Flourish

"Lisa:  So, this is the thing that was really fundamental for me, and this revelation came to me while standing on the stage in South Africa, speaking for the Justice conference there last year ... actually literally a year ago. I was standing on the stage and it hit me. The ancients thought of the image of the king as being a marker of where that king ruled. So, like Jesus is in the temple with His ... going back and forth with the Sadducees, pharisees, and scribes, and they're trying to entrap Him.They say, "Yo, yo, yo Jesus, should we be paying taxes?" That's my Philly coming out there.Jen:  I like it. Yes. The Philly version-Lisa:  Philly girl. But yeah, so and then Jesus says to them, what? He says, "Go get me a coin." And so they do, and He says, "Whose icon is on the coin?" That word icon is the same word, it's the Greek version of the Hebrew word “tselem,” which is the word that's used in Genesis 1:26 when he says, "Let us make humankind in our tselem."So he says, "Whose tselem" if you're gonna talk Hebrew, "is on the coin?" And they say, "Caesar." And He says, "Okay then give to Caesar what is Caesar's." In other words, because Caesar's image is on that coin, Caesar owns the coin. It is Caesar's dominion. And then what does He say? He says, "But give to God what is God's." ​Well, what is God's? We belong to God, because we bear the image of God. We have the tselem of God imprinted on us. Now get this. Like I said, the ancients thought of the image of the king as being a marker of where that king ruled. We were created to be markers of where God ruled, not where each other ruled, and where that marker flourishes, where you see images of the king at the entrance of the city and on the coins, and they're all doing well, you know that that kingdom is flourishing. But where you see images of the king crushed, maligned, toppled, twisted, melted down, then you know that there is war against that king happening in that kingdom, or against that kingdom, because the image of the king is being crushed.Well, look at it this way. I think that on the first page of Genesis, where either the priests or Moses are coming out of subjugation, and they declare that all humanity is made in the image of God, and they say, "And let them have dominion," in case you don't get it. "Let them exercise agency. Let them be freed from oppression. Let them actually steward the world." What they're saying is the image of God is a marker of where God rules, and the thing is, where those images are crushed, where people's capacity to exercise dominion is limited, distorted, ignored, you are also limiting, distorting, crushing the image of God on earth, and therefore, declaring war against the kingdom of God.So, what would it look like for us to lay down our arms against God? You see, I don't think that we mean to declare war against God. I mean, even evangelicals who voted in someone who absolutely is declaring war against the image of God, every day, and the way that we are making decision about how the polis will live together. This current president believes in human hierarchy, and is legislating according to human hierarchy." ~This is an excerpt of Jen Hatmaker's interview with Lisa Sharon Harper. You can listen to the whole thing here. It is a must listen in my mind.

After I listened about two weeks ago I have not been able to get away from the idea of flourishing. I cannot stop thinking about what it would look like to not only flourish but to be someone who helps others to flourish themselves. 

The scripture that keeps coming to mind is Mark 4:30-32:

 30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.

It is an eco-system...a healthy eco-system where everything is connected and one organisms' health is tied to the next.


We have milkweed in our back yard. We planted it for the butterflies. And it has been amazing to watch our yard be a butterfly nursery. At any one time you can see the whole lifecycle right before your eyes. But it is more than just butterflies, there are bees and lizards and ladybugs and humming birds...my yard is alive and flourishing.
It goes thru cycles though. A few months ago when we had tons of caterpillars on the plants, the plants did not look so good. All the leaves had been eaten off and it was just stocks coming out of the ground. But that was flourishing too, because over 2 months we had 20 butterflies emerge from their chrysilas (way higher number than the average 2% that make it from egg to butterfly) 

The opposite of a healthy eco-systems is one where invasive species have been introduced.  "invasive species": An invasive species is a plant, fungus, or animal species that is not native to a specific location, and that has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy or human health. Wikipedia

The thing about invasive species is that the invasive species itself looks and is healthy. It flourishes at the expense of the other plants and animals around it. It does not give...It only takes.

So I feel Jesus challenging my to really look at my life and world to look for places where people are really flourishing and where they are not. 

How can I be "milkweed" and not an invasive species? 

How can our institutions and communities be healthy eco-systems? 

My head and heart are full of the metaphor, but I am not sure what the out working is yet fully. I will keep thinking...I just had to put it down somewhere.