What is your image?
There is this story of a little child in Sunday school. She is drawing a picture and the teacher ask her what she is drawing. “God” she answered. “But no one knows what God looks like”, said her teacher. To which the child responded, “they will know what He looks like when I am finished”. We all have a picture of God and this picture drives your life. In South Africa there are a lot of people who believe that there is a white God and a black God. Some believe in an angry God and others in a God that is always smiling.
In our Oasis rhythm we start from the premise that we are made in the image of God. But what is God’s image like? Tozer said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
We believe that Jesus came in a person into the dust streets of our lives in order to help us draw a picture of God. He used His life as a pencil and His words as coloring. In Him we change our thoughts about God. In 1 John 4 the apostle John helps us with drawing God. He writes that, “God is love” (v16). But God’s love is not something intangible it is something he describes in the beginning of the book as hearing, seeing and touching.
At Oasis we believe that God is love. When our image of God changes to have love at its center it influences the way we see, hear and touch those around us. What image do you have of God?
Does your God have rhythm?
A good rhythm pulls us into a movement. Just think how contagious it can be. You may be standing in a line somewhere and a song plays on the radio, a song with a rhythm. The queue becomes a movement in the presence of a rhythm. The Early Church also talked about rhythm; they talked about the rhythm of God.
The Greek word for this was perichoresis and it literally means to dance=choresis and around = peri. To dance around.
The dance of God is a contagious dance filled with rhythms of love and healing. In this sense one can imagine the creation account as one wherein God says, “let us make the circle bigger, let us invite people into our dance”. “Let us create people in our dancing image who can bring a different rhythm to the world”.
At Oasis the “O” in our logo is represented by a circle. This circle is called the circle of inclusion. We believe that everyone has been made in the image of God and is invited into the rhythm of God. We are all invited into a dance of love with rhythms bringing healing to the world. We serve a God that always ‘makes the circle bigger’. As followers of Jesus we bring a different rhythm into the world and the rhythm produces a movement.
In the next few posts we are going to explore the particular rhythm of life we are experimenting with at Oasis. But for now we want to ask you to think about your picture of God. Does your God have a contagious rhythm?
Painting pictures of God
Every morning I have the sacred privilege of taking my children to preschool. The conversations in the car are varied – depending on our collective mood. A few days ago we drove to school and Tayla said, “Dad today my heart is full of joy”. I asked her why and she replied, “Because it is going to be a good day.”
One of their favourite activities in the car is to have the windows down so that the wind can blow through their hair. They also love it when our two dogs join us for the ride. Mocha usually sits in the front with me. She sits upright and looks like a human in the passenger’s seat. Lillo, like Liam and Tala, loves to position her head for optimal wind absorption. Her ears flap next to her head as if they are clapping hands.
When the kids and the dogs are in the car we are quite the spectacle and it is fun to see the reaction of fellow motorists, they usually smile. On the way to school we usually pray and the kids have developed a prayer that goes like this (in Afrikaans it rhymes),
“God thanks for this great day, wherein we can play and laugh”.
“Here, dankie vir hierdie dag waarin ons kan speel en lag”.
Because of the immense crime problem in South Africa the preschool they attend has a camera at the gate so that the teachers can monitor who is seeking access. This camera has a dual purpose. Not only does it serve as a security measure, it also brings the kids lots of fun.
Over the years the camera has been used as a tool for saying goodbye. The children ask their parents to wave at them. Not so for Liam and Tayla. A wave is not good enough. Over the last few months their instructions on how the wave should be performed have become more ostentatious.
This morning I had to jump from a squatting position and spin in the air as well as use my arms in a chopping motion (per Liam’s request, he calls it “the shark”). The kids show me what to do and then I open and close the gate and stand in the road facing the camera. Then I will do the “moves”, that is what the kids call it.
Last week a pedestrian walked by and watched me do the moves. She burst out in laughter. To her I was just a weirdo doing “moves” to no one in particular. Over the last few weeks this routine has become very special to me. Every morning this liturgy reminds me of the love of Our Father.
The Bible gives us multiple pictures of the Father. The one I am reminded of every morning is painted by Zephaniah 3:17,
“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. ” (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV)
When I am done with the “moves” in front of the camera I hear a gentle whisper from the Father saying, “Tom I also do moves for you”.
These moves are filled with the soothing (quieting) rhythms of rejoicing, gladness and love. It is also full of energetic moves of exultation and loud singing and also contains the saving moves of might and salvation.
During this Advent I am thinking about the jumping God in front of the camera.
I am reminded that the One whose “coming(s)” we celebrate is above all a jumping God, full of love and ready to make moves. Soothing, energetic and saving moves.