Category: My Temporary Home

The following guidelines are suggested for facilitating a small group in Bible study:

• Prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to teach.
• Observe deep confidentiality. Nothing said in the group will ever be repeated to other people.
• Be present as fully as possible. Be here with all your doubts, fears, and failings as well as your convictions, joys, and successes; your listening as well as your speaking.
• What is offered in the group is by invitation, not demand. This is not a “share or die” event! During the group’s time together, do whatever your soul calls for, and know that you do it with the group’s support.
• Speak your truth in ways that respect other people’s truth. Our view of reality may differ, but speaking one’s truth in our group does not mean interpreting, correcting, or debating what others say. Speak from your center to the center of the group. Use “I” statements, trusting the Holy Spirit to do the sifting and winnowing.
• Know that it is possible to leave the group with whatever it was that you needed when you arrived and that the seeds planted here can keep growing in the days ahead.
• Trust and learn from silence. Silence is a gift in our noisy world and a way of knowing in itself. Treat silence as a member of the group. After someone has spoken, take time to reflect without immediately filling the space with words.
• Ask yourself, “what can I learn?” When others in the group share scripture, poems, storis, questions, and silence, ask yourself, “what can I learn from this?”
• Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions instead of counsel, corrections, etc.
• No fixing, saving, advising or correcting each other.
• When the going gets rough, turn to wonder. If you feel judgmental, or defensive, as yourself, “I wonder what brought her to this belief?” “I wonder what he’s feeling right now?” I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” Set aside judgment to listen to others – and to yourself – more deeply.

###Brandon Blankenship

Attributions: Image credit: Camfire in the dark, Jerry Kirkhard CC flickr 8SEP2010

… then I will look at you with your eyes and you will look at me with mine.
– Dr. J.L. Moreno

There is a woman who sits in a park in Birmingham, Alabama. For as long as I can remember, she has sat in that park. She is older now. She doesn’t smell too good. She usually sits at the intersection of two walking paths hoping for someone to give her money for food. She is passive for a beggar but she is always present. I walked past her many times. Sometimes I shared pocket change. Most times I just walked by.[1. ©2017 Brandon Blankenship, Image Credit: Donnalee Blankenship]

One day, while waiting in line to enter an event at the park, we started talking. She slowly shared the story of the husband that beat her into the hospital. No longer able to think clearly she eventually lost her job. Her husband left. Unable to care for her children, they were taken by the state. Thirty something years have passed and she grieves the loss of her children. She wonders where they are and what kind of lives they might have had.

If her children had become pro athletes or millionaires or professors, I might have been quick to acknowledge that I knew their mother. I am quick to share her honor. St. Paul’s encourages that when one person is honored, we are all honored. And challenges that when one person suffers, we all suffer.[2. 1 Corinthians 12:26.] Since her children became wards of the state, I am tempted to reject her instead. I am slow to share her suffering. The real work of discovering humanity is leaning into, sharing the suffering with her. The real work is in not pulling away.

I don’t know what it is like to be beaten to the point of irreparable brain injury. I do know what it is like to suffer an injustice and not have the power to change it.

I don’t know what it is like for a court to determine that I am inadequate to be a parent. I do know what it is like to want or need to do something and question if I am adequate to do it.

I do not know what it is like to spend entire days ignored in a public park. I do know what it is like to feel alone.

By discovering her humanity, I discover that – whatever our differences may be – we have these things in common. We have a shared humanity. She agrees that she is still a mother even though her children were taken from her. I asked if I could call her mother, and she said I could.

Now, when I walk through the park, I look for her. When I see her, I call out “Hello mother!” and she smiles.

I am America, carefully picking the route I walk and drive so as not to interrupt my happy day. And when I stumble upon an interruption by accident, I have carefully honed my peripheral vision to ignore it. Visions of people who are beaten, alone, or hungry would interrupt my happy day. So, I avoid them where I can and ignore them where I must.

It is a Christian Practice to discover humanity as we walk, drive, work, and play. This requires stopping the practice of looking past people who are different from us to find people like us. It requires engaging humans as we encounter them.

People are sometimes gross, offensive, or painful – it is a Christian Practice to acknowledge them anyway, to engage them anyway, to love them anyway.

### Brandon Blankenship

Want a car? Sure. But which one? Isn’t finding abudance in the abudnant life really just about lifestyle?

Got a car but you got a new raise? Well, you need a better car. Got a better car? Then you need a better place to live. At a certain level of earning, you need a second car, a second house (beach, mountain or lake). No matter how much your check is, you always seem to end up with the same amount at the end of each year – little to nothing. No matter how much you make, you end up living a lifestyle of scarcity.

Yet you believe that there is such a thing as an abundant life. But no matter how hard you work, abundance evades you. It plays an unfair game of hide-and-seek, unfair because it cannot be found no matter how hard you seek. It seems like a better car would be an abundant life. It seems like more clothes would be an abudnant life. It seems like a better house would be an abudnant life. Finding abundance, however, is not about more.

The opposite of scarcity, however, is not abundance – it is enough.

If you can find a away to shift your lifestyle so that rather than sliding up the scale to the next better thing, you slide down the scale until you have just enough (until perhaps you are just a little uncomfortable).

Then you will be left with an abundance.

And when you have the opportunity to help others with your abudance – then you find the abundant life.

### Brandon Blankenship

… what a person plants, he or she will harvest. [1. Galatians 6:7, The Message, gender modified.]

I am encouraged with the farm-to-table movement in the United States. The side benefit is that as a new generation studies the source of the food on their table they become interested in things like seeds. Heirloom or hybrid, instead of thinking that fruit comes from the grocery story a whole generation knows that an apple grows on a tree and that there are many varieties of apple trees.

The simple knowledge that apple seeds, when planted in good ground, grow apple trees and good apple trees produce apples give this law meaning: what a person plants, he or she will harvest.

Intention is the Seed, Not the Act Itself

The seed that I plant is what I do and the tree and the apple that I harvest is what I get in return. What about those who give and give and get frustrated in the lack or quality of their harvest? Test your intention. Intention is the seed, not the act itself. The harvest is based on the the quality and quantify of your intention.

I Was, After All, Giving to the Homeless

Consider the story of when I would walk once a week or so from my office to a Bible study downtown. Often, I would pass homeless people on the walk. I kept a few dollars folded separate from everything else in my pocket so that I could easily give it as I felt lead to to so. As each person asked, I would pause and consult my conscience.[2. Each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.] As I felt led, I would give.

One day, I was compelled to start saying “in Jesus name” each time I gave. “O.K.,” I thought. “How hard could that be.” So, when the opportunity came, I opened my mouth to speak  —  and stuttered something even I didn’t understand. Giving “in Jesus name” turned out to be a lot harder than I expected.

The Nature of the Seed

When I give, if my intention is to look good to others or to be a good person, then that is what I harvest. So, when the harvest comes others see me as good in their estimation or worse, I see myself as good in my estimation. The intention of my planted seed is harvested.

Neither result is a good return on the investment. The Christian disciple seeks for “Christ to be magnified in our bodies whether by life or by death.”[3. Philippians 1:19-20.]

Checking my Intention

Perhaps that what David meant when he prayed, “search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.”[4.Psalm 139:23.]

Maybe David knew that there were places where his intentions were not right. Maybe David suspected that there were places where his true intentions were hidden, even from himself.

Challenge

There are several tools Christian disciples can use to check our intention. Here is a simple one. After you resolve to do something, add the phrase, “in Jesus name.” If adding this phrase is difficult or makes you uncomfortable, it may be time to ask, “what is my true intention?”[5. Image Credit: Return on Investment, Simon Cunningham CC flickr 1JAN2014 LendingMemo.com, ©2015 Brandon L. Blankenship Attorney Lawyer]

### Brandon L. Blankenship

Lord,

Let me be a place of rest for the unexpected traveller. A hot breakfast. A long talk over hot tea. The name of a friend in the next town and a package of cheese sandwiches for the road.[1. (c)2015 Brandon L. Blankenship, Image “Anna’s Canyon Rest” See Guillebeau, Chris, Happiness of Pursuit, Page 208.]

### Brandon Blankenship, Alabama

The ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because they lacked ten righteous men.

If you don’t know the story, the God of Abraham condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to absolute destruction because the wickedness in the cities had become great and exceedingly grave.

Eating while others hunger.

Sodom’s wickedness and the wickedness of the cities that had grown up around it was that its citizens exaggerated their own importance, had more than enough to eat but didn’t share with the hungry, pushed all of their work off onto others but didn’t provide for the poor.[1. Ezekiel 16:49]

Abraham begged for the cities to be spared.

Abraham[2. He was actually called Abram at this point in history because God had not yet called him by his new name of Abraham.] pleaded with God not to destroy the cities because righteous people might get executed alongside the wicked even though they were innocent. God agreed that if ten righteous men could be found He would stop the destruction. Abraham did not call for the destruction of the wicked. He pleaded for the righteous.

There were not ten righteous men.

The saddest part of this story is Lot who was Abraham’s nephew. Lot sat at the city gate of Sodom (and was therefore esteemed among the city government). Even though Lot was surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of men, he did not have ten friends that he persuaded to be righteous.

The cities were destroyed.

Challenge

What if God was looking at your city right now? Would it be destroyed or would it be saved? What role would you play in either fate? Consider these three questions that might make a difference:

1. The next time you focus your attention on condemning something you think is bad, can you shift your focus onto something righteous? Something good?
2. Can you take some step (no matter how small) to care for the poor and needy in your city?
3. Can you encourage nine others to shift the energy they put into showing off into gratitude?[3. ©2015 Brandon L. Blankenship, Image Ten Men by Sarah Hennington, used with permission.]

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