Meditation on Luke 13.24-27

"Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. Once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door, saying, 'Lord, open up to us!' then he will answer and say to you, 'I do not know where you are from.'  Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets'; and He will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you are from...'"

~~~

The Lord ends his statement with a preposition, twice.  Apparently the narrow door has something to do with more than grammar. His words ring strange though, almost bumpkin, especially spoken into the sophisticated air we currently breathe.  We strive with the question - who am I? - some of us our entire lives.  We pass the striving on to our children and our children's children - do you know who you are?  In light of Jesus' riddingly poor grammar, I wonder if our question may be too broad.

What if we narrowed our focus from who am I? to where am I from?  Some would immediately say that it is, in essence, the same question.  Well, maybe.  Who am I? ends with a pronoun - me. Where am I from? goes one beyond the me to some place, some people, something other than just the me.  What appears to be a narrowing is really an Alice-in-Wonderland door into an open plain of sorts, filled with the menagerie of our lives, people, places, things, sinners, saints, the good, the bad, and the often ugly, always a result of much more than me.  To enter that question though, you must shrink yourself.

So, where are you from?

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:49 AM

    I am so NOT urban, but yet I find myself needing to tell you that you are ALL up in my grill again. This post and the Maybe, Maybe Not post are messing with me.

    Where I'm from or maybe where I've been lately has completely changed who I am...to the point that I don't always recognize myself.

    I'm sitting at the crossroads of Where I'm From and Where I'm Going. The proverbial fork in the road, I guess you might say. And suddenly I find that I lack the knowledge and the courage to pick a path. So I find myself in a state of "be."

    And this probably only makes sense to me.

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  2. Gretchen, just remember to spit as well...

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  3. Snoodlings,
    It makes sense to me, possibly more than you know...might there be another viewing option besides the 'fork in the road', either/or?...maybe like a long blind curve ahead or a switchback or something?

    I'm searching for the state of 'euphoria' myself...

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  4. Nobody tells you when you get born here...

    From.

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  5. Micah Jamie2:16 PM

    The crossroads of where i'm from and where I'm going sounds mighty exciting to me! It beats the hell outta been there, done that, bought the tshirt. Just saying.

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  6. i have long said that our metaphors in the church are what is killing us - this path to jesus - wide road, narrow road - somehow we all thought we were supposed to be on the SAME road. that is the place where we fall down. thank you for the lewis carrol reference, i quite like that picture. shrinking...shrinking...

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  7. Great reading your blog posst

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