Joan Ball: July 2009 Archives

I am a big fan of Post-Secret, an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard with sometimes funny, sometimes startling, sometimes heartbreaking results. That's why I was thrilled to read about a new project by author, blogger Anne Jackson called "Permission to Speak Freely" which, according to Anne's blog, will be released by Zondervan next fall. 

Okay, I'll admit it. I posed a question to my 11 year old son Ian over dinner earlier this week that I cannot answer myself. I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know it when I shared the conversation here in a post titled, What Would You Ask Jesus? In fact, I didn't know it until the comments started coming in and the wonderful, honest and genuine readers of this blog took the question to heart. Whether weighing in here or on Facebook, I was humbled as I read the answers of the sick, the faithful, the curious, the skeptical and the disgusted. I considered plucking out a few examples to illustrate this point on either side of my coming clean about my own inability to conger an answer to this simple yet paradoxically complex question but chose instead to list them here. It's kind of long, but I think it's worth it. Feel free to add to the list. As for me, I have some thinking to do...

Pam: I would have so many questions about the state of this world, but I would be selfish and ask about me. As a cancer survivor, I feel that I am wasting this life, I have had no great epiphany. I would ask Jesus what is it he would have me do with the rest of my life. I have been given a second chance and absolutely nothing has changed.

Mark: As with the 11 yr old, I would want to go back in time and meet my Jesus face to face. Get a big hug from him, be held by him, Sit and talk with him about how I am living my life and all my shortcomings and how I can trully get closer to him and serve him and be the man he intended for me to be. Then maybe go get a quick look at some of the big fallen empires such as babylon, rome maybe see about alexander the great. But before any of that I would need to see Jesus first. He must always be first.

Anon: I would ask him how did we come to be and where did this thing called existence come from? I am just fascinated by how existence came into existence?

Jeanine: If I was granted the previlage of being face to face with Jesus on earth I would simply ask," am I living my life the way you planned and hoped?"

Jakebreaker: I'd ask Jesus 3 things: 1 - Why did he lose it and whip those temple money-changers with nails? He's a role model. He should know better than that. 2 - How come he never just flat-out said that it's wrong to own another human being? 3 - Why would I follow the teachings of a God who threatens infinite punishment for finite crimes when he hates you, and who mutilates infant genitalia without anesthetic when he *likes* you?

Larry: I would thank him for giving me understanding of what's happening today, tomorrow, and all that will happen till he comes. It is what he will say to us that's important, I want to hear "well done my good and faithful servant"

Anon: I would ask Jesus alot of WHY's and have him teach me the reason behind them all. I don't understand the Bible nor do I understand what it tries to tell me. I went to several classes on the teachings and got me more confused then ever as everyone interpets differently. So I would have the Great Teacher of all teach me the Why's and What If's that I have within me. That is if HE (Jesus ) has the time.

Robert: Did you take the day off on September 11, 2001?

Kristy: I would ask Jesus to help me remember that He has already accomplished the work in us and that we do not need to strive as Christians. What we do need to do is call on His holy name, and trust only in Him through the faith that has been given to us that are His.

My husband Martin, son Ian and friend Andrea sat tonight drinking coffee and discussing outlandish dreams. What power, ability or experience we would love to have if there were no limits. It was an impractical exercise that broke down like this...

I came across the following comment written by mariakirby (screen name), in response to a post called "Summer Theology" on The Jesus Manifesto website. I don't know mariakirby, but she paints such beautiful word pictures of her understanding of the sovereignty of God that I wanted to share...  

I've had similar thoughts about the sovereignty of God. When I was a child there was an artist who came to church and used art to illustrate God's transformitive power. She drew a beautiful landscape of hills and sky and houses. Then she made big black marks across the page to show what sin does to our lives. Then she turned those black marks into palm trees and they fit right into and added to the picture she had drawn.

I've had similar experience co-drawing with a small child. I start drawing a well thought out scene and the child scribbles right over what I have done. My talent as an artist is when I can use those scribbles as part of the picture, incorporating them into what I'm drawing so that it forms a complete picture and it doesn't look like two artists or one person had messed up the work of another.

In my mind God is such a talented artist that no matter what is drawn by someone else (by their own free will), whether it is Satan, or a human, or any other kind of agency such as evolution, God is able to incorporate it into the beautiful picture that he is drawing. And as the picture is being completed, it is very hard to discern where our scribbles have left their mark and God's pen has deftly drawn them into what is making.

Following the commands of God is like aligning our selves with God's principles, and is similar to how a transistor works. A transistor has three wires: one for the main current, one for a small current, one for the output. The main current flows through the transistor when and relative to the small current flow. If the charge for the small current is backwards, then there is no main current flow. When our actions and thoughts are at cross purposes with God, his power does not flow through us, we do not have eternal life because His Life which is eternal is not flowing through us. However, when we are aligned with God, our smallest action is a conduit of his great power and love. The significance of our acts our miniscule compared to the act of God through us.

I love it when great posts lead to equally great comments. Here's another tattoo story written in response to Diane's "Beautiful Tattoo" post yesterday...Who I Am and What I Have: Andrea's Tattoo StoryI also have a tattoo but mine is...

I "met" Diane first through her writing at the Burnside Writer's Blog and later during a long and surprisingly deep chat on Facebook. I hope to meet her in person one day, but for now I am honored to share...

"Newsman Walter Cronkite, who died at the age of 92, was so thoroughly and uniquely linked with the word "trust" that it is tempting to say that the word should be buried with him. In the generation since he left...

A frequent commenter here on the blog who goes by the name Credis Dervish posted the following four lines across two comments yesterday in response to my Submit: The New S-Word post. Credis is a self-described anti-theist, a piece...

So, I seem to have really stepped in it with my "What Does it Mean to be a Christian Woman" post on Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog earlier this week. It appears that my initial experience with the Bible and...

This is a guest posts from Dr. Suzan Johnson-Cook, Author, Speaker, Senior Pastor at the Bronx Christian Fellowship Church in New York and Founder of Wall Street Wednesdays, a mid-week service that has been held for more than a decade in the heart of...

Scot asked me to expand upon an email conversation we had last week regarding what it was like for me to approach the multitude of teachings regarding Christian womanhood for the first time as an adult convert to the faith....

Came across the following thought-provoking definition of the nature of the Bible in an online text written by one of my professors. "The Bible is the record of...Divine breakthroughs into human history. 'God's search for man,' it is described, rather than being...

It is starting to really hit me. I wrote a book and it comes out in April. Sure, there are things to do between now and then, but the train is rolling and I am on it. The writing part...

Summer is here in the US, a season many of us long for. I love being outdoors in warm weather, especially being from the east coast where we only get two very hot months. It's the time when I...

I've been thinking a lot about Michael Jackson. How can you help it? His life and death and music is all over the media. It has eclipsed news about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Between Michael, Farrah, Ed, Billy and...

This is the second part of a previous post where I introduced kenneth, a commenter on the blog whose spiritual journey has taken him from Catholicism to Paganism. Toward the end of his story, he makes a statement that I found...

Internet communication on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and the like seem to receive either high praise or deep concern with regard to the future of interpersonal communication. On the one hand, there are those who text, Tweet and update their status...