Friday, March 1, 2013

Lenten Challenge, Day 17: Prophet

I have to admit...today's word had me stumped. With most of the others, something easily came to mind that I could write about, but prophet? Notsomuch.

Probably because "prophet" seems like such an archaic word today. It's rarely used, and when it is, it's almost always in reference to 2000 or more years ago. Word Nerd Alert: I ended up looking up the Hebrew root for prophet, and found that its two-letter root refers to "openness," because to "receive transcendental wisdom, one must make oneself open." (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

Now that got me thinking.

Prophets way back in the day were the ones who shook things up, right? Because they pointed out what everyone was doing wrong. They were open to challenging the way things were and then fixing the problem.

So how open is the church as a whole today? Are the loudest voices we hear about love, or about hate? Are they about openness and inclusion, or close-mindedness and seclusion? These are obviously rhetorical questions, because I think we can all name an idiotic church or two that scream messages of hate on huge billboards and picket signs at funerals. And they're the ones everyone remembers. They're the ones everyone hears.

But if they're going to pile on the hate, and close-mindedness, and judgy-I'm-better-than-you-ness, the rest of us need to be doubling the dose of love and openness, and changing of the status quo.

The rest of us need to be prophet-like and shake things up a bit. Now...who's with me?!

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