Thoughts on life, love, and politics

Sunday afternoon ponderings...

hello to all who read my blog... perhaps I am just talking to myself but it does help to write things down... so hello to myself at least.
Well student teaching is still going well... Monkey Boy is doing well... I am beginning to see a change in him where he is beginning to want to please me, but he doesn't want to let me know that. I have noticed that he has begun to do exactly what I ask him to do but he won't do it until I am not watching. It is really quite interesting.
This week we have parent teacher conferences and fall break. As a result students will only be at school on Monday and Tuesday. So we are not doing any of our normal things because they are all based on a traditional five day week. We are reviewing some concepts that we have done before. So Miss Ray has had fun this weekend planning what we are going to do. I am quite excited about tomorrow. All of you should be jealous about the fun my second graders get to have!

Onto my ponderings...
Church this morning was quite interesting. One of the pastors announced his resignation at the beginning of the service because he felt that he no longer met the qualifications for elders because one is that they manage their household well.
Our "head" pastor is currently in Italy speaking at a pastors conference. So one of the other pastors has been preaching. I had only heard him a couple times before, but I had always appreciated what he had to say. This time as he has been preaching the last several weeks I had not been real sure that what he was saying was what the passage meant or even correct. I couldn't really put my finger on it but I was uncomfortable with what was said. My friend that I go with felt the same way... on the way back today we were both wondering what the pastor would think of the sermons. It is not like they were heretical or anything just a lot of fluff which is very unusual in this church.
Today during the sermon I had an interesting thought. It was on the parable of the good samaritan. I began to wonder if this is simply discussing meeting the physical needs of my neighbors or if it is also talking about spiritual needs. It is easy to live in the middle class environment most of us live in and rarely be confronted by physical needs. However, all of us are daily confronted with people who have deep spiritual needs. Is part of being a good samaritan seeking to meet those needs (through sharing the good news)? A quote in a book I am reading supported this notion to some degree. It is from a man who was being helped in the 1800's by a mission in London said, "Religion is all a sham. I'll never believe these people believe my sould will burn in hell for ever and ever. If they do, they must be brutes indeed. Why, if I saw a poor creature under a cart-wheel I'd try to pull him out, but hell you say is worse still. If they believed it we should hear more about it than we do." This man compared sharing the gospel to doing a good deed. The more I think about this concept the more I believe that sharing the good news is probably at the heart of the story of the good samaritan. Why do we usually not share Christ? Because we don't want to risk it. We don't want to be maligned. We don't want to step over the cultural seperation of religion being private. We don't want to get involved in messy, long term relationships with people that are hard to love. In the story the Good Samaritan risked much. He risked rejection by the person he was helping. He risked cultural seperation. He invested into the relationship with his time and money.
Perhaps I am misusing this story... I am not sure this is what is meant... but it was an interesting thought that brought more meaning to a parable I have heard over and over.

Hope all is well with you... think about the good samaritan and let me know what you think...

posted by rayhe @ 3:00 pm