The Narrow Gate: Day 882 - A Hard Day's Night (I've been working like a dog)

The Narrow Gate

Welcome to the continuation of my blog, post-seminary. Ministry and evangelism have brought me back home to Chattanooga. I welcome your company on my journey.

The original blog, Down In Mississippi, shared stories from 2008 and 2009 of the hope and determination of people in the face of disaster wrought by the hurricanes Rita and Katrina in 2005, of work done primarily by volunteers from churches across America and with financial support of many aid agencies and private donations and the Church. My Mississippi posts really ended with the post of August 16, 2009. Much work, especially for the neediest, remained undone after the denominational church pulled out. Such is the nature of institutions. The world still needs your hands for a hand up. I commend to you my seven stories, Down in Mississippi I -VII, at the bottom of this page and the blog posts. They describe an experience of grace.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Day 882 - A Hard Day's Night (I've been working like a dog)

If you are wondering why no new posts the last two weeks, these past two weeks have been a combination respite/vacation, a visit a long-term ex-pat friend who has come to the US for a few weeks, completing a major home construction project; move a woodland garden so we can build a garage, tilling and planting a 1200 sf garden for outreach at Northside Presbyterian Church, and helping a couple of folks in our urban ministry with difficult housing, health and food problems.

Now that I'm close to fully rested (ha!) a new post will appear soon. It deals with the subject raised by one of my associates here in town, who probably is too young to appreciate the complexity of life in the South for a pre-teen/teen child of either race in the 1950's and 1960's. He seems inordinately obsessed with a recent new and telling publication (actually one could call it a reprise) on the sordid history of lynchings (mob rule) in the South in period of the post-civil War to mid 1900's and borders on suggesting all Caucasian Southerners are guilty for this vile history by inheritance.

The quite detailed and difficult article is prepared by the Equal Justice Initiative, titled, "America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." You can google it, if you do not read the NYT. If you do not know much about that part of Southern history you should read the report, but be advised it as gruesome as a photo-documentary on the Holocaust of WWII.

I encourage you to read it, not to infuse a guilt trip on you (there are plenty of people doing that purely for political purposes), and especially not to endorse any broad indictment of a Southerner because of their regional identity. (That is the blatant bigotry itself.)

I do challenge you to consider this question that will be the subject of an upcoming post, "What obligation do we have as a people, not as Southerners, or "Yankees" but as fellow travelers to correct or remediate the consequences of past human history. A closely related question you may wish to consider as an alternative is, "Is there such a thing a collective sin, or is all sin fundamentally a consequence, or responsibility, of personal activity or inactivity of the self?"

Grace and peace,

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Gates

The gate pervades the Good News. Peter entered the temple gate after the Jesus’ arrest to deny him. Poor Lazarus lay at the rich man's gate, longing for the crumb's from the table, while dogs licked his sores. The blind, lame and paralyzed lay at the Sheep Gate at the Jerusalem temple waiting at the pool with five porticoes for healing water. Jesus warned of the easy road and wide gate to material ease and spiritual destruction and calls us to the hard road and narrow gate to the waters of life.

necessary disclaimer

This blog is created solely to communicate to my brothers and sisters how one person sees adversity bringing out the greater character of humanity. It's early part relating connection to the volunteer relief effort in Mississippi after Katrina and later work with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Program and the Presbyterian Church(USA) is solely through my participation in them; this blog does not carry any sponsorship from these fine organizations or purport to speak for them. All original content is that of the writer who holds the copyright to all original writings and art or other works (See Creative Commons License above). Every effort is made to identify content from other sources which have been obtained from open internet sources. It's more recent content contains sermons and lessons used in preaching and teaching. The url to scripture are obtained via http://bible.oremus.org unless otherwise indicated.

Texts quoted from oremus bible viewer are from "New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved." and "New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Church of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved."