For the Audience of One - Chapter 2

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 2 Sacrifice in Worship

Honesty does bring some pain. In fact change generally hurts or upsets. When we avoid things that we know bring us closer to God then we really need to pay attention. Pain can make us deaf or blind - do ask for God's comfort and healing. Don't forget to share what you're reading and praying over.

1. What didn't you like in this chapter? And Why?
2. What do you use in worship to justify yourself in behavior, in choosing what you want?
3. How do you feel about the tension between duty and love?
4. Are you willing to seek God and do things God's way?
5. Read 2 Chronicles 7:1-6 and ask God what he desires for you.

Faith and Fear

Monday morning I had an episode. I went to a reading class with my professor and suddenly there was this zigzag bright flashing line in my eyes blocking part my vision. I had to pause our discussion because I couldn't see properly. Over the years I have had floaters inside the eye and you learn to live with those things. Anyhow my professor was concerned and told me to see an opthalmologist and if they came back or I saw a veil of darkness to go to emergency immediately. Anyhow the lights went away and I couldn't detect any vision problems but I had a whole series of meetings etc.

Tuesday morning I had a day long meeting and called my old opthamologist and had real difficulties getting an appointment but telling the receptionist the symptoms and her talking to the doctor got me in Wednesday morning. But I didn't sleep at all well last night. My back was hurting as well because of the underlying tension, worry, and fear of what if my retina detaches or I have to go into emergency etc. Who will look after me if I do have vision problems or impaired sight? Internet research means that that ignorance is bliss is impossible because I now know the worse possible possibilities and outcomes.

Faith and Fear are sometime said to be effectively opposites but it seems to me not exact opposites. Fear and anxiety are similar but not the same but both sap energy and create all manner of effects in my body and psyche. I don't know whether I reach on he scale fear but I have been more anxious than I thought. It has taken 9 hours to calm down. Nine hours since the opthamologist told me that the thick gel inside the eye has shrunk and pulled away around the optic nerve but this is quite common.

To have Faith is to be blind, otherwise it is knowledge and therefore not faith. These couple of days have been stressful and anxious and a call to faith. My faith has been stretched.

Hope and care

Care is something other than cure. Cure means "change." A doctor, a lawyer, a minister, a social worker-they all want to use their professional skills to bring about changes in people's lives. They get paid for whatever kind of cure they can bring about. But cure, desirable as it may be, can easily become violent, manipulative, and even destructive if it does not grow out of care. Care is being with, crying out with, suffering with, feeling with. Care is compassion. It is claiming the truth that the other person is my brother or sister, human, mortal, vulnerable, like I am. Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey.

Over the last few days I've been watching the Live 8 DVDs and was caught by one moment when Bob Geldof explained the origins of Live Aid in the response to famine and crisis in replaying a 20 year old video. It ended pausing on this starving little girl. He said something like 'Don't let people tell you that you can't make a difference! You can." There appeared on stage that child grown up into a young woman.

We all hope to and I want to leave something behind in this world. I don't have a spouse nor a family but I want to make a difference. So often it isn't by doing anything but simply listening. My heart hurts when hear the pain of someone and I know I can do nothing but listen and pray with them. In that moment there is hope - I pray there is hope.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

For the Audience of One - Chapter 1

In this blog I'm going to try and be more of a push and pull technological expression. This will be an attempt to provide some questions for reflection on Mike Pilvachi's book For the Audience of One.

Read Chapter 1 The Highest Priority

It's all about being honest about ourselves. In the first set of questions I hope you were able to be honest to yourself and God. Well some of those questions have come back in chapter one.

1. What surprised you reading these few pages?
2. What are the elements of worship and what are the expectations for worship?
3. When did you last experience joy, do you sometimes have to will yourself to worship?
4. How do you feel about worship as duty? Is worship a tool or toy?
5. Are there desires in your life/heart that attracted to what is being said about worship?
6. Read Mark 12:29-31 and ask God about what his desire is for you.