The title comes from a song from Christian folk artist Buddy Greene, I Don't Belong:
I don't belong / And I'm going someday / Home to my own native land / I don't belong / And it seems like I hear / The sound of a "welcome home" band / I don't belong / I'm a foreigner here / Singing a sojourner's song / I've always known / This place ain't home / And I don't belongI don't listen to his music that much any more, but he was a strong formative influence on my earlier musical development, and the phrase captured my desired theme for the blog perfectly.
But we have another unsolved puzzle: what on earth is a ragamuffin, anyway? It seems to call up questionable images of begrimed, barefoot street urchins. What happened to "kings and priests"?
Growing up in the context of middle-class Christianity, it's sometimes harder to understand the social dynamics of the faith. Relating to the world as ragamuffins, beggars telling other beggars where to find bread, is a perspective that I find helpful; it slices through my personality in a painful and penetrating way.
I owe the whole concept to Rich Mullins, who in turn owes it to Brennan Manning, author of The Ragamuffin Gospel and Rich's spiritual mentor and director. Manning's book puts it well, describing ragamuffins as "the smart people who know they are stupid... the honest disciples who admit they are scalawags."That's me.
Images courtesy of crazewire.com and breathecast.com
2 comments:
We are all Ragamuffins. We come to the cross broken.
BUT -
IF we stay there, if we never become what Jesus redeemed us from and destined us for we live below what his purpose was for us.
My concern for many Christians is they spend full lifetimes taking the purposes of God to the grave unfulfilled.
We are to be Kings and Priests. We are to rule and reign. On this side of the Veil.
I know that doesn't fit the faux-humility of most evangelical christian doctrine but you have to tear a bunch of pages out of your Bible to accept less than the fullness of What Jesus redeemed us for. It's not about our going to heaven. It's not about our living quiet lives.
We are here to take over. Too long the Church of Jesus has languished in mediocrity and impotence.
It's time to arise. A lost world needs to hear from us.
Arise, Shine, for your Light HAS come.
I appreciate your thoughts Gene. As Oswald Chambers said:
"The way we continually talk about our own inability is an insult to the Creator. The deploring of our own incompetence is a slander against God for having overlooked us. Get into the habit of examining in the sight of God the things that sound humble before men, and you will be amazed at how staggeringly impertinent they are." (My Utmost For His Highest, November 30th)
It is important to keep both perspectives in balance; there is a very real tension here that I feel we deny to our peril. I like the way Manning puts it in the quote I concluded the post with.
We must remember that it is the meek - not the mighty - who inherit the earth.
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