God local, God global

God local, God global

God is with the little child sleeping under a mosquito net in Africa, God is with the elderly woman walking to the market in New York City, God is with the Catholic priest in South America, and God is alive and well in my life and community.

God is present in every context- real- full, dynamic- present.

The challenge is that in every context we also experience the realities of the dominant cultures, systems of oppression, exploitation, fear and brokenness.

As Christians our task is to enter into the conversation to ask ‘Where is God present? What is of God, and what is not? What is truth and what is brokenness?

This question grows more complicated for us as Christians when we recognize our own cultural bias, our own lens, when we understand the history of the people of God as demonstrated in the Bible and in early Christian communities. We have to seek to understand. We ask, ‘what can we really know of the mysterious God of creation, redemption and life?’

We find ourselves caught in a game of tug-a-war between what we understand and experience of the realities of the Holy Spirit, and what we understand and experience in the culture around us.

We are all caught between the way things are and the things can be.

In order to break free from the systems of oppression and brokenness within us and within the world, we must first discern what these systems are, and what God wants for us and for the whole world.

True life, freedom and hope comes in letting go of the brokenness so prevalent in our own lives and in the global context, and to open ourselves to new life and freedom in Christ.