Dialogue of Grace ….

...or Dialogue that is just Dialogue

Rhuna is a Bengali family worker that comes into our Toddler group. It seems a long time since she shared her grief with me, but the lesson I learnt that day is still as acute now as it was then.

Her pain was obvious, tangible – her cousin had recently died. Memories of her Fathers death were battered her. We talked. I asked her about her Muslim faith – and as toddlers ran around our feet Rhuna and I shared our beliefs. She looked at me, smiled and asked "Do you mind if I ask you what Christians believe about life after death?"

Dialogue of grace.

It was not long before she was looking at me with that "I never knew that" look on her face.

"Can we talk again?"

The world has deconstructed truth. It has deconstructed love. In fact the world has almost deconstructed anything remotely definable! The meta-narrative that it struggles with is grace. How we as a church demonstrate grace is the challenge, cheapen it, is to deconstruct it.

My big lesson? Share grace through dialogue that is just dialogue!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit of sally bashing....

Came across a good bit of Sally bashing over at salvationsoldiers I have to say we try and make sure that everything we raise goes into projects that build local community in Poplar but hopefully if you read this blog you get that sense anyway.
Read more

Lost Voices of Mission...Fred Brown

Image
Along the world famous Oxford street in London's Westend; nestled in among the classy frontage of designer shops there is almost an unnoticeable, unimpressive wooden door. It is more or less alongside The Regent Hall's main entrance onto the busyness of Oxford Street. People pass the wooden door oblivious to the equally unimpressive wooden steps that go up three storey's to what was Regent Hall's youth club. When I was 10 I played on these bare wooden steps totally unaware of the significance behind and upon which I played. Many years later I discovered a university youth work course - as an induction to Youth Work - stopped outside this insignificant wooden door to point out that Youth Work as we know it in the UK started behind this door. ...whether that be the surbanite flower people that flooded the Westend to express their free love; or the hard core drug community this unimpressive wooden door became the 'portal' that blurred encounter between church an...
Read more

Types of Christian Spirituality...

Image
It is easy to think and to limit ourselves to a single approach to Christian spirituality. A 'if it works for me it should work for you approach' tends to narrow our appreciation of other ways which actually impoverishes our experience of spirituality. Urban T. Holmes has developed a means of exploring spirituality and helps develop an appreciation through discovering links between spirituality, temperament and predisposition. The diagram illustrates his ideas together with potential inherent dangers. The vertical continuum speaks and helps us understand our relational orientation to God. This ranges from engaging with God through understanding and theological process to a more emotive response. Horizontally speaks of a persons preferred means of pursuing the spiritual life. Kataphtic speaks of affirmation and the need of something tangible in an individuals spirituality- this may take the form of worship, art, even imagination with the use of metaphors, symbols and images play...
Read more