracted by the out-of-the-ordinary moments in life.
Blessed distraction - keep your senses on the look-out for those things that us away from the everyday. It might be a God moment.

Tying the Rites Together

A recent paper I wrote for a course that I'm taking has made me stop and think about the Church's practice regarding Baptism and Communion. Growing up, Communion was reserved for those who had been baptized and were in good standing with the local church. The Communion service was a separate service, usually taking place Sunday evenings. In our tradition footwashing followed Communion as part of the service. (We will leave the footwashing for another post.) Since then I have witnessed and participated in the gradual opening up of the Communion table.

Now, many of the churches that I know have opened Communion to anyone who has professed faith. I think some of the reason for opening it up was to make celebrating the Lord's Supper something more public. Opening it up allowed the service to be done as part of the regular Sunday morning service without offending anyone who was not baptized. (For those of you reading this from a mainline church background, this may seem like an odd issue. Anabaptists are fairly strong that Baptism is an "adult" confession of faith.) The invitation to participate in Communion is usually phrased in such a way that it is up the individual to determine whether they are "suitable" to take communion.

I have some questions that I'm wrestling with:

• Why has this change in our practice gone unchallenged for the most part?
• How has our narcississtic culture impacted our practice (and our theology)? Is our faith so personal that it means only I can determine my standing before God?
• Are we so careful not to offend that we will stop from thinking through a theological argument before making such a change in the way in which we worship?
• Does being identified as part of the body of Christ (baptism) give us the entrance into participating in taking the elements representing his body and blood?

I am curious about how you practice Communion in your worship? Is it something open to all, to those who are believers, or just to those who are baptized?