What is Sacred?
When I was a kid, church was different. We acted differently there than anywhere else. We dressed differently, wearing our Sunday best. We even spoke differently, not just the words we said but the way we said them as well. It was not your outside voice. Church was a sacred place. Everyone knew it and it showed in their actions.
Today is different. Our culture is different.
Empowered
I graduated from college in 1980 with a degree in Women's Studies. It was a new thing back then and the man who would later become my husband asked me if that meant I studied cooking and sewing. (He may have been joking…) At the time, I was interested in equality – in men and women having the same opportunities and rights in the law, work, and so on. My ideal was that each person be empowered to be all they could be.
Applying that idea to a Christian worldview, we desire that each person be all that God created them to be. The word most often associated with this idea of equality is Empowerment, which is defined as the authority or power given to someone to do something.
Try Harder!
Most of us have been told at one time or another to try harder. We're working out and the trainer encourages us to try harder—just 2 more reps. We scrubbing the bottom of a pot and it's not working. We want to give up, and we're told to try harder – scrub it a little more. The assumption whenever we hear or think "try harder" is that we have not put in enough effort, and if we did, we would succeed. It's all up to us. The truth is that trying harder doesn't always apply in the spiritual life.
Lukewarm
A few blog posts ago, I talked about the letters to the seven churches in the Book of Revelation. One of the letters was to Laodicea, who Jesus said was lukewarm. The most frequent comment I heard from people who read or listened to that episode was – I wonder if I’m lukewarm. And that made me want to dig a little deeper into what that word means because in every case, the people who wondered if they were lukewarm were not. So why do we sometimes accuse ourselves and what exactly does it mean to be lukewarm?
Sign Your Name
My sister, Kathy, and her husband Tom are remodeling their bathroom. As they tore out the walls, they found a board with Tom's signature and a date – the date he had remodeled the bathroom 40 years ago. Tom is a tradesman. Before retiring he did siding and roofing, and with every job he signed his work in a place nobody would see.