Sometimes life . . .

Or Beer for Jesus

Sometimes life just doesnt work out the way you hope, or think it should. Sometimes our perceptions and expectations just arent aligned or in accord with what turns out to be reality. Sometimes our realities, or should I say our constructions of reality are illusionary phantoms - poltergeists of our minds. Religion does not exemplify the exorcising ability to cast out, manage or overpower these demons of the mind. Christian religion, as a religion, may well be the enabler, the power behind the throne, and/or ultimately the very constructor of these psychological dominators of what is the human personality. We, in our religious smugness, think that we can construct a form, a pattern, a set of answers, that if adhered to, will ultimately keep us on the straight and narrow, be our guarantor of a well ordered life and prosperity. Our focus becomes primarily doing what is mandated by the code, our rules of order. And lives that dont quite appear to measure up to the standard, as conceived by arbitrary standard devisers, all so religiously justified, simply didnt do what they were supposed to do. Our faith is in the doing. Its easy to find reasons or things to condemn one another about. Ultimately, somebody (anybody - take your pick, it doesnt matter who), didnt do, isnt doing, or wont do what is arbitrarily conceived in your mind - what is necessary - for some purpose that you have rationalized and deemed absolute, for your express purposes (which you couch as sacred). For a resultant outcome that squares with your mental ideal. Our ideals become the roosts of our religious demons. But what if it (reality) has nothing to do with the doing? And everything to do with simply being? What if doing the will of God actually boils down to simply being and allowing Him to be through me? Is it worth considering that in Christ, I dont have to worry about What Would Jesus Do?, and all I have to do is be me, because He is in me, He and the father are one, and I am one with them? Is it possible that moving from a religious mind set of the Church of the Doers to a mind settled on Being, that there might be some disruption of the status quo - stirring up forces comfortable in their roosts? And willing to fight for their territorial dominion? Is it possible that in becoming a beer of Christ, might tend toward indefinable results, because life is no longer centered on my hopes, but Him, in me as my Hope? And that Hope, walked out in Faith, subordinates my perceptions and expectations to His providence.

Yes, sometimes life just doesnt work out the way you hope, or think it should. Set up a cold one for my buddy Jesus over here.