I just finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I know that I had to come to a place where his words would make sense to me. I know conversations, podcasts, reading a blog posts and books has brought me to a place where this made sense. I was engulfed by his writings, I could put it down. His friendships and adventures where things I would have loved to experience. I would love to worship at a church like Imago Dei and be encouraged to live a life that finds fulfillment in giving it away. Wow! I want to pick up all of his other books soon. I paragraph in the 17th chapter on Worship really hit home for me because I know I have lost this felling.
He starts off saying, "I love how the Gospels start, with John the Baptist eating bugs and baptizing people. The religious people start getting baptized because it had become popular, and John yells at them and calls them snakes. He says the water won’t do anything for them, it will only get their snakeskins wet. But if the mean it, if they had faith that Jesus was coming and was real, then Jesus would ignite the kingdom of life within them. I love that because for so long religion was my false gospel. But there was no magic in it, no wonder, no awe, no kingdom life burning in my chest. And when I get tempted by that same stupid Christian religion, I go back to beginning of the Gospels and am comforted that there is something more than emptiness of ritual. God will ignite the kingdom life within me, the Bible says. That’s mysticism. Its isn’t a formula that I am figuring out. It is something God does."
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