I awoke with the sun shining in windows that will someday be yours. The pale, new dawn light crept through the dense green trees like God breaking over the land. Dawn has a sound. Dawn has a whisper, like a lover in the early hours before responsibilities and life begins. A voice that has always brought me from sleep better than any alarm clock.
Out in the orchard I hear Sparrows, Chickadees, Flickers. The breeze is silent, barely stirring the bare trees. When I hear them at first -- the soft, distant cooing -- I think they are doves. But then they warble-cry and I realize there are Peacocks in this enchanted forest. A year or two ago, an entire ranch (no, not joking) emptied in a single wind storm, dozens of Peacocks flooding the nearby Banner Forest to live free and wild. You'll glimpse them sometimes, standing in the brush. Majestic and fabulous. Regal and otherworldly. You blink and wonder if you imagined it. The large blue-green body of silken feathers. The alert, aware and Godly head.
Birds are God's own angels.
A young man contacted me this weekend. A subscriber to this blog. He asked me to define New Testament Christianity. He was dismayed that *everyone* seems to use this term like a badge of honor (like a catch all) but that few people seem to embrace the tenants that he himself grew up with as an Armenian American in a New Testament Christian family. He wanted something written down, something to show everyone else. Something that says: You are not what I am. This is what I am. Because assumptions are dangerous things.
I told him there were fifty times when I wished for just such a note. But that having it wouldn't be within the guidelines of our own denomination. For a New Testament Christian does not come from a place of hubris. Does not argue with other Christians. Does not convert cross denominations, cut down other Christians, or even point out things we may see as inaccuracies in other scriptures.
Instead I wrote him this:
Gerald, you are a New Testament Christian if the base of your religion is the words of Christ. If you believe that the new day begins at dawn, not midnight. If you live your life by the passage of the sun and not the clock. If you believe that men and women are equal in the eyes of the Lord and were made to support each other. If you treasure children and know that life begins at conception and that conception is way before zygote. If you study history. If the pulpit does not preach politics. If someone being gay, like it is in nature, is genetic. If God, not Big Bang, created the Earth and that every blade of grass is here by His hand. If Christ -- not the Old Testament, not what came after Ascension, and certainly not what man teaches man -- is your Lord. If the body is sacred. If the heart is a temple. If to say "I love you" means I accept you, I value you, I will always support you. If you would never raise a hand to your child or your mate. If you strive to never raise your voice. If you think it's okay for a man to cry and for a woman to shout in protest. If you believe that bigotry and racism and phobias are what happens when man's culture imposes assumptions over God's natural diversity. If you don't accept scare tactics and wear a cross only because He beat it. If you are a rabble rouser. If you leave hubris at the door. If you accept all through the gates of your heart... even when sometimes you will be faced with enemies in your courtyard. If prayer not just at meals but constantly, four, five, eight times a day. Not wishes half-formed in your mind. Conversations, alive, passionate and *never* one-sided. Conversations with a real Christ. Not a vision of a white man with blue eyes. Not a visage. A real man. Powerful, strong, rebellious, articulate, gentle, focused and fully, completely alive. Our Christ. The beginning and the end. Our salvation and our grace. The heart of all that we are.
Do you turn to Christ or to man? If you turn to Christ, Gerald, than you are a New Testament Christian. If you turn to Christ, truly turn to Christ in all things, than you know it.
Standing in the early-spring orchard, cold and alive, I know enough not to write my weekly blog from a place of fear, pride, anger, hurt, guilt or any man-made emotion. I can only allow these feelings to wash away from me. Lifted into the dawn air. I can only know in my own heart that Christ stands beside me. Not because I am great. Not because I am gifted or touched or divine. But solely because I am none of those things. He stands with me because I need Him.
And He stands with everyone who does.
E.J.
