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This daily post is designed to help you live into our New Room Society covenant of practicing daily prayer together. Below is this week’s theme and daily practice.
Week 27: Foolishness
Lighten up! It’s okay to be a little bit nuts. You’re a Jesus follower. You should be used to this by now…
“The message about the cross doesn’t make any sense to lost people. But for those of us who are being saved, it is God’s power at work.” 1 Corinthians 1:18, Contemporary English Version (CEV)
You’ve read, studied, and thought seriously enough as you prepared to enter the leadership of the church. And in the same way that thinking is not enough to form you into the image of God, trying is not enough, either. Here’s a tongue-twister for you: Spiritual disciplines are what you do to enable you to do what you haven’t been able to do yet.
Here’s an even better way of saying it: Spiritual disciplines are what you do to enable you to become the person God dreams of you being.
What does “foolishness” have to do with spiritual formation (or this Tables Project)?
Foolishness is what the Gospel looks like to people outside of the life to which God calls all creation. So to practice foolishness is a part of practicing looking silly, or sometimes even incomprehensible to others, because of the Way of Jesus.
For example, in the grand and ridiculous tradition of the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, Jeremiah paraded naked (for 3 years!) through the streets of Jerusalem to push home his point (Isaiah 20). Seemed crazy, but it made his prophetic point in the service of God’s message. And there are thousands more examples, throughout biblical history and the tradition of the church.
Welcome to the circus. It can feel a little bit insane, this profoundly holy Way
Sunday: The Why of Holy Foolishness
A jester in a king or queen’s court was often laughed at, mocked, or derided. But the very important and often dangerous role of a jester was to remind the rulers and all the court of the limits of power and ambition.
What is the cause or “why” of holy foolishness? In what ways are your heroes and sheroes of the faith “holy fools”?