not a trailer queen - a mystic

Several thoughts this morning, funny one first....

"__________, your butt's crackin' out." Spoken by my 3 1/2 year old this morning. I won't reveal who it was spoken too, to protect their dignity but know that it could have been spoken to any member of our family. :o) We roared and I'm sure that terminology will be heard numerous times around our household.

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Next thought - I was listening to the radio this morning while taking the kids to and from school. I really enjoy the radio station, KLOVE. We didn't have the privilege of a good Christian radio station in our hometown. In fact, I'll be honest, I was so repulsed by it that I'd rather listen to the secular stations than it.

Anyways, this morning on KLOVE I heard a short little deal by some Christian leader that was awesome. He was talking about being at a big motorcycle event and the 'trailer queens' that come in driving their big motor homes with their motorcycles strapped on the back. They pull their bikes off the back of the trailer and shine them up and say, 'Look at my cool bike.' He compared that to Christianity. We need to be the 'wind in your face' kind of Christians, not the 'trailer queen' type. Good stuff.

And lastly, I read an excellent post by PBZ this morning. It was particularly interesting to me because last night I read Brother Lawrence being accused of being New Age and a mystic. I had never heard that and really thought it ludicrous. But I guess in light of this post, he was a mystic, though not New Age. The entire post is pretty long but I leave you with one paragraph from it that I thought was excellent. Oh, and I'll gladly own up to being a mystic - stone me.

While there may be dangers with Christian mysticism, I don't believe it to be any more dangerous than Christian pragmatism. And this lies at the heart of why we need an infusion of Christian mysticism in the American evangelical church. In our American compulsion to make all things practical and pragmatic, we are in danger of reducing God to a tool; making Him a means to an end. The vast majority of what passes for preaching and teaching in the American evangelical church is purely pragmatic. We have a glut of "how to" books and sermons. How to have a better life, a better marriage, a better job; how to have wisdom, success and prosperity. In and of themselves these teachings are fine, and the Bible does have much to say about these topics--but, when it becomes the totality of our message, we have domesticated God to something "useful." We are not so much interested in God, as in what God can be used to do. God is made a tool. A means to some other end.