They should lash us to our pews
Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?...Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?—Annie Dillard, (1945 - ) from her book Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.
posted by King of Peace @ Sunday, December 30, 2007
4 Comments:
At 12/30/2007 2:34 PM,
Anonymous said…
We don't have pews...
:)
At 12/30/2007 3:39 PM,
Anonymous said…
The God of Abraham is not aiming to make our life as pleasant as possible. He is here to turn tables and create people who can run with Him. "If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses?" (Jer. 12:5). He wants a people like horses, people whose necks are clothed with thunder, mock at fear, and do not stop at the sound of the trumpet.
I think Annie Dillard new that we sometimes forget that our God is unpredictable. That we must be like him. We should fear Him, for He IS the beginning and the end.
At 12/31/2007 8:56 AM,
Anonymous said…
Should we fear God, or is he Abba?
God's aim may not be to make our lives as pleasant as possible, but I don't think it is to make us as miserable as possible either.
Annie Dillard suggests that we should recognize that the ONE in our presence is all powerful and we need to respect that. We, as children, simply cannot comprehend all that He is.
Like in the sermon yesterday, Annie Dillard is trying to describe "a cup of coffee."
At 12/31/2007 10:10 AM,
King of Peace said…
The describe a cup of coffee reference in the comment above refers to yesterday's sermon found online here Beyond Words.
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