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Friends
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| Living lightly must be an invitation | | Elephants take two years to have one baby. In that time, a pair of mice can produce more than 100 million offspring – over 2000 tons of mice! Multiplying trumps size.
To make a big impact for God's creation and our neighbours, the best thing is to win over our friends, even our opponents. Our living lightly must be an invitation, not an exhibition of hair-shirts.
That’s why Jesus talked about being fruitful and told us to ‘go and make disciples!’
| | Brendan Bowles 01/06/2009 12:12 | |
Indeed. It has been one of the big ah-has for me as I make this journey - that Living Lightly can be really fun - I still too often when speaking encounter people who want to have lists of do and don'ts or to get into the technicalities - when to me it is a journey. One on which I am very much a beginner but in which I look to live out what I believe is God's path and in which there are lots of (good) surprises.
| I think it is a personal realization and choice. It is not to be advertised - for walking with God, the journey itself, is bespoke between the individual and God - hence the bankruptcy of the majority of discipleship materials. They begin with a global objective reality in view - and there is none. St Francis' model was not that of Andrew Carnegie, yet both were devoted to God. We cannot make the judgement, and we do not have the global prescription for Christian truth. It is in walking together and the conversation that develops that we can communicate our own perspectives, which are neither right nor the only one available, and together participate in a multilayered kingdom expression on earth.
Living lightly can become as authoritarian and fundamentalist in application as any other single issue or programmatic process. It is rather about choices that we are all free to make - and God enjoys the liberty he has given so delightfully.
| Yes, thanks for this. You're probably right about discipleship materials. For me, it's about inspiration, and I know that I learn lots from others. When I look at what other people are doing it inspires me and gives me ideas for my own life.
| To be effective, living lightly needs to be joyous and liberating, not a great weight to be carried. My own experience is that, knowing why I make the choices I make, I find that they become very energising and liberating and even exciting. What is important is the reason for the choices, our love of God.
Last week a colleague was ridiculing me for my attempts to live lightly and said it wouldn't make any difference. I know God sees what each of us does, and that matters. Besides, where would society be if individuals hadn't taken action over the centuaries?
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